Observation...

The patient played quietly in the corner, another game of chess with himself. He didn’t bother too look up when the nurse brought his lunch tray. She said something in a tone he found patronizing, but which was probably intended to sooth and coax…or, more likely, it was simply the result of habit and had long since lost any sincerity of intention.

Unlike most of the other patients’ trays, his bore no pills or elixirs, and he knew by taste there was nothing added to his food. They were experimenting with him again. He didn’t know why. They did this every few months. He was suspicious beyond his years, either actual or those counted since starting over.

The medications that came and went were varied, but usually they were some concoction of stimulants and hallucinogens. Sometimes they supplemented his “therapy” with electrical current, then hooked him up to machines that monitored his brain activity. A year or so after his arrival (as best he could mark time under the circumstances), while he was still rebuilding motor skills and relearning how to speak (the latter only privately, in his own mind), he had mastered the monitoring machines. He spiked the meters a few times early on, just to text his skills and to see their reactions. He had learned it was better to keep the show a little more consistent. Not too consistent, because that, too, might arouse reaction and further testing.

Unlike some of the other patients, many of his efforts were directed toward being left alone. Occasionally, when one of the officials was getting too close to something, he could even imagine a disturbance with one of the other patients...and somehow that disturbance would occur. The first time it happened, he went too far. He’d had no idea…well, almost no idea…

The mundane management of his doctors and nurses and their machines was far from his largest concern at the moment. There had been something stirring in his mind, faintly, weakly, like a moth trapped in the folds of a handkerchief, slipping ever more beyond the precipice between life and death, but occasionally summoning the strength to cause another slight tremor in the linen.

His mind processed things largely by way of such images…images of things he couldn’t remember ever having seen or experienced, nor even read about.

His own mind both fascinated and terrified him. He tried to keep explorations of the dark, lost rooms on his own terms, but this feeble thing somehow demanded his attention, threatened his control. He therefore fought to master it, to squash it out of existence. He pictured a thumb pressing down firmly upon the tiny bump beneath the white linen.