Alors, Et Toi? is a quarterly magazine of the arts, digitally published on the world wide web.
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The Biopsy
by Sharon Harriot
I was cold. It started as a prickling on my skin, and then the icy hand cupped me. Parting my eyelids the tiniest bit so I could look through my lashes, let sharp light in to sear my eyeballs. I was laying on something hard and metallic. Shivering, I realised I was in a starkly white room. I could see an open doorway with a clock just above the door.
Straining to my right, I squinted at the light glinting off a stainless steel sink. An orange bucket with a lid sat on its sideboard. The small cupboard over the sink had a picture of a kitten hanging from a tree branch. I couldn’t read the words.
A rustling at my head made me aware of someone else in the room. Arms in sleeves, and then the brush, brush of conscientious shoulders. The waft of rosewater or soap carried on the stirred air. Feminine.
Then, the clock moved towards me, and I was through the door, my eyes snatching at narrow corridors and strip lights, bright murals and penguins with orange feet. No windows.
We stop, and a face hovers above mine.
“She’ll be out completely by the time we get down.”
Another woman's voice: “Are you going to Vino’s later?”
“Yes! I’m a Nun. Which reminds me, gotta pick up those tights!”
A mechanical grinding stopped their conversation. I hear the sharp ‘ping’ of a lift bell, and the ‘chunk, clunk’ of the doors opening. The wheels of the trolley tumbled into the lift; the clang echoes down the shaft.
“See you later.”
I have no sense of being higher or lower in the sky. Another narrow corridor of strip lights tries to press down on my ears. I can’t move my arms or legs.
The new room has a huge metal lamp hanging from its centre. I’m wheeled right underneath it, dazzled by the glare. I can’t shut my eyelids.
Beyond my periphery, a man hums Lenny Kravitz; he moves plastic bottles and metal, clunking them together and then setting down again. Cold hands touch my left arm, and I feel the prick of a needle.
More feet shuffle, rustle and tread around me. Voices muffle numbers and foreign words; a machine suddenly erupts with alarm.
“Wait, she’s not out!”
“Shit, hang on!”
Finally, the light goes out.
About The Author
Sharon Harriot is London born and bred, and has since written for both Magazines and Newspapers. She’s spent the last ten years in PR writing press releases on technology, gizmos and gadgets. After taking a couple of creative writing courses she discovered EditRed, where short fiction and poetry has been falling out of her ever since! January 2007 saw the launch of her Audiobook Reviews Blog at Audiogeist as well as writing short Blogs on MySpace at myspace.com/cravingaudio.