Victim of Imagination

My computer was glaring expectedly at me, waiting for the first few letters to appear on the page. Nothing came to mind. Blood? Guts? Who knew what I would write next? I had recently exhausted my creative abilities in that disgrace of a novel. That cash-camel I called a story was nothing but an order from up high to make money for a large corporation. Fucking publishers.
Now in this leather chair I slumped with a cold sweat dripping down my cheeks, staring at the blank screen before me. If only it would come to life!
I wish I could say the floor had fallen away, and the word processer and I were one, the story falling out of my fingers and coming to life on the page. But it had been a long time since I wrote something. The last time I wrote anything worth reading was a good few years ago, before I was here, alone and in the dark.
I sat in my leather trap, sinking slowly into the crevasses between the cushions. I lifted my hands in hope, but no ideas came to me.
I jumped out of my skin as a beep came from the answering machine in the corner of the room.
“Matthew? Matthew if you’re there please pick up the phone. Matthew? I wish you would stop ignoring me. Don’t you think it’s time you grew up and found the courage to actually talk to me?” she paused briefly. “Fine, don’t answer. Just...call me back? I hope you will.”
For so long I had sat in silence listening to her voice filter through the mechanics of my answering machine. It was a real shame; I much prefer her voice in reality. But then again, in reality she had assured me we would never be apart. Therefore, in reality, we were still together, because no matter how badly she had hurt me, I trusted her. In a reality somewhere we were still together, I knew that much and it was enough to keep me from doing anything too drastic. For now.
My eyelids were growing heavy, and I realised I was shuddering. I couldn’t stop it, I was shaking all over, and nothing could stop it. I lay there, slumped in the chair for a few minutes, shaking violently and frothing at the mouth and bleeding from my nose, until I stopped, and lay deadly still. I could move no muscle in my body. I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t even close my eyes. But I did, however, notice that my fingers were furiously tapping the floorboards, with an eagerness that told a story…

The room was a small concrete cell, with no windows and nothing but a large drain in the centre of the floor. Resting above the drain was a plain metal chair with no armrests. Attached to the chair was some sort of device. It was round, with bolts and screws, and it was attached to the upper back of the chair. It took me a few seconds to realise what it was, and the only reason I knew was because of book research for a gory horror novel my imagination had given birth to a few years earlier. It was a type of head-cage. It was designed to keep the head of a certain person in a rigid and un-moving position. This particular cage had only strips of metal at the forehead and chin position, giving full access to the main area of the face.
I heard a clanging noise coming from the door, and it suddenly swung open to reveal a scrawny white man with a shaved head wearing a green military uniform accompanied by a sadistic grin. His eyebrows looked as if they had been thoroughly plucked and he had no marks on his face. No scars, moles, birth marks or stubble. He was a perfectly, yet frighteningly well-groomed man. He was surrounded by two large guards, also in military uniform.
“Good Morning Soldier.” He spoke in a German accent, although his English was impressive.
“S—s—soldier?” I stuttered
“How did you sleep? I heard you were tossing and turning all night!”
“I…I don’t know who you think I am, but I…I’m not a soldier”
“Oh please Mr. Johnson, don’t try that on with me, we are well past the denial stage.”
“Mr. Johnson…?” I was growing more and more confused by the second. “What? My name is Peters. Matthew Peters!”
“Yes of course Mr. Peters, whatever you wish!” he chuckled “Now let’s get you back into that chair shall we?”
I screamed at the very top of my lungs, spit dribbled down my chin and I felt the blood rush into my head as I was lifted limply into the metal chair. My efforts to resist were fruitless; my limbs seemed to ache to the point where simply to stand would cause me to scream out in pain.
They dropped me onto the cold metal chair and opened the cage around my head. I could hear nothing but my own hopeless screams as they closed it and fastened it tightly. I shook violently for a few everlasting moments until I finally gave up and sat there, completely still, waiting for the pain, with my eyes tightly squeezed shut.
“Open your eyes.” Said the German man.
I tried to shake my head, but with no success. I opened one eye before the other, longing hopelessly to see that I was alone and everybody had left. But sure enough, there he was. The well-groomed man was smiling brightly at me, holding a large surgical scalpel.
“Now,” he said “you have information, information that we require.”
“Wh—What?”
“DON’T PLAY THE IDIOT WITH ME SOLDIER!” The man suddenly exploded and screamed his orders like an angry Rottweiler. “Now, you know what information I speak of, and I know you have this information. I can assure you, if you refuse to give up your fellow soldiers, you will feel the wrath of The Führer!”
Everything in reality abandoned me, and I realised where I was. But surely this wasn’t possible! How could I have travelled back in time?! Such things were impossible!
“The—The Führer…?” I couldn’t help but mumble the word pathetically.
“Yes, The Führer. Trust me, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you will be subjected to many painful ordeals before you finally die. And yes, I will enjoy each and every one of them.”
“But I — I don’t know anything!”
“TELL ME!!!”
“BUT I DONT KNOW!” I began to cry “I don’t know.” I sobbed uncontrollably.
The man sighed, and shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “Have it your way then.”

