Although he felt like he had been there forever, he knew that was no the case. He had been there for maybe two days, but the unnatural darkness of the room made it confusing for his circadian cycles. He had measured the seconds and hours by the flickering of the lights above his head. It was the occasional light that gave his dark world substance. He had watched with glassy blue eyes doctors move around him, half-wrapped in coats of white, half-wrapped in cloaks of darkness. He had not fought them when they had brought him here. It had taken them several hours for them to find Caleb Norwill crouched over the body of Zach Kori. He had clutched the man's pillow between his kneecaps and his torso, cradling it. The smell of death hung in the room, and rigor mortis had just set into to Zach's limbs. They were splayed to the sides of his cot, and his eyes stared vacantly up at the ceiling. Caleb could not bear to close them, because he could see a familiar face etched on the eyelids. There was an ancient belief that the murdered recorded the face of their assailant on the back of their retina, but that there was no way of processing the images, so this information was useless. But Caleb could see his own face shining back at him, with ragged hair and a fractured glint of a smile. He hadn't the heart to close Zach's eyes - to dot hat would remove the guilt that hung in his chest, where his heart should have been. He knew that there was a heart still - something beating and throbbing within him, but he figured that it only beat out of habit, and that there was no real reason for it to throb the way that it did. If his heart stopped beating, would he die as easily as Zach did?
But he had not resisted them when they shot him full of sedatives - horse tranquilizers. It had taken two full syringes before he had collapsed into blissful unconsciousness. Although Caleb did not sleep, he dreamed, whether he was awake or unconscious, he dreamed. And he suspected that he had been dreaming for the past few days, with his wrists shackled to the sides of the hospital bed, wrists rubbed raw from strain, only to heal instantly up again without even the memory of scar tissue. On the first day of his arrival, there had been many doctors and nurses, busying themselves with charts and facts and figures, but by the second day, they were all gone. They had forgotten about him again, and Caleb was not surprised. He supposed that he should have tried harder to be memorable, to be seen. But when the doctors looked at him, all they saw was a profitable collection of blood plasmas and cancer tissue. But when the novelty of these things had worn off, they had disappeared to find the more violent and pervasive prisoners. Caleb hadn't said a word since they had brought him in. On the first day, a tired looking nurse had tried to feed him, but she couldn't get him to open his lips. By the second day, she was gone, and the bottles of Ensure they had tried to force into his system were gone too. There was nothing in this grim operating room, except for him, and the dreams. And the moth.
Caleb stared up at the flickering lights. A moth was trapped beneath the plastic that enclosed the light. He could see its silhouette struggling weakly with every flicker of the light. His fingers curled at his sides, but he did not make an effort to escape his bonds. He just stared blankly upwards, and felt himself succumbing to the dream again. He watched himself get up from the operating table, pulling away from his straps easily. He watched the man who was him, but was not him smile at his x-rays, smiling at the punctured lungs and the morphed spine. He watched his fingers brush against a discarded hospital gown, and pull it over his naked body. He had been stripped down, so that they could get a better look at him. Beneath the ragged and dirty slip, Caleb's body was a thing of ruin. Cracked and pitted white skin, marred with many scars and even more scar tissue, fingers and toes that had gone black at the tips from either blood-build up or decomposition; Caleb couldn't be sure. His hair was white and brittle, and whatever body hair he had once had simply broke off in calcified chunks. He was a dust-covered monster, with bright blue eyes and a forgettable face. Caleb watched himself stare at himself, and play fingers against a half-caved-in chest. This was the dream.
Arthur smiled at him, and his teeth were bright and terrible. He was a thick-skinned calcium sipper. Caleb strained against the strap on his head, but he could not move. He didn't have the strength. He felt Arthur's fingers push against his trachea. For a moment, he thought that his Other was going to strangle him. The words escaped his mouth before he could do anything to stop them. "Let me die. Let me go. Please." They were cracked and broken words. They were the words of desperation. The words of a drowning man, who no longer had the energy to cling to his raft.
Arthur squeezed hard on his throat. This is it, Caleb thought. This is the end. Thank God on High. This is the end. But then, the grip released, it was no longer strong. It became a carress, and then nothing at all. Caleb's eyes blazed with teas and fear, and his fingers tightened at his sides. Arthur patted his knuckles with his fingertips. "I won't let you die," The war criminal whispered, and Caleb could hear the cruelty in his voice. He could hear the hatred that Arthur had for him, a hatred so deep and horrible that not even death would alleviate that hatred. Only pain could, only Caleb's suffering. "I never can let you die." His fingers brushed towards the buckles on his wrist straps. Caleb realized that Arthur was setting him free. He willed himself to banish this nightmare, to end this dream -but he couldn't wake up. He was not asleep, how could he wake up? The first strap came undone, and the next. All the while, Arthur spoke to him, his Other, just as much as he was Caleb's. "Don't try to kill yourself. I'll repair all of the damage. I can repair anything." His fingers went to the buckles around his ankles, and he released Caleb's legs with a snap, "If you do, they'll bury you, just like that poor boy. If they bury you, and I have to crawl out of your wreck of a corpse, I will do it." Caleb clenched his eyes. They were filled with tears.
"Stopstopstop." He said over and over, and when he opened his eyes, the dream was over. He was alone in his room. There was no Arthur. There was only Caleb, alone, in a hospital cot, strapped down. No. Not strapped down. All of the straps had been neatly undone. How? How had this happened? Caleb felt a shiver run down his naked spine. He pulled himself up, and hugged his knees to his chest. He sobbed for a moment, but there were no tears. He could not cry anymore. He was too dehydrated for there to be any-more tears. He swung his legs off of the hospital bed. There was nothing to do but go. There was nothing left for him. He would return to one of the cells in the bottom of this hospital, and he would be forgotten once again. And he would be alone with his dreams. He would sit on the Persian Gulf and watch missiles stream across the sky like falling stars, one arm clasped to an AK-47, semi-automatic gun, while the other was held by his Other, who reminded him that he was alive, and would never die.
Caleb plucked a discarded doctor's coat from a chair. Doctor Mikahil Astrov was embroidered on the pocket. Caleb wrinkled his nose, and pulled it around his thin and shaking shoulders. He stared at himself in the dark, metallic gleam of a half-filled, entirely forgotten sink. He said his names to himself. If he didn't, maybe he would forget again. Maybe he would believe that he was Mikhail Astrov. "Caleb James Norwill." He mumbled. "Arthur Terrance Prince."
Caleb James Norwill and Arthur Terrance Prince walked with one body down the halls of the hospital, wrapped in a stolen doctor's coat. They were looking for the way down, and a place to be forgotten again.
