His Pain

by Wrath James White

“One of the bones in my leg was badly shattered and had poked through the muscle. It had severed several large veins and ruptured the surface of the skin. I was suffering from hypothermia from the frigid mud and rain. My leg and forehead wounds were bleeding badly. I was losing blood rapidly and going into shock. Yet by welcoming the pain, by not fighting or resisting it and allowing myself to feel levels of anguish that our minds usually shield us from, overwhelming my senses with it until they could feel nothing more, the way a word constantly repeated loses all meaning, I was able to slow my breathing and heart-rate. That’s the only way I survived. If I hadn’t been able to alter my thinking I would have been defeated. Now I’ve perfected and enhanced these techniques. I’m using them to help cancer patients cope with the strain and discomfort of chemotherapy. I also teach these techniques to burn patients who can’t be helped by morphine or other pain medications. There have been people who have undergone surgery using nothing but my visualization techniques and no other anesthesia.”

  Melanie listened in awe. She felt her first genuine swell of hope in years. Could this man possibly help her little boy?

  As the show neared conclusion, she rushed to gather a pen and paper to write down the man’s contact information. All they listed was an email address, a website, and a name. Yogi Arjunda at www.physicalenlightenment.com.

  “Physical enlightenment?”

  She’d heard of spiritual enlightenment but she had no idea how someone could be physically enlightened. Still, if there was a possibility that Yogi Arjunda and his meditation techniques might allow her to one day embrace her son, she had to give it a try. She jotted the email address down and raced to the computer.

  Dear Yogi Arjunda,

  You are a gift from God. I hope that you might have the answer to my prayers. I listened to you describe how you overcame broken bones and frigid temperatures through meditation techniques and how you are teaching others to combat pain using similar methods and I knew I had to contact you. I am the mother of a teenaged boy who has suffered indescribable pain his entire life. He is afflicted with a rare neurological disorder that makes everything he touches, tastes, hears, sees, or smells painful to him. He spends everyday locked inside a soundproof room, sealed in a latex sensory deprivation bag, doped up on a cocktail of pain-killing medications. He has never been able to go outside and play like other children or even watch television or listen to music. Even the sound of a human’s voice hurts him. I can’t even touch him. I dream of one day being able to hold my son in my arms. I believe that you can help me and my family. Please contact me. I am desperate.

  Sincerely,

  Melanie Thompson

  P.S. We will pay any price for your assistance.

  Melanie pressed send and the shut off the computer. She didn’t know why she added that last bit. She and her husband were comfortable, but far from wealthy. If the Yogi asked for a million dollars there would be no way she could come up with it, even if they sold their house. She was hoping that since he was a spiritual man that he would do it out of the kindness of his heart or for some nominal fee. Maybe he’d make her join his religion. She didn’t care what his price was as long as he could help her and her child.

  By the time she’d finished dinner, Edward was walking through the front door. She’d wanted to keep the news about Yogi Arjunda to herself until he had at least replied to her email, but seeing the dejected look on Edward’s face made her want to share the good news. He looked like he was desperately in need of some.

  “Guess what, Edward. Something wonderful happened today!” She was beaming when she spoke.

  Edward lifted one eyelid quizzically and then turned to look at his son’s door as if he expected the boy to come bursting out and run into his arms. His face then fell back into that morose grimace that had taken up residence on it seventeen years ago and refused to vacate.

  “I saw a man on a talk show today that helps people deal with pain through meditation. He’s helped hundreds of people, mostly burn patients and cancer patients. He said that people have even undergone surgery without anesthesia just using his techniques. I wrote to him today. I think he might be able to help Jason.”

  “That-that’s great, honey,” Edward stammered, but his face remained unchanged. He walked over to the couch and collapsed down into it.

  Melanie hadn’t really noticed how much the years had changed him. Once, Edward had been an enormous man. Not fat but burly, tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested. Now he was a thin wisp of a man. His shoulders were bowed and stooped, curled inward towards each other. His thick chest had sunken in and his weight had dropped dramatically. His head hung low and his eyes were dull and hollow as if his body had somehow learned the trick of remaining animate without a life-force. Merely the shambling ghost of the man she had married.

