The Conversion Bureau: Infiltration

        I slowly came to, regaining my senses one after another.  First was my sense of touch.  I felt myself lying on a soft surface, warm and comfortable.  My head was resting slightly higher than the rest of my body, and I could feel my hair on my forehead.

I’m in a bed, I slowly concluded.  With a head on a pillow.

        Next, I began to taste.  My tongue detected something sickeningly sweet, attempting to disguise the rancid, bitter undertones.  I knew this taste, even though I couldn’t exactly remember what it was.

Some kind of food… I thought.  A nutrient paste, maybe?

        While I was mulling over the flavor, trying to place exactly where I had discovered it, I was overwhelmed by my sense of smell.  Antiseptic.  Medicine.  Stale, filtered air.

Why would I be in a hospital? I wondered.  Am I sick?  Have they been feeding me paste?

        Then I heard sounds.  Nothing spectacular.  Just the humming of some climate control system.  The beeping of equipment.  The beating of my own heart.

It’s very quiet, I noticed.  Where are all of the staff?

Finally I opened my eyes.  I turned my head around, trying to find my bearings.  It didn’t help, given the room was completely, utterly dark.

I can’t see anything. I noted, with frustration.  Surely they realize that a patient needs some sort of light.

        It’s interesting, really.  People always talk about some supernatural sixth sense.  There’s nothing supernatural about it at all.  I know this, because it was the final one that awoke.

My body tensed in agony, the sudden burst of pain sweeping me out of the calm water that was my mind and into a hurricane of base instinct and agony.  It felt like my brain was being sawed in half by partially activated fusion saw.  But as quickly as the pain mounted, it was swept away.  Not gone, but hidden, in the back part of my mind.  Even today it remains, constantly informing me that even after all these years, something is amiss.

        Panting like some common animal, I finally came to my senses as the lights suddenly flared on.  I hissed as I threw up my arm in front of my face.  Or was it a leg?  I didn’t care at the time.  I gingerly pulled it away, squinting into the light as I heard a door behind me hiss open.  I tried to turn to face it, but I realized, with some sense of deja vu, that I was tied down to the bed I was in.  Sometimes we miss the simplest things, right?

        Anyhow, I craned my head as far as I could to see a man, probably around 40 if I had to guess, walk in.  He was pale, almost albino, but had dark grey eyes, so dark that you could barely make out his pupils.  His hair was black as well, slicked back formally, but not so much as to be ostentatious.  He wore, you guessed it, a black business suit, with a painfully familiar logo on the front.  Two clasping, golden hands, rimmed with a gold star in order to make it out from the dark surroundings.  However, even more familiar was his face.  A face that, though I couldn’t place it at the time, I can never forget today.

        “Good evening, Miss Grace,” he said, his voice cold and uncaring.  “I don’t suppose you remember me?”

        At first I didn’t know what he was talking about.  He addressed me as Miss Grace, but I was very sure that wasn’t my name.  Was it?  A sudden spike of pain in my temple made me blink rapidly, but as it receded, I remembered.

        “Mr… Wilson?” I asked.  I wasn’t really sure how I knew his name, nor why I was so sure that Miss Grace was my own.  Though wasn’t Grace my surname?  What was my first?  I couldn’t remember for the life of me.

        He smiled, though his grin didn’t reach his eyes.  They stared back, as if maws of darkness, indifferent, but perfectly happy to devour that light which strayed too close.

        “That would be correct.”

        I watched him uneasily, suppressing my base, but futile, instinct to run away.  I felt like I was trapped in a pit with a panther, which knew very well it had all the time it needed to do whatever it wanted.

        After observing each other for what seemed like hours, he finally spoke.  “Well I’m glad you remember something, but the doctors said not to stress you, and you seem to be… uneasy at the moment.  And I’m not so hypocritical as to argue with those who know actually know what they’re doing.  Do get better soon, Miss Grace.”

        As I watched him leave, I felt another sudden stab of pain.  As it subsided, I immediately said the next thing that came to mind.

        “Yes, sir.”

        I couldn’t see his face, but I know he grinned his cruel, calculating grin as he stepped out the door.

        The lights turned off.