Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

I breathe deeply. In. Out.

I feel the headache recede. Not entirely. Only just a little relief. And just like that, I can’t remember Lucia anymore. She’s just gone, but she has left me this. I breathe deeply. In. Out.

Think, Birdie.

“Yes, the headache is terrible,” I hear. I lift my head. Doctor Bragg is in front of me. He looks at me with fake sympathy. Or is it real? His dark eyes give me no comfort. There is something in them that I don’t understand: pity, self-hatred, defiance, or a kind of terrible determination to continue like a fatally wounded animal that nonetheless tries to flee. “It’s the quality of the anesthesia, I’m afraid,” he continues. “I have to make do with what is left behind, you see. We all have to make do with what is left to us.” His long face doesn’t change as he says this, although there is something shimmering in his eyes, but I can’t understand it. My heart races inside my chest.

“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t do this.” I fight to keep calm. I have a feeling that if I become too emotional, he’ll just restrain me tighter. I have to be calm. I have to reason with him. “Please.” But I know as I say it that he won’t stop. Whatever he wants to do, he is going to do. There is no argument possible to stop him.

“Let’s not do that, shall we?” This time Doctor Bragg attempts a smile, but it’s much, much worse than nothing. The widening of his lips is purely mechanical like making a corpse smile. “This will be over quickly,” he says, the smile dropping away from him like discarded garbage.

“Please.” I whisper it, hoping that a whisper will make it through to him. But he ignores me.

There is a rolling sound, and I see that Doctor Bragg is in a rolling chair. He slides over next to Squint. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a scalpel and pulls away a protective plastic cover. The blade glints terribly in the light.

“Please,” I repeat, hardly able to get the word out. I don’t want to beg. I’ve got nothing else. Nothing. I used to think that I was beyond that, that I could withstand anything, that I would rather die with dignity than beg and whimper and cry, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. “Please don’t do this.” I’m trembling. Tears roll down my face. My heart is a storm inside me that I can hardly contain.

Doctor Bragg ignores me. He reaches up and grabs a clump of Squint’s hair, pulling his head down.

“Mmmmm,” Squint says through his barbed wire, cage of a mouth.

In one movement, Doctor Bragg inserts his scalpel into one side of Squint’s eye, slices around with a twist of his wrist, and then, with a gloved hand, plucks his eye from his head. It all happens so quickly that I don’t even have time to turn away or close my eyes, although I would give anything not to have seen it.

“Mmmmm,” Squint says.

Doctor Bragg lets the eye drop on a metal plate that I just now notice is sitting on his lap. He lets go of Squint’s hair and the infected man just straightens up as if nothing has happened. Thick, dark liquid oozes from the hole where his eye had been.

“It’s puzzling,” says Doctor Bragg, looking back at me. “The eye actually grows back. This is the second specimen I’ve removed from him.” He holds the metal plate forward as if for me to inspect. As if I am curious about it. The eye sits on a pile of long, thin worms, all contorting and twisting as if they were being impaled on a hook. “Even more curious,” the Doctor continues, “he moves around with the same accuracy as before. I think the worms sense their surroundings. Certainly, as you can see, there is no ocular input whatsoever. Curious.” Doctor Bragg looks up at Squint and blinks slowly as he considers this curiosity. Then he turns back to me and, after a filthy attempt at a smile, rolls his chair back to me. I’m too scared now to say anything. My lip trembles.

Doctor Bragg tries to smile again. The fleshy attempt hits his face like roadkill. Then it falls as quickly as it appeared. “I know that to you,” he says, his eyes dark and bottomless, “this must seem cruel. Unfair.” He clears his throat. “And you’re not wrong.” He shakes his head. “No, you're entirely right. Strictly speaking, this is a hideous crime, what I’m about to do to you. Hideous. Barbaric. I won’t argue with you.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I breathe, my whole face trembling.

The Doctor shrugs slowly. He looks at me almost apologetically. “Well, there’s the rub,” he says. “I do have to do this. This is the only way to know. This is the only way to protect us all. I have to know.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m very sorry it has to be you, and I know there’s no forgiving me. I don’t expect that.”

He cocks his head slightly and then shrugs, as if the decision was beyond him. Then he attempts another nauseating smile and it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. “You see, Birdie,” he says, “I’ve been able to learn so much. I’ve learned that what we think of as the Worm is actually something like a super organism, like a bee’s hive or an ant’s nest. There isn’t just one kind of worm. I’ve been able to identify six distinct types of worms. Six.” Sweat is gathering on his upper lip as if in excitement. “Each type of worm has its proper role. Ones in the stomach seem to be focused on reproduction. Ones that latch onto the brain stem. Ones that seem to work their way through the blood stream, invisible to the naked eye, constantly nourishing the body, keeping the host in a kind of suspended animation, a kind of living death. Ones that plant themselves into the heart, ones that seem connected to the ear, and another type that seems to live in the pancreas and liver. I’ve learned so much about them.” He holds up the plate with the ball of worms. “But the ones that inhabit the optic nerve, these I have not studied thoroughly.” He looks at them with an open, acidic hatred. Not disgust, but hatred. “This last type remains mysterious to me, especially when it comes to someone of your unique ancestry.” He looks at them as if they were an affront to him.

After a moment he turns back to me. “You can help me, and, in so doing,” he explains, “help everyone. Your whole species.” He gives a twitching, brutal little smile. “If you think of it, your sacrifice is kind of an honor.” I want to say something back to him, something biting, something that can communicate the terror coursing through me, but my mind is blank from terror.

Suddenly I feel a sudden prick. I look down and see a needle in my thigh. I realize he’s been talking only to distract me. I feel heavy suddenly, heavy and distant. The skin on my face sags, begins to feel like mud.

“It’s easier if you don’t struggle,” he explains. He looks at his watch and waits patiently as the numb feeling spreads through my body. Only my fear and horror remain undulled.

After a minute, Doctor Bragg suddenly stands up and takes my jaw in his hand. I hardly feel it as he forces my mouth open. My heart is screaming, but I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. Helplessly I watch as he lifts the sprawling, wriggling mass of worms to my mouth. I feel it fall onto my tongue and then he shuts my mouth with a clamping sound and plugs my nose. My body is beyond my ability to control, and I feel myself swallow, feel the cold, writhing eyeball slip down my throat, twisting and contorting like a living octopus. Then it passes and it is done. Doctor Bragg looks down at me.

“There now,” he says. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

This is it. There’s no use in thinking or breathing, dreaming or remembering. I sit in the cage I only escaped days ago. I imagine the worms inside me multiplying, sending out new worms to invade my brain, latch themselves into the most central part of me. I will be the Doctor’s next source of worms, his next research subject. There will be no one to care for me, no one to give me that slim chance for survival that began all this. I am slowly dying. It should take no more than twenty four hours to know what it feels like to be Eric. I will know what he has known these weeks. I will understand if he has vanished or if he still exists somewhere inside him. I will be gone or I will be there to witness what atrocities the Doctor will do to me. I have only a day before the fever begins, before it starts taking me. If I survive the fever, I will be shuffling around the cell in only a day or so, if it happens as quickly as it happened to Squint. Only a day.