  “Edward, this might work. Don’t just dismiss it. We have to have hope. The least you can do is give it a chance.”

  “And if he can’t help us?”

  “Then we try something else and we keep trying until we find a cure for our boy!”

  “And if there is no cure? If no one can help him?”

  “Don’t say it, Edward. Don’t you even think it! That is not an option.” She glared at him threateningly until he dropped his head and looked away, which didn’t take long. His spirit had been broken long ago on the day their son was diagnosed.

  “Dinner will be ready soon. You just sit there and feel sorry for yourself while I try to help our son.”

  Melanie stormed out of the living room and back into the kitchen, leaving her dejected husband to ponder the chances of one day having a normal son and to once again debate the virtues of euthanasia.

  Dinner was eaten in silence as they waited for the sun to set low enough for them to open their son’s room without the light disturbing him. Melanie kept glancing over her shoulder at the computer while Edward continued looking for signs of life from his son’s dark room. Neither of them tasted much of their meal. They chewed mechanically as if they were engaged in the process of waste disposal rather than enjoying a meal. They washed dishes and cleaned the table without conversation.

  Edward looked into the pot where his son’s meal was slowly boiling. The potatoes had turned to mush and the steak didn’t look much better. Melanie had probably boiled it twice already, washed the steak in the sink, replaced the water in the pot, and boiled it again. Edward already knew what that mush would taste like when she was done. He’d tasted the flavorless gruel many times himself. Baby food was spicy in comparison.

  Melanie took the pot off the fire and carried it over to the sink. She turned the faucet all the way to cold, pulled the steak and potatoes out. She ran them under the frigid water for a few minutes. They were barely lukewarm when she put both of them on the cutting board and began to chop, reducing the steak to quarter-inch bites and the potatoes to a white pulp. She then piled the tasteless sustenance directly onto a rubber placemat she had chosen specially for its texture and walked into her son’s room.

  Instinctively she reached out for the light switch and flicked it upwards. When nothing happened she flicked it again before she remembered for perhaps the thousandth time that there was no light in this room. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. The black walls sucked the light seeping in from the rest of the house down into them and murdered it. When she could finally make out the outline of things, Melanie stepped inside and shut the door. She walked over to the bag hanging in the middle of the room and stared down at it. Something about it reminded her of a coffin. Maybe it was the bag’s resemblance to a coroner’s body bag. She’d seen them on T.V. and this looked like a more stylish version of one. Something a vampire might have in his home. With the black walls and windows keeping out the sunlight her son’s room would have made the perfect lair for a vampire.

  A chill went through her as her mind began to carry the idea to extremes.

  What if my son is really a vampire? What if that’s why he hates the
light? Maybe that’s why he’s so sensitive, because he hasn’t had any blood to make him strong.

  She watched the black rubber bag rise and fall with her son’s slow steady breaths and chills raced across her flesh.

  Maybe that’s why he’s so pale? Maybe that’s why he doesn’t love me?

  Melanie knew her thoughts were ridiculous. She was deliberately freaking herself out. But once her mind began to travel this path she couldn’t force herself to detour. She began to wonder what she would do if it was true. Would she be able to kill him? Could she drive a stake through her only son’s heart and drag his body out into the sunlight? Or would she keep him here forever and help him find the blood he needs to rejuvenate himself? She didn’t want to think about it. She shook her head to rattle the idea out of her skull like a child shaking quarters from a piggy bank.

  Stop it! Stop it right now! You’re just being silly, she chastised herself.

  Then the bag moved.

  Melanie jumped. She fumbled with the tray and almost dropped it as she backed quickly away from the bag. It took several long slow breaths to calm herself. She stared at the black bag as if expecting a monster to explode out of it. It didn’t move again except for her son’s monotonous breathing.

  Too many fucking horror movies, she thought.

