Trapped

He couldn’t move.

The table he lay on was cold against his naked back. There were no ropes binding his arms, no belts securing his legs. But he was immobile, paralyzed.

Yet he was still able to feel.

Panicked thoughts swirled through his brain. Where am I? Was I in an accident? I can’t open my eyes. Am I blind? Am I dead? I can still think, so I must be alive. But I can’t move. Can’t talk. What’s happening to me?

He concentrated, hard as he could, trying to move his hands and touch his face.

Nothing happened.

Noise, from the right. Footsteps. His body didn’t seem to work, but thankfully, his ears did.

Someone’s in the room.

He felt a hand touch his face, and then saw painful bright light.

A doctor in a green smock stared down at him.

He just pried my eyelids open.

“Good morning. You’re disoriented, I bet. Confused. Probably can’t even remember how you got here.” The doctor’s voice was scratchy, strained, as if he wasn’t accustomed to using it.

Please, tell me what’s going on…

“You can’t move because you’ve been given a paralytic.” He was an older man, bald, his scrubs stained. “Unfortunately, you have to remain conscious for this procedure to work.”

The doctor walked off, out of sight. The man’s eyes remained open, unblinking, gazing into the light overhead. Am I in an operating room? What procedure? Who was that doctor?

It was bright, but it didn’t seem bright enough to be a hospital. The light was yellowish, dingy, coming from a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. And there was a smell. Not an antiseptic, care-facility smell. A smell of rot and decay.

“The drug immobilizes the skeletomuscular system.” The doctor was somewhere near his feet. The man couldn’t move his eyes to see him. “You’re completely helpless. One more dose and you’d stop breathing altogether.”

The doctor rested a hand on the man’s knee, gave it a pat.

“You’ve lost your reflexes, your ability to flinch. But other vital functions remain active.”

A sudden pressure, between his legs. The doctor was squeezing his testicles. The agony bloomed, white hot and inescapable. His vision went blurry. He tried to pull away, tried with all of his might, but he didn’t budge an inch.

“You can still feel pain, as I’m sure you notice. Lacrimation is normal, for now. Your pupils can dilate. And, of course, your pulse and heart rate just shot up considerably. The drug keeps you from moving so I can do the procedure, but it doesn’t shut you down completely.”

The man felt the tears flow down the sides of his head, the throb still lingering after the doctor released his grip.

This wasn’t a hospital. It couldn’t be. A doctor wouldn’t do that to me. What the hell was going on?

Then he heard the most agonizing scream of his life.

It didn’t come from the room, but from someplace else in the building. Nearby, maybe a room or two over. The scream was so shrill it didn’t sound human at first. Then it lost pitch and was replaced by shouting.

“NO! PLEASE NO! STOP IT! JESUS NOOOOOO!”

What are they doing to that poor guy?

And what are they going to do to me?

“That’s one of Lester’s guests,” the doctor said. “Lester has been with him for a few hours now. I’m surprised he still has a voice left. I shudder to think what’s being done to make him cry out like that. Do you recognize who it is?”

And then, all at once, the man knew who was screaming. He remembered how they got there. The strange noises. Being chased. Hunted. Running terrified. And then being caught. Caught by…

“No need to worry.” The doctor leaned over him, smiling. Crumbs wedged in the corners of his thin lips, on his chin, and a small streak of something brown—blood?—smeared across his age-spotted forehead. “You won’t end up like that. You’re being given a gift. An invaluable, extraordinary gift. The world is full of lambs. But very few get to be wolves. Lester’s playmate, sadly for him, is a lamb. But you, you, my lucky fellow—you’re about to become a wolf.”

The doctor raised a gigantic syringe.

“This is going to hurt. Quite a bit, in fact.”

The man couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away, and he was forced to watch and feel as the needle descended and plunged into his unblinking eye.