Ineffable

XL

  “If you could, do try not to move, this can be particularly tricky,” said The Doctor, crouching beneath the table on which The Young Cripple laid.

  Something she had learned up until now was that there was no use in struggling. Whether it was the orderlies clasping her collar bone, or the leather straps on both ends of the bed which shackled her every limb to the floor, everything which was supposed to bind her, did so with superb efficiency.

  The Doctor was beneath the bed now, turning handles and flicking switches to align the subject’s body with a series of holes in the bed’s frame, so as to insert the syringe and extract the girl’s Light without much fuss.

  “On three,” said The Doctor.

  The Young Cripple clenched her eyes as tight as she could, and with it, she clenched her whole body. Little good it did, though, for she was not a turtle or an echidna. She had no external defence mechanisms.

  So she clenched as tight as she could, and she braced for the worst pain imaginable. And it wasn’t the pain of a blow or a grating cut which scared her the most; it had nothing to do with any trauma to her physical self. It was the thought of feeling nothing; of being erased and vacuous, and of existing without Light - that was what sparked the first tear. And then, as if a fire exploded in her heart and ignited in her eyes, The Young Cripple thought of everything she would miss in the next second or two, should her soul be taken from her.

  And it was exactly like The Young Boy himself had imagined; last night, by the campfire. She thought about the things she would never be able to do again; all the innocuous little things, the things you never even knew that you did and that you never knew mattered, that is until someone tells you that you’ll never do them again.

  She thought, not about the things themselves, but of the sensations they brought her. For example, in the time it took for me to write this, she remembered her morning prayer, not because of her devotion to Light or to The Sun of God, but because of the shivers she would get, bowing in the fresh morning air and listening to the sparrows as they discoursed over something that might have been as trivial as a domestic dispute, the day’s obligations, or a poor night’s sleep; which to the girl, sounded like the merry whistling of philosophy and poetry.

  It was this that she remembered first; the faint sting from the morning air, and the shiver, not from the cold, but from a world much smaller than she, that was so animate in merely being alive. And that was the cause of her first tear. It alone ran down her face and, as if following some fated course, fell through the small opening in the bed beneath her right ear where The Doctor was steadying his hand. And the single tear landed on the very tip of the syringe.

  “One,” said The Doctor, readying his stabbing hands.

  The next hundred thoughts occurred in rapid succession. Once again, it wasn’t as if she were watching some neatly edited show reel. She was experiencing these memories as emotions, tastes, scents, sounds, vibrations, feelings, sensations, and overall familiarizations. She experienced them all as colours. Her every sense harmonized in such dramatic fashion; and all in minor chords.

  She missed all of these things that she experienced. She missed not the things themselves, but the feelings, on which they anchored, that, should she ever experience them again, would allow her to relive, in utmost subtlety, every cornerstone she had built to house her worldly experience.

  The events - be they a hug, a first sweet or sour experience, a first fright or broken heart, or the first exhilarant delight of accomplishing the unaccomplishable and being so very surprised, proud, and even a little shy in the same tone - were merely mooring points for her emotional vessel, for the colour and shaping of her Light and her internal being. And so she missed, not the events themselves, but the thought of ever reliving them again, as if each sensation were as dear as a brother or a sister, as absolute as a mother or a father, or as inspiring and shaping, as the compromise and devotion of an impassioned lover.

  And so she wept, and as she did, from out in the hall, a sad song played.

  “Two,” shouted The Doctor.

  He plunged the needle right into her neck and its tip broke in half.

  “Well that was unexpected,” he said, completely baffled.

  Having witnessed the irrational, The Doctor went into shock. He crawled to the farthest corner of the room and curled himself into a defensive ball, staring wildly at the broken needle, and then at the girl who was bound on the bed. And like the girl with her memories, he wasn’t staring at the needle, as much as he was staring at an accidental proof of uncertainty, and more diabolical, possibility.

  As the girl continued to weep, out in the hallway, the song continued to play.