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Free at Last

Vaishnavi Kolluru

    A bright tube-light illuminates my rebirth. “We’ve injected Pathazepam,” the doctors inform me, “so this time will be better than the last, as long as...”
    I tune them out to wallow in the newfound peace of my body. The restless jitter of my extremities has ceased. Something sinks in my chest, but with comforting weight instead of fitful flutter. I am free from the chains of anxiety.
    Freely I leave the enclosure, swinging my arms up-and-down; left-and-right, too, for I am far enough from the others on the road that I am wholly free to do so. Surrounding me are familiar noses, eyes, mouths, who wave hands from afar. I reciprocate ever-enthusiastically, a bright overhead sunlight illuminating my greetings. I do not ask, How has the day been? Why do you look down? or any variations of any such questions, for I am free from the chains of empathy.
    Was I always this unbound? I do not know. Nor do I care, as I am free from such worries. I continue my arm-flapping down the street, but as my arms become progressively weaker, it slowly ceases to be an enjoyable physical manifestation of my unrestrainedness. But I am still feeling, so I continue my dance, hoping that my mind doesn’t outcompete my body: that my humanity doesn’t outcompete my freedom. I turn a corner.
    Here there is no appreciable overhead light source, but somehow I find myself enveloped in the night’s dusky glow. Perhaps I perceive the glow relative to the other components of my surroundings; the black unpaved street, black unlit lampposts, and black unidentifiable buildings might be brightening my perception of the empty atmosphere overhead.
    I pause my walk, for there is now something beneath my shoe. I look down and notice an untied shoelace. Keeping my foot on the obstruction (for the elevation greatly facilitates my forward-bend), I loop string into string and shift my weight back, ready to climb over, when something groans and I look down and there’s a man under my foot and I fall back because how unaware can I be? and I see a gunshot wound through his chest where I stepped but he’s still alive and I can’t breathe even with the happy drugs in me and I can’t remember what the doctors wanted to tell me and I’ve just about killed a person but he’s staring at me like my other victims did and I realize I haven’t changed a bit, since no drug can kill my monster, so I step over the man since he was going to die anyway and
    A chk-chk interrupts me and there’s a boom, which I am well-acquainted with due to the numerous times the same sound was emitted from my own gun. I hear that frequency pulsating toward me. Before death, my subconscious presents to me one last fragment from my life: “...as long as you tell us immediately if you feel the medication invading your empathy. It’s a common side effect.”

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