the BLAZE project

Bio-identical. Life enhancing. Alienzyme. Experiment

Spoiler alert: one full-phat swear word and several lite-weight others

I didn’t need to know his name, but he told me anyway. We shook hands. He doesn’t need to know who I am. It’s a drug trial, not a date. 
‘Take a seat, Ms….?’
‘Thank you.’  The seat looks like a dentist’s chair. 
‘Ok. If you could just roll up a sleeve, and I’ll inject the serum.
‘Super. Now, take a seat in The Tank for the next 20 minutes, please. I want you to write down any unusual thoughts, strong emotions, body sensations et cetera. Unusual to you, that is. It’s important. Ok?’
‘Ok.’ 
‘Any questions?’
‘No.’ (Yes, ‘can you pay me first. I really need the money’. But I didn’t say that.)

So, I’m in The Tank feeling ‘the same’, wondering if anything’s going to happen, or if something IS happening but I can’t tell because I’m travelling at the same speed as the experience…. and then I get a nose bleed. I taste it on my lip first, salty, metallic warm blood. I wipe my nose sideways along my fingers, but blood’s already beginning to drip off my chin. I check my pockets for something to shove up my nostrils or soak up the downpour, but there’s nothing. I look around for a red button or a chord to pull to get someone’s attention, but there’s nothing. I’m beginning to feel agitated, I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do? I’ve got my head both tilted backwards and lurched forwards, trying not to spoil my jeans by splaying my legs out to the rim of the chair. I shout out,
‘Hey!
‘HEY!
‘HELLOOOOO! I’m bleeding. Can someone come in here please.’
I don’t know why I felt compelled to be polite, these arseholes have injected me full of some experimental shit in the name of research, and then just buggered off. I go to get up but find that my feet are stuck firmly to the footplate of the ‘dentist chair’. What? I can’t move my feet. Why can’t I move my feet? I’m starting to get unnerved now. What is going on? And what’s that noise? 
It’s like water rushing, but smoother. Like the whoosh and bite of a downhill skier. No, smoother. Like white noise, but loud, and getting increasingly louder. It’s painful now so I put my fingers in my ears, and hear someone laughing, in my head. I take my fingers out. Nothing/white noise. Put them back in. Laughing. Take them out. Nothing/white noise. Put them in. Laughing; a woman’s laugh. I can’t tell if she’s laughing at me or if she’s just crazy. Why would she be laughing at me? What’s going on? I take my fingers out of my ears and it all stops. All of it. The bleeding, the loud, smooth noise, the laughing. I move my feet and they unstick from the foot plate like they’ve been sprung from a trap. I stand up, open the door and leave The Tank in search of someone. 

I’m in a waiting room full of empty plastic chairs, an unmanned reception desk and one door marked IN/OUT. Ok, well I definitely want ‘out’, but actually before ‘outing’ I want to find the asshole who injected then abandoned me, to tell him in person what an asshole he is. 
And there’s the crazy-lady laughing in my head again.
‘I can hear you, you know! 
‘Where are you?’
I rip open the ‘IN/OUT’ door and am confronted by a brick wall. A solid, red brick wall.
I’m stunned, spontaneously angry and spin around looking for anything that makes sense; a security camera, a speaker…. nope. The reception desk - a telephone, computer, papers with information, a used coffee cup for god’s sake, anything….. nope. 

A mirror - there’s a mirror on the wall. I’m staring at it; not looking in it. 
I can feel my heart valves pumping gallons of adrenaline drenched blood around my system like pistons firing a machine. I don’t know whether I want to scream or completely detonate and grab every plastic chair in sight, smashing some on the floor, hurling the rest across the room. Sweat’s trickling down my hairline, I’m panting like a beast in the bull-ring, bewildered by its aggressor. 

MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL, I DON'T LIKE WHAT I SEE AT ALL...
I’m looking at the mirror; not looking in it. 
I keep the full length of the room between me and it, and edge sideways towards its oval. Do I look in the mirror? What do I think I’m going to see? I don’t know.
Am I going to look in the mirror? Yes, I’m going to look in the mirror! I want to cry, tiny measured sobs under my breath in an attempt to create some momentum. My eyes are stretched wide, swinging around in their sockets, searching for sanity but the room is sterile and anodyne. I take a wide sideways step into the centre of the mirror’s eye, uncertain of what I will see. 

‘What the hell!!!?’ It’s me; as a kid. 
The crazy lady laughs.

