THE ANAESTHETIST Vol 2 – Extract

When she came round she didn’t do it all at once. It was a gradual process. A very gradual process. And the thing was that because there was no pain involved, because she was feeling no pain at all, it was an even more gradual process. It was like there was no rush for her to come round because she didn’t have to deal with anything. That was it. She could just take her own sweet time waking up because she didn’t have to deal with trauma right now. She could just do it all in her own time. But because of that, because of that the fact that she was bondaged and suspended off the floor, gently swinging didn’t hit her straight away. That was another gradual process. The realisation that her feet weren’t on the floor. That she was suspended above the floor. There would have been a moment, like a split second moment that that realisation came to her, and it did. Then her eyes snapped open. She had had enough of waking up gradually now she wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Her consciousness came back, and so did her memories of being dragged back into that van. That was when her eyes popped open and popped open wide. It was when her legs flailed as well.

At least it felt like her legs flailed. That was the message she tried to send to them. To flail in her panic of realisation. Then she realised that she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that because her ankles were together. Bound together. But then so were her knees. Any notion that she would wake up and find that she had been in some kind of dream or nightmare was vanishing quickly. The anaesthetic was wearing off. It had all but worn off altogether and with that came the fear. Like a slither in the pit of her stomach. It was about the same time that she realised that she was naked. That couldn’t be right. She was telling herself that in her mind. That this wasn’t right at all. Naked, and her feet weren’t not on the floor. This was a young woman from a plain, ordinary simple life. The assault on her senses must have been complete and total. She was feeling upright. But then her sight, although coming back was not offering much and that was because the place that she was in didn’t have much light all. That place did have a feeling of being a ‘chamber’. That wasn’t even a word that was in Jane’s normal vocabulary and yet it came to her now. There was an echoey quality to the environment. And there was this vastness as well. It was completely weird. She had the feeling that she was the centre of this chamber and that she was the centre of focus. But she didn’t know what she was the focus of. She needed more light - that’s what she needed.

She needed to put her hand up to her forehead. She needed to think. But when she tried she found that she couldn’t do that, couldn’t bring her hands up. She tried to make sense of that for a little while and she tried again, nothing. But then she could see her shoulders either side of her face and they looked like they were going to ‘pop’. That was because her arms were behind her. Yes now she got it. Her arms were behind her. Now that she had worked that out maybe she could move them. Nothing! Her wrists were bound. Not just bound, but bound solid and her hands back to back. But then so were her elbows together. That was impossible though. For her elbows to be touching the way they were. That would have hurt. That would have hurt a lot. That would mean that her shoulder blades would be touching as well, or almost and that would have meant pain, pure pain. But she couldn’t feel any of that. She just couldn’t feel it. Did that mean it wasn’t so - that if she couldn’t feel it then it wasn’t so? Something deep inside her psyche was telling her that things were not right. She was naked and strung up. She realised that she was hanging by her bound arms. That alone should have meant severe pain but there was none. This wasn’t a young woman who would have known about pain blocks and pain management. This was a woman who came from the normal world. The plain world. She lived a normal life. A normal existence. And right now her head was being fucked with on a monumental level.

But that was it. That Jane lived a normal existence, a normal life, made what she was waking up into more cruel. It made it so that it was a pure assault on the senses. One that she couldn’t take in one hit. It made it so that it was a head fuck. One that set in and then stayed on the psyche. Maybe if she could lift her legs a little bit, just bend them at the knees there would be some relief gained. She felt fatigue but she didn’t know why, or what the reason for that was. Her body felt fatigued, completely. There was no pain just that fatigue. But when she tried to lift her legs or move them in any way there was nothing. Hanging from her ankle bonds were weights. Weights that kept her length straight, dead straight. That in itself would cause pure agony when the pain block was removed but she didn’t know that. How could she know that? Those weights, like lead weights, more than she would ever be able to lift in normal circumstances. They were holding her legs down, dead straight but not touching the floor. The weights also suspended off the floor so that it wasn’t just her legs holding the weight of them but also her spine. That would be a source of pain as well. She heard something, like a noise and she realised it was her own noise. Noise coming from her mouth. Or coming from somewhere at the back of her throat. A wet noise. There was a measure of despair setting it. She could feel it. Somehow she knew what that was even though she hadn’t suffered it before ever in her life.

The more her head cleared, the more that despair was setting in. This was a young woman who wasn’t used to drama in her life. She wasn’t used to being in deep water and then having to get out of that deep water. This was a woman who just had her little flat, her little apartment in a pretty village far enough out of the city to have that country feel. A woman who went to work and went home. One who read a lot, and listened to music every day of her life. She wasn’t used to this. And maybe this was the most cruel level of psychological torture that could be applied by one person on another. Taking a young woman so completely and so totally out of her comfort zone that the likelihood of her being able to cope with it, being able to contend with it was next to nil. And that would be a good assessment of Jane’s situation.