Electric Pulse

• Xavier Taylor, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

You lie awake in the early morning, 5, 6 o’clock. The bed barely big enough to fit someone 4ft, let alone you. Shivering breeze from the ocean side window. Powerless to close it due to the tight straight jacket, taking away the little freedom you already have left.

All you can do is listen to the constant clamour of neighbouring prisoners, nearly drowned out by the rust covered chains, clashing against walls or the head belting motions against brick.??Escaping the chamber for an early chow. The collection of medicine to “fix us”, we are just rats in a mission crazed scientific competition. Taken advantage of for a cure, cure of what?
Being a homosexual, a sapphic?

The ballroom doesn’t provide any sense of want, newspaper with the appearance of paper mache due to the foggy mist protecting the area. States; 1967, July 12 The Australian BREAKING MAN KILLED IN TRAGIC FIRE, BURNING FARM SHED AND ALL. the ability to read becomes a place of solitude. People sit, motionless, asleep in a mobile body. Rocking to the point of a heart beat, over and over again, repeating and repeating. Expressed in a rebellious way to breakout of their zombie state. Words you feared are demanded “Madeline Stertcha” it feels like an electric pulse, through your body up your bones, sudden alarms wales within your head, another one of your “treatments”, inevitable.??You refuse with the strength of your whole body, but a man with a pop eye build pulls you with the force of 100 men. Long dark corridor, a horror movie, the feeling of meeting your death arises in your heart. If only you never took interest in your best friend, if only your parents didn’t love god more than you. You’d be free.

The asylum guard places you in the chair, arms strapped, another version of constraint, the cold feeling of water is sponged against your brain, trickling down your chin, is this the end? Will this be the one that ends me over curing me. Everything is connect and the words are shouted to begin “pull”. A painful ticklish, 100 pencils prickling you in every joint, while you are forced into your cure, messages are flashed. You deny. You receive the shock. You feel yourself shutting down, luckily it’s over. ??You are taken to your cell to recover so you are able to repeat the process the next day, the smells become even more dominant, urine and feces going along with a smell of fresh bread in the morning.

You lay with the inability to move, what have I done wrong?, you need to fight and keep your mind? You are an innocent in the eye of the devil.