Every blink and twitch of my lip, my little girl reflection makes in tandem. 
‘I. I. I just’  I’m watching my reflection mesmerised
‘don’t understand’ I say quickly trying to catch me out, but we are seamlessly lip synced.

‘What the hell is going on!!!’ We say, in unison.

I swear I’m about to loose my shit and freak-the-fuck-out, so I go to step away from the mirror, but my feet are once again firmly glued to the ground. I look down at them and watch as the floor slowly turns molten, the linoleum starting to stretch like dough and I watch myself sink into the floor until stopping, my head resting at ground level like a bowling ball. I’m whimpering, paralytic with fear, with an urgent desire to piss my pants. And then, like a rubber band, I’m catapulted up, rattling at speed cutting through the polystyrene squares of the false ceiling, dark spot, rafters, brightness, sky, wind, heat, cold, darkness. Emptiness. I don’t think I’m breathing. I don’t think I exist. 

FAR OUT....
No, I exist. I must do, I’m tingling. Buzzing. Pulsing with strong, swelling waves of current, surging in intensity towards what feels like a cosmic climax…. nooooooooo I can’t handle that. That's too much. 
So I breeeeeeathe 
iiiiiinnnn, and oooooout
iiiiiiiinnnn, and oooooout
But I want to hang out here, in this otherworldly state of arousal. Expanded. Dilated. Swimming in this angelic high. And then, just like that, it plateaus like I’ve reached altitude. I’m completely fluid like the *aurora borealis. Blissed out and beautiful, I am the *’So-hum’ 

Constellations melt into ballerinas who dance in slow-motion, and I watch a million moving pixels deconstruct and reconfigure into recognisable forms. There’s Mum! playing bridge, smiling cannily - she’s got good cards. There’s Dad! on his motorbike, probably going to see nana. Jaiya! look at him, sunbathing like a lion-dog of the savannah. James! so sad. So young. Such an awful accident. That’s me! playing skatey-land on the polished tiles, muttering my game. 

Then a pause, the pixels thrown from their forms into confusion, like static, before regrouping to continue with more programming. 
A young brown-skinned man, driving a tuk-tuk barefoot. A blonde woman, arguing with a man, crying. A fair-skinned boy in a pair of shorts, fishing from a rock. An immaculate Japanese Geisha, sat on her heels. A red haired wild looking woman, in armour, addressing a crowd. A baby, strapped to the back of a woman, thundering across flatlands on a pony. A nun, old and shrivelled, praying on a stone step with pained eyes. A child giggling, being tickled by her father. And so they pop up like bingo-balls, all these images of other people’s lives. 
Hang on, are these my lives?? But there are soooo many. I am galvanised to this ‘live footage’ and the sound grows with the tuk-tuk, the hooves, the shouting, the charge, the prayer, the chatter Ohhhhhh, here comes that electrical charge again. I can’t stop it this time, it’s too much. 
With every life comes another soundtrack, stronger, swelling, filling space, a tsunami of sound and sensation. It’s gonna crash, any second, I can’t hold it, aaaahhhhhh!

THE DOCTOR WILLL SEE YOU NOW....
My body’s shaking, ahhhh I can’t stop it. My body’s shaking. Someone is laughing.
I snap open. Eyes. Body jolting. Awake. A warm-smiling woman is looking down at me.

‘My what a dream you’ve had. It’s been quite entertaining watching you, I have to say. 
I’ve left you as long as I could but you really are the last to go in. The doctor will see you now…..’

I’m in a hard plastic chair in the waiting room, leaflet squeezed between fingers in my tightly clenched now unfurling hand. I look down at it, a little embarrassed under her eyes but mostly trying to make sense of where I am and…. well, everything.

I look around. The empty plastic chairs. The reception desk. The mirror on the wall. 

 I get up. Turn toward the only door in the room, marked IN/OUT, grip the handle with some trepidation, and open it. The outside world; traffic lights on red with cars waiting, the green man beeping. People crossing the road. Two men chatting. A couple arm-in-arm. A woman pulling a suitcase. Someone talking on their phone, others following blindly, messaging. Everything seems to be back in order.

‘No thanks, I’ve changed my mind….’
And I leave. 




Inordinate thanks to @BethKempton for her Ink+Flame, SoulCircle and ever-present hand on the back, moving of all of us who love to write forwards..... 

* So-hum Derived from Sanskrit and literally means “I am That” . It means identifying oneself with the universe or ultimate reality.

*Aurora borealis An aurora, or northern/southern lights, is a dazzling natural light display in high-latitude skies, forming dynamic patterns of color.