“Lie down, or I’m going to make you.” Krasa chimes brightly, as if she were wishing me a happy new year.

  “What? No!” I can’t believe this is the same girl. There’s still red around her eyes from crying, but now she’s ordering me around? I’m not down with any of this.

  I swing my legs over the side of the table. Krasa signals to the rest of the kids standing around her, and just like that, they leap into action. Suddenly, I’m being wrestled to the table by a squad of girls half my size. What they lack in strength, they make up for in practiced coordination. I cry out in pain as they grab my arms. I get my right arm free, shoving back one of the girls. She stumbles backwards to the wall. I turn to Agnis who is standing in the corner with her palms on her face in exhaustion.

  “Agnis! Help me!”

  Agnis glares back at me, then marches over to the table wordlessly.

  “Thank yo- OWW!”

  Agnis joins the others, wrestling me back down to the table. I should be strong enough to get free, but my injuries make fighting back preventatively painful. I lose steam quickly. So I lay there, held down by a crowd of exhausted tweens and a pissed off Agnis. I feel like a trapped animal.

  “See? I told you, she’s lost her mind!” Agnis chides.

  “Shhh, shhh. Don’t worry. All you need to do is hold still.” Krasa says, attempting to keep me pacified.

  It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I can do anything. I close my eyes, trying to forget where I am. One of the assistants begins to tug on my robes. What does she want? Unexpectedly, she pulls the robe out from under me. It slides away easily, as if it were merely a blanket that was wrapped around my torso. How did she…?

  I open my eyes to the sight of my naked burned flesh. It’s horrible. It doesn’t even look like my body anymore. I wince, quickly squeezing my eyes shut again. I pray that all of this is a dream. I pray to wake up in my own bed. I pray to wake up with a headache and a sore throat, even.

  “Oooh!”

  I make an involuntary noise, shivering as some kind of ointment is applied across my exposed body. It’s cold! I squirm around, making Krasa speak up again.

  “Don’t move, okay? Stay still. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  I glare at the team of girls holding my naked body in place, and say nothing. Agnis has left my side for some reason.

  I squeeze my eyes shut again. I try to think of something else, anything else, like a Pink Floyd guitar solo, or the taste of Tillamook sharp cheddar, or the way Liz’s lip gloss catches the light when she smiles. Try as I might, I can’t think about anything but getting hacked apart with bone saws by these barbarian lunatics. I swear, if they start cutting me up, I’m going to kick these kids’ teeth in with all my might.

  Maybe it’s just the cold temperature of this ointment, but I can feel my burns cooling, and the pain receding. I can feel my muscles relaxing, and my racing heart beginning to mellow. I breathe slower. Am I worried over nothing? Perhaps they actually know what they’re doing. Agnis said so, after all. The tension in my body relaxes a bit. Maybe Krasa senses this, now speaking in a hushed voice.

  “Feels better, right? Now, I need you to drink this potion. Sit up for me, okay?”

  “Potion?” my eyes pop open. I sit up, pulling myself away from Krasa’s assistants. I look around for my robe. I call to Agnis, who is looking off into space on the far side of the room.

  “You! Agnis! This girl is not a real doctor! There’s no way! I don’t have time for magic mumbo jumbo!” The little doctor freezes, my comment stripping away the resolve she had mustered.

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  “I- I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Krasa repeats quietly, sinking to the floor with a shell-shocked expression.

  “Arghh! Krasa! Don’t listen to her!” Agnis says, red with anger, grabbing my shoulders and throwing me back down on the table.

  “OUGH!” I wheeze.

  “Do as I say. Don’t speak. You don’t know what you’re saying.” Pinning her weight down onto my shoulders, Agnis looms over me from behind. Hanging down from the top of my vision, she looks like a bloodthirsty bat.

  “Krasa. Give it to me.” Agnis holds out one hand to the side, taking a little wooden flask from the dejected girl.

  “What’s-”

  “Open your mouth.”