I screamed at the top of my lungs for him to stop, but he didn’t stop for what seemed like an eternity. The carvings of the Nazi Swastika ended up on nearly every inch of my flesh. My face was dripping with a constant stream of thick red blood, as was my torso.
“Please…” I whimpered “Please. I can’t take it anymore.”
He seemed not to listen at first. “When they find your body, they will know that this...masterpiece was the work of the Nazis. The all-knowing and all-powerful Nazis.” He turned to look at me with a slightly childish grin. “What a wonderful notion!”
He moved towards me slowly. “You will be the living example of what happens to anybody who refuses to comply with our wishes. You should be proud!”
“Please…”
“Goodbye soldier.”
In one swift movement he lifted his arm and thrust the scalpel into my heart, and I started drifting away, but not before I heard my own desperate and horror-filled screams of agony…

I woke up in the same position on my leather chair with sweat stuck to my face and body, making me itch all over. The computer in front of my face had gone to ‘Sleep’ and I slid my finger across the pad to move the mouse. When it awakened I was astonished at what I found. My mouth fell open in amazement as I read page after page, each one documenting in great detail the pain a certain man felt when strapped into a chair and tortured by the Nazis. Had I just dreamt all I had written? I honestly didn’t remember writing any of these pages, but then who else could have written them? It had to have been me. Was I in some sort of trance? I remembered my recent seizure and looked around curiously for evidence of froth or blood, but there was none. It was as if I had began dreaming the moment that message on the answering machine had ended. I had also apparently written a whole chapter on Nazi torture without realising. No words came to mind for the confusion I was feeling at this moment.
I lifted myself out of my comfortable armchair and drifted absently towards my bathroom.
When I switched on the light I saw the usual furnishings. The fluffy rug in front of the gleaming white bathtub, the shiny black tiles layered up and down the walls, and the white porcelain surface of the toilet and sink. What interested me the most was the mirror standing above the sink. When I groggily flipped the light-switch at the side of the mirror I was not expecting to see what I saw. It was not the mirror itself that shocked me, but what I saw in the mirror. I did not see myself. At least, I didn’t see a me that I recognized.

The me in the mirror was an evil canvas of the Nazi Swastika. The carving was on my cheeks, my forehead, and when I lifted my shirt I noticed the large symbol, stretching across the whole of my torso. The scars looked old, like they had been inflicted when I was a child. I certainly didn’t have these scars before I fell asleep, and I definitely didn’t have any scars like this in my childhood or any other time in my life for that matter. There was only one explanation for these horrible markings on my body. The dream I had was not in fact a dream. I had no clue what it was, but it was without a doubt real in some way. It had to be.
How had I fallen into my own horrific imagination?