The Butcher Surgeon

The mind is unlike the body in that it exists in a sort of half-real, half-imagined state. You cannot diagnose a broken mind like you can a broken bone. A broken mind is hidden. 

   Nobody would ever conduct an experiment where a participant was forced to run on a broken leg. No experiment would ever be allowed that required a participant to lift weight with a broken back. Ethics, even in the late 1960's and early 70's, weren't completely unknown, even if regulation was much more lax than it is nowadays. One would expect, then, that before subjecting men and women to invasive psychological and psychiatric experimentation, a sort of “weeding out” strategy would be employed. If not for moral reasons than perhaps for scientific ones: better, more accurate data. 

   One would expect. 

   One would expect a lot of things from humanity, the so called “one who knows”. One would expect that after a few millennia of practice we might hold ourselves to a higher standard of love and compassion for our fellow humans.    
   It's difficult to track down much solid information on the experiments conducted on my Grandfather and his fellow “Piggums”. (A term used by the scientists and subjects alike – most likely a derivative of “guinea pig”.) Official records have either been destroyed, or were never created in the first place, and many of the participants, subject and scientist alike, are now either dead or worse. 

   We do know that the participants numbered roughly 30. They seemed to be divided fairly equally between men and women, and their aged ranged from teen to retirement. 

   We do know that the experiment involved the injection of a mysterious drug cocktail directly into the cerebral cortex. From a combination of recent MRI's and more than a few CT scans, the Think Tank medical staff believes that the injections targeted the Wernicke's Area, although residual damage and structural changes to the brain have been observed in several other places as well. 

   We do know that the leader of the project, often referred to as Dr. Nosebleed, The Vice-Roy, or simply The Doctor, had a serious of violent and sexual relationships with many members of staff, as well as the “Piggums”. These were apparently treated as a matter of course by most of the staff, many of whom attempted the same behaviors, with varying degrees of success. 

   Utilizing advanced hypno-therapy techniques developed in-house at the think Tank headquarters, a group of roughly half a dozen “Piggums” were able to give some recollection of the horrors they would endure during the sessions with The Doctor. They described scenes of medical horror, little to no anesthetic, heads and upper bodies restrained for hours at a time while sections of skull and tissue were removed, Doctor Nosebleed indulging in vice after vice in front of them, neglectful or abusive staff, and absolutely no indication what was being studied.

   Week by week there were fewer patients. Some were almost certainly dead, a lack of privacy during the experiments meant that often a restrained “Piggum” would be forced to watch his or her peers subjected to a torture that was only minutes away from being performed on them. Massive hemorrhages were treated as an annoyance at best, and a job for the janitorial staff at worst.  In one recollected instance a middle-aged woman was able to communicate the following:

 

[DIRECT TRANSCRIPT FROM HYPNOTIC MEMORY RECALL SCENARIO 8 – ELLEN LUCAS]

   So I... We were all tied down. It was a chair day, one of the worst days because you knew you'd have to keep good posture or else the restraint bolts would dig into your temples and you'd basically be supporting your weight with the sides of your head. 

   I could see... the name... I can't quite get the name... a small girl, probably 23 or something. Sweet thing with a scar on the earlobe... I can remember the scar but not the name... She had a hole already, most of us did. They'd clean it with alcohol every so often but everybody knew it would be infected soon. You can't just leave a hole in someones head like that, it's not right. 

   I heard the nurse tell The Doctor he was going too deep. They knew. Everyone knew. Everyone knew, but nobody knew WHY.  I don't know what they injected or where they injected it, but it was the wrong spot. She...she's....she's starting to shake I think...

she's shaking 

I can see her shaking
 

they didn't tighten the bolts enough
 

she's breaking herself
 

she's smashing herself to bits and pieces 
 

her face is running red and the needle is still in the hole
 

they didn't take the needle out
 

why didn't they take the needle out
 

oh God
 

her eyes
 

what happened to her eyes
 

her eyes are bleeding
 

her eyes are bleeding and they aren't doing anything
 

why aren't they doing anything
 

oh God oh Christ oh God oh Christ oh God

 

I think I'm next