  Still, her heart trip-hammered in her chest as she lowered the zipper on Jason’s bag and let air in. She sat down on his latex coated bed and waited for him. Jason slid out of the vacuum bag like some type of alien larva escaping an oversized cocoon. Chills raced down her spine again watching the long shadow emerge. His feet touched the floor and he stood up in the middle of the room and stared at his mother without moving or making a sound. She half expected him to attack. Then, she remembered how sensitive and fragile he was. A harsh word would be all it would take to drive him to his knees.

  He sure looks like a fucking vampire though, she thought as she stared at his pale skin and long gaunt frame.

  Jason was completely naked and seeing him standing there with his penis dangling limp across his thigh made his mother blush. At seventeen years old he was not a little boy anymore.

  “I brought you dinner, Jason.”

  His hands flew to his ears and he grimaced painfully, baring his teeth in a vicious snarl. He dropped his hands from his ears and glared murderously at his mother. Melanie had to bite down on her fist to keep herself from apologizing. She pulled her fist away and mouthed the words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jason shook his head and reached for the tray, careful not to allow his skin to come in contact with his mother’s. For some reason he found her touch particularly uncomfortable. Melanie turned her head as he sucked and licked the food off the tray. He hated getting food on his hands and refused to use even plastic flatware. The risk of cutting himself was too high.

  Melanie wanted to tell her son about the Yogi, but she couldn’t speak to him and he had never learned to read more than a few basic words. They once tried sign language but Jason had proved too impatient and irritable to learn. She sat staring at her son as he scarfed his food, wondering how the Yogi would ever get through to him.

  ***

  Two days later the Yogi responded.

  Melanie had just about given up hope and her mood had darkened as she ran to the computer two or three times an hour for the last forty-eight looking for some communication from Yogi Arjunda. She had just finished cooking breakfast for Jason and watching as he lapped it off his tray in the pitch blackness of his room, when she stopped by the computer on her way back to the kitchen and saw the new email come in.

  Her hands shook as she dragged the cursor over to the little envelope shaped mail icon and double clicked on it. She squealed like a schoolgirl when the Yogi’s email popped up on the screen.

  Dear Mrs. Thompson,

  I read your very heartfelt correspondence with great interest. I am so sorry to hear about the grief you and your son are going through. He has a very challenging condition and one I have admittedly not encountered before. I can only imagine what it must be like for your son to know nothing else in his life but pain and what it must be like for you being helpless to prevent it. I feel it is my divine duty to help you and your child. As long as he continues to suffer my soul will not rest as I’m sure yours cannot either. I am catching a plane to come visit you immediately. If you would allow me to stay in your home as a guest while I strive to free your child from his misery, food, shelter, and your hospitality would be the only recompense I would require.

  In Peace,

  Yogi Arjunda

  Melanie read the email over and over to herself. It was absolutely amazing to her. They had already spent thousands on various specialists. It was hard to believe that this man was going to help them for free.

  Not free, she reminded herself. He wants food, shelter, and my ‘hospitality’. I wonder why he said ‘your hospitality’ and not ‘your family’s hospitality’?

  If the Yogi wasn’t a holy man she might have interpreted “Hospitality” to mean sexual favors. But, she was pretty sure that all monks were celibate though she had no clue about the Hindu faith. She really had no evidence that he even was a Hindu. She had turned on the television in the middle of the program and had never actually heard him say what faith he was. She had just assumed from the orange robe and the title.

  Isn’t a Yogi a Hindu priest or monk or something? She wasn’t sure. Her only experience with them had been on television watching a Hindu priest squeeze himself into a 2x2 box and hold his breath under water for half an hour. Yogi Arjunda certainly dressed and acted the same way the contortionist had.

  Perhaps Yogis are like Christian Priests and Pastors and there are different denominations and sects? Maybe it’s just an assumed title, ‘Self-proclaimed’ as they say? Maybe it’s an entirely different religion that just uses similar titles for its priests and monks? Melanie didn’t care. If the little man wanted to fuck her in order to cure her son than she’d gladly spread her legs and welcome him inside. She’d done far worse for far less before she’d married Edward.

