1,000 word challenge: Lysandrium Treatment

Note: I am planning on entering an online competition where you are provided a genre, location and object that all must appear in a story that is a 1,000 words or less. I'll have 48 hours to write the story. Below is a practice one from an example: Sci Fi, Drug Rehab Center, Wig, that I wrote. Hope you enjoy. I'll try an post my entries once the competition begins.

 

 

Down the corridor her steps kept time for those lost in it. Edna paced in rhythm and habit past closed doors with patients sleeping off their last fix of Lysandrium. She wore heels and stepped with force off the tiles, knowing in the waning hours of slumber, her time would count the patients into a new reality. Dr. Puck developed the process over years of trial and error for those addicted to the sleeping potion used for crew members for deep space travel missions.

Considering the numbers, the trafficking of humans beyond the stars seemed not worth the human toll. If Dr. Puck’s theories were true, then thirty percent of crew members experienced mild to severe addiction to the narcotics that keep the body young and mind in limbo during voyages hundreds of light years away. That’s the theory he offered for publication. In their long, private discussions, he insists the number is likely much higher.

“Don’t forget, so many go and don’t return. The politicians blame all those on malfunctions with equipment, unforeseen asteroid fields and contact with hostile beings, but that’s not always the case. I think some crews have nearly one hundred percent mental breakdown. Complete catastrophe.”

Dr. Puck’s passion enthralled Edna. Working with him tingled the very nerves that had pushed her toward becoming a nurse. And, Dr. Puck, he was so…. She nearly stopped pacing, but caught herself. Only a few minutes away from reanimation, and she nearly blew it. If only he’d let his guard down about mating with colleagues. Other nerves tingled with that thought.

 ***

 

“What time is it?”

 “It’s evening.”

 “That’s not what I asked!” The patient yelled. The man thrashed his head back and forth, and when that didn’t have enough effect, he slammed it back hard into his pillow. His wrists were secured to the metal rails that ran along each side of the bed. His door was the first to open that night, and he was the first to wake. Nights like this, she earned her money greeting all these pour lost souls.

 “Please, calm yourself. We need you to be calm.”

 “Then tell me what time it is?” The Lysandrium-rich mind fixated on time.

“It’s getting near time for you to return to teaching. We need to get you well.”

“Teaching? I’m no damn teacher.”

***

“Please, I just want to sleep. Don’t you understand?” The Lysandrium-rich mind longed for sleep, but couldn’t without a fix.

“Mr. Roberts, you’ve slept so long already. It’s time to wake and to live.”

This man was grossly overweight, and his stomach slipped out from under the cotton white t-shirt issued to all the patients. He sat in a white recliner, the walls were white, and he wept.

“Why do you keep calling me that name? I know that’s not who I am.”

“What is your name then, Mr. Roberts?”

He wept.

“I don’t remember. Please, can I just sleep some more?”

 ***

“God, what don’t you understand, you dumb beast! I need to know what time it is.”

 Two days and this patient had not relented the business about time, meaning he’d likely need to cycle through another small dosage of Lysandrium. Dr. Puck called it resetting. The mind remained fixated in a past a thousand years gone while the body had moved through space and time. The mind longs for returning to its previous environment, but that world is gone. Sometimes with enough cycles with the drug, the mind finally adjusts to the new reality often by fixating on something else. Edna shivered whenever Dr. Puck brought the particulars up. Why had man ever reached for the stars?

Edna closed the door, resolving to confess her love for the doctor after her shift.

***

Edna sat quietly next to Dr. Puck in the community room. It was her first time near him since he rebuked her affections a month earlier. Fifteen of the patients from the previous cycle had progressed to actualization sessions.

“I’m scared to ask it.” The patient seated across the table from them said.

 "Scared to ask what, Ms. Conrad?” Dr. Puck asked. He made a note on his handheld computer without looking at the patient. Edna loathed that he sometimes ignored them. Didn’t he understand the confusion they were feeling.

“Was I a man when I came here?”

 Dr. Puck laughed. It was a good impression of a real laugh.

 “I am a good doctor, Ms. Conrad, but I am not that good.”

 The patient, impossibly thin and bald, wiped at her eyes. Edna’s heart broke a little. The drugs were so unfair. They robbed these folks of everything, even their identity.

"I just remember being a man, that’s all.”

***

It wasn’t a date. Dr. Puck had made that much clear. The two sat alone in the cafeteria, eating the mush served to everyone in the facility.

 “The Lysandrium breaks them, Edna. You should know this better than anyone.”

 “The lying. I can’t handle the lying.”

 “It not a lie. They used to be someone, but that mind is broken. We build a new one.”

Edna slurped the mush into her mouth. How had she ever loved this man?

“Do you even care for them?”

“Edna, they are my life’s work.”

“Did you ever care for me?”

He swirled the mush around his plate, before tipping it and letting it slide onto his tray. Taking his napkin, he wiped the plate clean until it shined. Before she could react, he reached across the table and pulled her hair.

He tugged once and hard, and she yelped as it tore away from her scalp. Stunned, she glared at him holding what she clearly could see now was a blond wig in one hand and the plate toward her in the other.

"Care for you, Edna? How could I not? You’re my greatest success.”

Dropping the wig and the plate in front of her, he left Edna staring at a face in the plate.