An English Thing

I have an assignment for English. The task is basically 'take a quote from the move Whale Rider and use that as a stimulus to write your own novel/short story'. So I, of course, pounced on that and desperately tried to ignore my other assignments with closer due dates.
And I've got the Prologue thing here if anyone wants to read it.
I also decided, some time after finishing this, that I couldn't fit a story into this as easily as I was hoping, so I'm also currently working on a second thing, based on the same quote. If anyone cares.
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“…I wasn’t afraid to die…”

-         Paikea, Whale Rider, 2002

                                       

PROLOGUE

I wasn’t afraid to die. At least that’s what I told them as they lay me on the cold, steel platform. The truth was, I was terrified of dying. But then, who isn’t? ‘The suicidal and depressed’, I thought to myself dully. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought. It mattered not, though, for it was taking all my will power at that moment not to go into a mental lockdown of blinding panic. As I kept my face clear of all emotion, that blinding panic continued to keep a firm hold on my soul, my heart, my chest, whatever was in there.

My mind was going numb. Death was not a pleasant prospect, in my point of view.

Desperately, I tried to make myself accept that I was about to lose who I was and become something else. I was hoping, by that point, that it was working.

“You’re doing a noble thing, Mr River,” said the man wearing a lab coat and shades as the other assistants wearing similar clothing bustled about with various tubes and contraptions around me. The sentence barely registered. I was too focused on attempting to concentrate on acceptance of what was to come. “This project will change everything about humanity for the greater good, and it’s all possible because of your willingness.”

Once again, this had not registered at the time. I hadn’t let it register. It wasn’t necessary to listen anymore. I had let go. At least, I think I had. I distinctly remember a sense of emptiness spreading throughout me, but that could have been at any time in the lap, I suppose. Every event that transpired in there was a hazy blur of hazy movement and slurred speech to me.

Tubes were strapped into me, buried in my arms and stomach. Alien-like machines with glowing, blinking lights loomed over me. People dressed in white surrounded me, holding horrifically brutal-looking weapons at the ready.

“You are the future, Mr River,” said the same man, now at my side with his hand on a machine covered in buttons. “Now, prepare to die.”

And as the man’s hand pressed down on any number of the buttons scattered on the machine, I felt the liquid pump through all four of the tubes buried in me and gush into my bloodstream, unwelcome among its company. It was cold against me and I was feeling sick in a matter of seconds.

At once, my eyes begun to droop and the empty feeling inside me increased substantially, gripping my soul, gripping my heart, gripping my chest and forcing the hold of the thing that had once been fear off.

This isn’t so bad, I had thought to myself as the last ebbs of consciousness quickly left me for the last time and the people advanced on me with the weapons of dissection. Dying is not so bad after all, and I won’t even feel a thing.

But I was wrong. For as I was pulled under by the dark tendrils of unconsciousness, I felt the first sharp weapon penetrate my skin. And I felt the next one after that too, as well as all those that followed.

Unconsciousness did not do a thing to ease my way out of the world.

And I spent my last hours of living screaming a scream that no one could hear, feeling a pain that was impossible to feel and was yet so vividly real. And then I died. But I wasn’t done.

Not yet.