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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
I've been here before, deduced Sydney, recoiling from lights, a terrific metallic clash, the shatter of glass.
"Get your mind off your career for one second, will you? I’m talking about the children." Jacob had argued prior to the incident—a malicious, calculated incident.
Sydney's eyes opened suddenly, filled with ephemeral relief.
The nightmare, both precious and intimate, concluded.
An unfamiliar nightmare commenced; Sydney wasn't certain he'd survive to be haunted by this fresh terror. There was, however, no doubt that he'd spend the remainder of his life obeying Jacob's piercing, disparaging command. He wanted me to consider the children.
The children.
The child he had saved.
The countless other children he had forsaken; among those were his abductor, the man that had, presumably, restrained—and reclined—him in an adjustable contraption that closely resembled a Bergonic chair. Sydney struggled to identify the man, both widened and narrowed his eyes in an attempt to bypass blurred vision; his head throbbed in response.
The tortured individual, meanwhile, argued fiercely with voices only he could hear, alternating between English and Latin. Sydney strained, unsuccessfully, to determine the man's position, proximity. "I said we're not using this thing now, Ray! We lobotomize only as a last resort. You've all concurred that shock therapy is indicated; it's imperative that we begin immediately."
Sydney longed to protest, to reason with the stranger, and would have, both verbally and non, if he were capable. He wore a straight jacket, iron shackles around his ankles; encompassing his head—and secured tightly—was an apparatus, resembling a cage, called a branks; a projecting spike inside was lodged between Sydney's lips, preventing verbal communication, preventing him from closing his jaw; saliva, consequently, streamed freely from his mouth.
A hasty assessment of his surroundings significantly diminished what remained of Sydney's optimism. Desperately, he sought egress, bouncing his horrified gaze erratically between the four solid brick walls of a windowless, door-less, malodorous room illuminated via an odd vermilion glow whose origin was unclear.
A fraying rope ladder swaying gently served as both ingress and egress, presumed Sydney, squinting painfully to ascertain its precise location and whether or not the ladder was suspended from the ceiling of the room he occupied or from a second or third floor.
Sydney failed to reach any conclusion; he could discern no ceiling, only darkness.
Sub-level?
Is that what this is?
Some sort of subterranean reservoir?
The disordered stranger's seemingly disembodied head materialized from darker shadows beyond the reach of Sydney's vision, abruptly wrenching the psychiatrist back to his paramount dilemma.
Searching for an exit was both premature and imbecilic; after all, the impediment to his escape was not potential points of egress, but his abductor, restraints.
"Yes, yes, you recognize this machine. Of course you do," Sydney's abductor said, mistaking the psychiatrist's evident terror and bewilderment for curiosity, recognition, perhaps even appreciation. The younger man shifted uncomfortably; with some hesitance, he extended his hand and adjusted the nasal cannula, grimacing at the contact between his fingers and Sydney's flesh, and hissing, as if in pain.
He'd been attempting to ensure Sydney's comfort; understandably, he succeeded only in heightening Sydney's terror; that particular accessory had entirely escaped the psychiatrist's attention.
Dear, God, what else has he done to me?
"It's just oxygen, Doctor," Sydney was assured lightly when he, instinctively, attempted to retreat. "And this?" Sydney's abductor inquired, pushing a brain retractor set into Sydney's face and then mounting it to the chair.
Indifferently, patiently, the man tightened T-screws, made minor adjustments, and explained sedately, "As I was saying: I hear them in my head; they won't stop; the incessant buzzing never ends; it's all I hear, this infernal, unnatural buzzing of perhaps ten thousand swarms of flies. You can't hear it, can you?" He asked, staring vacantly at Sydney, and waiting, ostensibly, for an answer that he'd rather deliberately, overtly prohibited.
"Doctor Billy didn't hear them either. He didn't remember me either. No one ever remembers me. But he remembers me now--and how spurious is that title huh? Doctor? When applied to that reprehensible charlatan? He remembers me now, of course. And you're going to remember me, too."
Sydney didn't doubt him, this victim-cum-avenger.
He pondered incalculable sins of omission, victims whose names and faces he couldn't recall- including the name of his abductor, which, served, independently, as an indictment against him.
The stranger had experienced a unique variety of hell; he deserved to be remembered, compensated.
Indeed, Sydney believed the punishment he had, and would, endure at the hands of his irreproachable abductor was absolutely righteous.
I should have listened to Jacob, God rest his soul.
Sydney believed that in sparing countless innocents he and his brother might have secured their own salvation, escaped damnation.
If only I'd listened to him.
"That's not important right now," the younger man murmured to himself, echoing Sydney's self-condemnation: It's much too late for my damned soul now.
"What's important is that I must prove to someone that I'm suffering from a legitimate neurological condition, and, um, well, today that someone is you, Doctor Jacob. I'm not crazy. I'm really not. Just because my condition was triggered by you shrinks doesn't make it a psychiatric problem. I'm not crazy. You understand why I have to do this. You won't know how very, very bad you people treated me until you suffer the same fate.
And when you finally know that I'm telling the truth you will document my condition and publish it all of the medical journals and then you doctors can find a treatment and I won't have to hear this infuriating noise anymore. Shut up, will ya, Raymond," the man shouted abruptly.
"Now, to accurately measure the effects of ECT on the brain of a conscience subject we're not going to anesthetize you," the man said, apathetically, saturating some gauze rather liberally with isopropyl alcohol and then pushing it over Sydney's temples, squeezing gratuitously, and watching with childlike fascination the rivulets of liquid pool and trickle atop his flesh.
"And," he added thoughtfully, removing the branks, "you won't be needing this." The man eagerly seized a pair of electrode paddles and thrust them against Sydney's temples.
Sydney's eyes widened in disbelief. He opened his mouth to reason with the man, inform him of the dangers involved in not allowing ample time for the alcohol to dry and its fumes to dissipate, as well as the proximity of oxygen, the risks associated with ECT in older patients, and to hastily stammer the necessity of restraints, mouth guards, muscle relaxants, anesthesia.
Sydney was never given an opportunity.
The terrific flash and pain indicated that fumes were, indeed, present. Sydney squinted against the brightness, recoiled; rather than retreat from the sparks, however, his body, involuntarily, lurched towards them. He anticipated syncope, welcomed its mercy, solicited the intercession of saints.
Sydney emitted a strangled cry that sounded inhuman, was vaguely aware of muscles violently contracting, severe hip pain, a possibly fractured scapula, and a not unpleasant warmth between his legs.
Urine and saliva mingled on a dirt floor already saturated with blood; the smell of burnt hair and flesh, perhaps temporarily, vanquished the stench of decay.
Sydney's final thoughts, before thinking became too painful, were of Miss Parker and Jarod; he longed and dreaded, in equal measures, to see them again, was seized by an exquisite wretchedness.
Salvation is a remarkable, often unendurable, imposition.
There was no doubt that in the search for him, Parker and Jarod would discover the truth; Sydney preferred death.
