Page 1 of Dose

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THEON

Bitter almonds. Wet copper. The faint, sweet rot of acetone burning through my nostrils until the inside of my skull feels scraped raw. My six-year-old body knows that scent before my mind can name it. Cyanide derivative. Sublethal. Documentation grade.

I’m strapped to the chair again.

The leather cuffs cut into my wrists, and my feet don’t reach the floor. They never reach the floor. I remember that detail like most people remember the color of their mother’s eyes, except I don’t remember my mother’s eyes at all. I remember the chair. The cold steel armrest where my forearm rests, palm up, the inside of my elbow exposed like an offering.

Dr. Halvorsen leans over me. White coat. Wire-frame glasses. A pen tucked behind one ear, the cap chewed to soft plastic. He has kind eyes. That’s the part that breaks me, even now, in a bed in Chicago. He has kind eyes, and he is going to hurt me again, and he is going to write down what happens while I scream.

“Subject C-08, session forty-seven,” he says into the recorder. “Compound designation A-9. Twelve milligrams, intravenous. Proceed.”

The needle goes in.

I’ve learned not to flinch. Flinching means starting over. Starting over means another dose, and another dose means my small body metabolizing twice the load, convulsions that last longer than it takes Halvorsen to finish his coffee.

So I don’t flinch.

The compound climbs my arm like a living thing. Cold first, then warm, then a heat that isn’t heat at all—every nerve in my body burning at once. My jaw locks. My tongue swells against my teeth. Somewhere behind my eyes, a white light flares.

“Observe pupillary response,” Halvorsen murmurs. A penlight clicks on and floods my eyes. “Dilation within expected parameters. Vocalization?”

I cannot vocalize. My throat has forgotten how.

“Note: vocalization suppressed at this dosage. Previous threshold exceeded. Adjust baseline.”

He writes it down. I can hear the pen scratching. In the dream, the scratching is louder than my heartbeat, louder than the wet click my throat makes as it tries to remember how to swallow.

A second voice. Female. Dr. Reines. She smells like lavender soap, and for years afterward, I cannot walk through a hotel lobby without my stomach turning over.

“He’s seizing, Mark.”

“Within tolerance. Continue documentation.”

“He’s six.”

“He’s Subject C-08. Continue documentation, or I’ll note your hesitation in the file.”

There’s a pause, and then the scratch of her pen joining his. Two pens now. Two adults write down what my body does while I seize, and not one of them reaches for the antidote sitting on the tray three feet away.

The convulsions come.

In the dream, they come more slowly, drawn out like film slipping from the reel. My spine arches, and I feel each vertebra grind. My teeth break the inside of my lip, and blood runs down my chin.

Halvorsen leans closer. Adjusts his glasses. “Lacrimation present. Note bilateral. Salivation is excessive. Increase suction.”

Something cold slides into the corner of my mouth. The wet sucking sound joins the scratching pens, joins my own gargled breathing, and the three sounds braid together into music that lives in my brain forever.

“Theon.”

He uses my name. He never uses my name during sessions. My name in his mouth sharpens the dream into something I cannot escape by waking.

“Theon, can you tell me what you smell?”

I am six years old. I am dying.

“Bit—” My tongue won’t shape it. “Bitter. Almond.”