  “Huh?”

  “Swallow.”

  Not even looking in my direction, Agnis blindly shoves the flask between my teeth, pouring a bitter liquid down my throat. I cough it back up. It’s all over my face.

  “Ughhh! Are you incapable of listening?”

  She lets go of my shoulder, and I have half a mind to run for the door. The other half of my mind begs me not to move a muscle. I lay still. As my pain recedes, a profound exhaustion has taken hold of me. I don’t really feel bothered by the fact I’m naked anymore. I don’t even bother wiping the spit from my face.

  “She spit it all up.” Agnis grumbles regretfully.

  “I’m sorry. This is all my fault” Krasa mumbles from the floor.

  “Save your guilt for later.” Agnis sighs, helping Krasa stand.

  Brushing off her doubts, Krasa shifts into doctor mode once again, as if she hadn’t missed a beat. For better or worse, she can really turn on a dime. She calls an assistant to grab another wooden flask, as well as a second, larger flask with a dowel poking out.

  “I need you to drink this potion for me. If you drink it, you can have some honey.” Krasa emphasizes the last part, as if she were dangling a tantalizing reward in front of a child. Condescending me, you damn crybaby? I’m too tired to care. The part of me that feels dread is already asleep. I just want to get this over with.

  “Is that okay?”

  I’m pretty sure I don’t have a choice in this matter.

  “Uh, yeah, whatever.” I brace myself to be force fed the bitter drink.

  “Make sure to drink it all.” The little doctor gently places the wooden flask in my hands. Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. I sit up, looking down at her for a moment. For a doctor, she doesn’t look particularly well herself. I try and ignore that fact as I cautiously hold the flask up to my lips. Here goes nothing. I gulp down the foul solution, trying not to taste it. Krasa stirs the dowel in the other flask before holding it up towards me. The tip of the dowel is covered in a glob of reddish goop forming droplets in slow motion. It moves like honey, but looks closer to blood.

  “Here!” Krasa presents the stick to me as if it was solid gold. Is this my reward? It’s humiliating. I unceremoniously shove the goop into my mouth. The assistants all watch me like a pack of dogs. Even Krasa seems preposterously fascinated. I guess they must really like this stuff, whatever it is.

  It tastes sweet. What do you know- it is honey! It’s just regular honey, but it’s still quite a pleasant surprise. I return the stick to her and fall back onto the table. I stare at the ceiling, drowsy and numb. I can barely move my eyelids. The speech of the girls around me slowly turns to meaningless noise. Agnis is asking Krasa all kinds of questions.

  “Krasa, do you know what’s wrong with…”

  “I don’t… shoulder… comes first…”

  “You… even though…”

  “Never… before…”

  I watch with glazed eyes as the little doctor spreads a thick, clear substance around the wound in my shoulder. There is sharp pain, but it’s so deep down I can barely make it out. There is terror in my mind, but it’s so far away I can barely hear it. Krasa says something. Her assistants gather around, holding my body in place again. Krasa is preparing something. There is an ocean between me and the ceiling. Krasa begins cutting at my shoulder with an extremely slender knife, a long sliver with a tiny point. It hurts, but I can’t seem to muster any reaction. Somehow, I can’t be bothered to care about my own body anymore. Krasa grabs the wooden rod sticking out of my shoulder at its base. Lights flicker from somewhere in my chest, as if I had swallowed a torch. It hurts, but I don’t seem to mind. She begins to pull upward. The arrowhead shreds the flesh of my shoulder. Pain. Screaming pain that could make you run away at the speed of sound. But I can barely perceive it as I sink deep beneath the silent waves. I am so very far away.

  I groggily open my eyes. My brain feels sticky. I’m sweaty and cold, and my bones hurt from laying on this hard floor. It’s eerily quiet. There is no wood creaking, or crashing waves, just the tiny whirr of the space heater, and the faint echoes of the Discovery channel playing in the kitchen.

  I sit up. I’m in my room.