  Maybe I’d even enjoy it? Maybe he knows some of those Tantric sex techniques I’ve been begging Edward to try? That Karma Sutra stuff?

  Melanie’s mind started to wander again as she imagined the olive-skinned little man mounting her. More disturbing however was the response from between her thighs. An uncomfortable moistness was starting to spread at the root of her picturing the little Monk twisting himself around her body, kissing and licking her in places Edward hadn’t touched her in years. Melanie had to resist the urge to masturbate. She picked the plate up again and skipped into the kitchen.

  “But what if he can’t help him?” It was Edward’s voice in her head.

  “He’ll help. I’ve just got a good feeling about it this time.” Melanie spoke out loud to the empty room.

  “That’s what you said about the guy with the shark cartilage and seaweed and marijuana injections. Remember how much pain Jason went through with that guy?

  “Of course I remember! But that-that was different. That guy came highly recommended by the way. He’d done amazing work with Cancer and AIDS patients. He had a PHD in neurology. How was I supposed to know he was a pot-head? This is different.”

  “How do you know it’s different? What do you know about this guy aside from what you heard on that talk show?”

  Melanie hated when Edward’s voice got in her head. He was so damned rational all the time. But over the years she’d learned that he was also frequently right. She washed off Jason’s tray and placed it in the dishwasher. She then walked back over to the computer.

  She sat in front of the screen and stared at it for a long time before deciding what to do. She then dragged the cursor up to the search bar at the top of the screen and typed in “www.physicalenlightenment.com.” In a few seconds Yogi Arjunda’s face appeared surrounded by hundreds of others; men, women, young and old, from various nationalities, all dressed in the same oran
ge robes with their heads shaved. She clicked on testimonials and read a story from a cancer patient who’d survived and even claimed to have reversed the effects of chemotherapy using meditation techniques. She read stories from people who’d been in car and motorcycle accidents, people who’d been burned in fires, people who’d gone through painful surgeries, AIDS patients, and others afflicted with diseases she’d never even heard of. All of them claimed to be pain-free thanks to the Yogi’s techniques. On another page you could download streaming video of people sticking needles in themselves, in their eyelids, lips, tongues, nipples, and genitals, electrocuting themselves, and even cutting and burning themselves without pain. She’d seen this kind of stuff in books before. They were called modern primitives. It was a little extreme for her but it was impressive.

  Next she clicked on the link marked “Our Philosophy” and tried to read through the complex ideology of physical enlightenment. It began talking about how everything in the universe is made of electrons and protons and how less than a thousandth of our bodies are composed of actual physical matter and the rest is just empty space. It talked about how we lose and gain electrons and protons all the time. Every time we touch something we transfer some of ourselves into it and take some of it with us. How even now we are sharing electrons with distant stars. It started getting even weirder when it began to talk about how there should be no reason we couldn’t pass right through things like walls and floors. How most of our atoms do in fact pass through the objects we come in contact with and that only ions deflect the rest from doing the same. It was all above Melanie’s head and she couldn’t see how any of it explained how a man could hook his nipples up to a car battery or pierce his penis with a sewing needle or how it would help her son overcome a lifetime of pain. Still, she continued to read.

  “We are a part of all things. Our individuality is an illusion and it is this illusion that causes us injury. Do you think the moon, the sun, or the stars feel pain? We are the universe so nothing in it should be able to harm us. Likewise nothing within ourselves should be out of our control either. Nothing in our own bodies should hurt us. We are unaware of an electron passing through us so it causes us no distress, it is our mind’s awareness of pain that causes it. The illusion our minds have created for us of separate individuals makes us think that the integrity of our bodies is being compromised when something invades it, but in reality our bodies have no integrity. They are constantly flowing and changing like the water in a stream, and our minds are the channels that determine which path that stream takes. Do you think a river winces when you skip rocks across it? Just as an electron passes through me without notice because it is a part of me a knife, a bullet, fire, and even cancer should pass through me painlessly as well because they are also a part of me.”