The room was large and imposing, and the harsh light that glared in his eyes was blinding. He attempted to block it out, but his thin eyelids did little to alleviate the pain, and the rough fingers which probed and clenched his body refused to allow him to put up his hands as a barrier. He mumbled some complaint, but his soft voice was barely audible beneath the variegated clicking and humming of the machines around him. His words went unnoted.

Eventually, to his relief, the light was switched off and the machines ceased their monotonous symphony. After the momentarily disconcerting blindness had passed, he was able to see his perpetrators again, though all had a fuzzy aura about them. Everything around him seemed fuzzy these days. They stood in a neat semi-circle around him, smiles grotesquely pinched on their chubby cheeks, small white teeth glistening in pink gums. They clasped their clipboards eagerly against their pressed white coats. On the edge of his vision one woman was preparing three needles with different coloured substances. He shifted uncomfortably under their scrutinizing stares.

"I want to go home." his thin voice faltered slightly like a trembling bird. He could hear it ricochet off of the bare walls and echo hollowly back at him. "When do I get to go home?"

"Just as soon as you tell us what we need to know, Mr. Fairfax," the lanky man in the center smiled coldly at him and tapped his fingers impatiently on the back of his clipboard.

"I've already told you everything. Everything." Fairfax felt a hard lump rise from his chest into his throat and forced himself to swallow it, feeling his adam's apple lift and drop with the effort.

"Our tests don't believe you, Mr. Fairfax."

One of the bigger men moved forward and took a hold of Fairfax's bicep, his entire hand easily encircling it. A primal urge to struggle, to shout at them to release him, to rant and rave and throw something rose from the lump, but he obeyed patiently as he was forced to his feet and led to a stainless steel table on the opposite end of the room. He had known his limits long before he came; he had been well trained. He was all too acutely aware of his fragile fame and was not willing to break any more limbs for a futile cause. After everything, Fairfax remained silent and patient.

They laid him down, strapped his arms, legs, and head to the cold metal, and turned on some unseen machine which caused a red light on a lamp overhead to blink occasional pulses into his sensitive eyes. Fairfax heaved a sigh and settled himself for a long painful operation, in the duration of which they would each take their turn with instruments of torture that were supposed to assist them in the interrogation. To his surprise, however, they circled around him again. The woman had finished preparing the needles and stood on his right, holding one filled with a red liquid cautiously over his body, as if afraid it would attack her if she held it anywhere near to herself.

"You still haven't told us where you're really from, Mr. Fairfax," the lanky man chirped again.

"Of course I did. I'm from England." Yet his strange accent and the wisdom that glistened behind his boyish eyes spoke differently. And the memory of the fall, the anxiety of the impact still made his stomach churn.

"Come now, you don't expect us really to believe that? We're scientists, Mr. Fairfax. We're not completely blind to the facts. We know you're not, either." He nodded his head slightly to the nurse, who jabbed the thick needle quickly into his arm. Fairfax trembled, moaning softly as he felt a heat rush quickly through his veins, black spots dancing spastically upon their white lab coats and spinning circles around his weary mind. He looked up at their swirling faces, feeling his skin tingle. He was almost certain he must be glowing.

"Who are you?" the man asked, his voice larger-than-life and thunderous in his ears.

A trace of a smile stretched his pale lips, and he thought of the light piercing through his skin. "I suppose I'm the Messiah. Or the Antichrist." His words were slurred.

The man scowled, and the nurse jabbed again with a second.

Fairfax shrieked as spider webs fell across his eyes and the room twisted into distorted monsters which leaped at him and scraped his face. A sharp pain bit down on each of his nerves, and he heard the question come again, though farther away this time, and less intrusive. He shouted a reply, spat curses in his native language, and moaned for his wife and children all in one breath. He was no longer sure if he was glowing, for the world was dark around him. Yet the tingling remained, and this reassured him. The pain was blinding and the blindness was pain. The lump began to swell into a monstrous beast which threatened to pop inside his belly, but he quickly stumbled over the revelation that the lump wasn't a lump after all, but merely a ball. Fairfax smiled, picked it up, and threw it to the ravished dogs who were choking themselves on their chains. They tore it to shreds and spat it back at him. He wept.

At some point he heard a voice come to him, float down through the horrors and the vicious memories and shimmer like a beacon before him. The spider webs held it aloft, and he struggled to make out its meaning. "Thank You." Fairfax felt a third prick to his arm, and could see the blood tumble to the floor in sweet slow motion, melting from his thumb where he had pricked himself on the spindle. A cold fire caressed his skin, forcing the light to rocket up from his toes to his head, filling him up until he felt he would erupt from the exultation. He felt himself spinning and floating in an airless space, and with a final cry and an blast of illumination, the bubble popped, and all was still.

© 1997, Barbara C.B. Steele