Open Heart Lobotomy; Generational Blunt-Force Trauma / [WHO KILLED STRAWBERRY?]

I was conscious through it all. I watched the fluorescent lights like mile markers ruin my eyes in a continuous cycle over and over and over and over again… I could hear Gray’s wailing. I was listening to Carmine relay my medical history to some lost looking intern. I also saw Doctor Sawbones and her odd mask… staring down at me from above with a calming smile on her blackened lips. “I will fix you,” she said. “I can fix what is broken. Rest now.” You know how there’s so many tales of grotesque beings encountering mortals and the mortal isn’t scared shitless? Like, imagine an object in a diamond shape, transparent and shining, and surrounding it were six wings and large, horrendously realistic eyeballs. Wouldn’t you be scared? I would. I’d try and kill the fucking thing, but they always tell you one thing before they show themselves to you. Be not afraid. Such a stupid command… it’s like going to your mom, the one person you feel you can trust about emotional issues and saying, “I’m just so sad,” and she hands you a mandarin orange and says “Go take a walk.” It’s different, though, like these creatures know that they’re scary to you and they want you be calm and listen to what they say. That’s kind of what Doctor Sawbones is like… she’s been a good friend to us. To me. Even if she was just comforting me, I was grateful. I close my eyes. She said she could fix me… Well, she’s a god. Damned. Liar. I woke up in the dingiest, dankest dungeon. Scores of mold, of dried blood, fucking TEETH on the floor, and old, rusted equipment that spewed black oil from cut tubes between them. Doctor Sawbones is listening to some shitty opera and dancing around my gurney. Something’s… different about her. She’s wearing the same thing as usual. Her black dress, her white crow’s mask, but her mane’s shorter. Gone is that long curtain of amber, but it’s now a strawberry-blonde bun. Her coat’s like mine, but lighter… soft pink, like bubblegum. I don’t understand. She still had her mask. But Sawbones is normally a… a tan. Sandy, almost. This is Sawbones, this has to be; why does she look like her if she’s not her? The mare in the mask notices me trying to wiggle out of my leather restraints. My cuts burn against the unsanitized straps… She tilts her creepy-ass head. Her petite little hand removes the needle from the record player, bringing about all silence… except for a drumming. A beat. Bum, bum, bum. A beat in between each bum. The loop resets after two seconds… then bum, bum, bum. “Haha, ohhh… oh, you are awake. Good, good.” Doctor Sawbones speaks with an accent. An overseas dialect… I’ve heard it before. She reaches for the clipboard at my mangled feet. “Let us see your chart. Hmm… oh! Ohoho… my, my. Oh! Really?” The bitch, she’s doing everything she can to tease me. Reading my damn chart like it’s some sort of saucy novel. I think I’m making her a hateful glare, but my face is stinging far too much. “Let us see.. you have had quite a sordid history, hmm? Winner of four child beauty pageants. You have kept your beauty all the way through high school… do you remember when you were worshipped on the baseball field? Pinehall High’s own legendary team captain… some say you could rival a sniper’s precision when it came to your batting skills. You were going to be a lawyer, and you even constructed a masterful plan. To play professionally for the highest paying team, then use your money to sit through law school. Was that not the dream?! To defend the weak with schooling and success? And now you are some skimpy-dressed vigilante who will argue with voices that aren not even there, who is so horrendously broken that she cannot tell who she is speaking to half the time. How could this have happened?” She turned the page. “Oh… oh, Strawberry. Dating your teacher? Getting caught up in some crime syndicate’s scheme? For shame. I suppose the angels finally realized you were only pretending to be like them and kicked your sorry ass out of Heaven.” Sawbones’s words stung more than any rusty blades could. How did she know? She couldn’t have known all of this. I don’t care. I don’t care, I just want her to stop. “Bonesy, please… please, I’m tired. I’m hurt. Help me.” “Help you?” she screeched. “Or what? You will go off on your rampages again? What will you do? Scream at the wind? Find a pickpocket to mangle? Is there a point to any of the violence, Strawberry; is it supposed to make a statement or are you just desperate to redirect your tortured heart elsewhere?” She isn’t relenting, but I can’t get out. I can’t scream. My throat’s torn and burning, so much so that the frantic breaths feel like I’m swallowing glass. “Stop…” “I know your MO, Strawberry. You act vulnerable, like you did before—” “Stop…!” “You let them think they have some power over you, that they control the narrative, and when you have found the moment, you strike.” “Stop! Please! Why are you doing this?!” “You think I would not know what you are doing? Recreating that night with Mr. Tinhorn; rewriting the narrative where you are the one who comes out on top? That you were not some pathetic weakling who got saved by chance and luck alone?” I know who this is now. She threw me off by wearing the doctor’s mask, but it’s unmistakable now. That degrading tone, that Neighponese accent… “Mom! What’re you doing?! Let me out, please, please— I want out— why?!” I scream and cry and kick what’s left of my legs, but my mom’s only giggling. I hear the thumping, the drumming from earlier, but it’s become more clear. It isn’t some war song’s drum nor or is some punky garage band, but it’s a chant. A chorus of voices all saying a single statement in unison. My mom throws Sawbones’s mask aside and reaches for the scalpel. “My, you have let yourself go. Let us cut away some of that fat, shall we?” She grimly chuckles, and her body overtakes the flickering lamp above me. The chant repeats the same thing over and over. “All your fault! All your fault!” I know where I am now. I’m in Hell. … I was conscious through it all. … I watched the fluorescent lights like mile markers ruin my eyes in a continuous cycle over and over and over and over again… I could hear Gray’s wailing. I was listening to Carmine relay my medical history to some lost looking intern. I also saw Doctor Sawbones and her odd mask… staring down at me from above with a calming smile on her blackened lips. “I will fix you,” she said. “I can fix what is broken. Rest now…”