The ceiling lights of the operating theater were a constellation of blinding white suns. They wheeled him directly underneath the largest one.
the voice grumbled, its dryness a stark contrast to the slick, antiseptic air.
"Can you feel this, Mr. Alden?" The surgeon's voice was muffled by his mask. A cold swab traced a line across Nathaniel's abdomen, far from the rebar.
"Unfortunately, yes," Nathaniel sighed. "If you're asking if the anesthetic has worked, it has not. I can assure you, my insurance won't cover a conscious surgery. I might have to sue."
The surgeon's eyes above the mask flicked towards the anesthesiologist. A silent, worried conversation passed between them. They increased the drip. Nathaniel felt the cold rush of the drugs in his vein, a sensation that went nowhere and did nothing. It was like trying to fill a bottomless cup.
The heart monitor continued its steady, unbothered beep. The surgeon looked at it, then back at Nathaniel, his brow furrowed. He picked up a scalpel. The steel gleamed under the harsh light.
"Sir, can you close your eyes? I'm not used to people staring at me when I'm performing a surgery."
Nathaniel nodded. As he closed his golden eyes, surrendering to the dark behind his lids, he felt the first cold kiss of the scalpel against his skin—a sharp, precise line of fire. He held his breath, not from pain, but from the sheer, tedious burden of being awake for it all.
His consciousness began to peel away, not from the drugs, but from the sheer gravitational pull of his own nature. To be unconscious was to be true to himself.
As the darkness took him, it wasn't the blank void he expected. It was a gallery of torments
His nightmares were getting worse.
This time, he died by having his head explode, but then his head just grew back as if nothing happened at all—like an Achilles without an Achilles' heel.
He was chained to a rock, the cold seeping into his bones. The great eagle's beak was a hot, precise agony as it tore into his liver. He watched, dispassionate, as the organ regrew, only for the torture to begin again. An eternity of scheduled maintenance. How tedious.
Next, he was sealed in a tomb of living roots that drank his blood bit by bit. He felt his skin shrinking like a milk carton without milk. Since regaining lost blood was harder than recreating organs, he simply closed his eyes and fell into a slumber.
As the voice faded he was dismembered and his parts were cast into different stars. He started hearing a female voice, half crying, half angry. "You promised me a dynasty that would outlast the stars. You gave me only silence and dust. To forget is a violence worse than any betrayal. I hope you are alone through your sufferings, nobody to hold you and nobody to remember you!"
He saw himself smiling. "I already am."
I'm seeing weird stuff again, he thought. What a gruesome ordeal.
Just like that, he forgot his nightmares, and his mind fell into nothingness.
Oblivion is Sloth too, after all.