THE BABY MILL [[{SHINee}]]

THE BABY MILL [[41]] IN UTERO

            It must have been a thousand degrees Celsius in the room. It had to be because otherwise TaeMin would have no justified reason for being as hot as he was. Perhaps he could pin part of the blame on his baby, now so close to leaving his plastic womb.

            He wondered if the baby was drowning in sweat like he was… It was a possibility he fixed himself on when a sudden drop in temperature rocked him off his axis. He was launched into a state of vertigo, careening from one side of a stretch mark to the other. And were those… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 dots? In the pattern of a rainbow? Amazing…

            The moment hardly lasted a minute. When TaeMin came to his head ached and he could sense someone observing him closely.

            So this is what bugs must feel like when they’re trapped in containers, he thought.

            He would have giggled if he’d been capable.

            “You look flushed,” Onew rasped, a comment meant for worry when speaking of the usually ghost pale boy.

            TaeMin was far too deep into his fever to pay attention to those small details, however. To be honest, what Onew had said had sounded like jarble to him. He’d picked up ‘you’ and the rest had frolicked off with the giggles in his head.

            “TaeMin?”

            Hopping over 1, 2, 3 bushes and 3, 4, 5 more.

            A spike in temperature burnt nature down to a crisp. TaeMin went through another brief moment of vertigo before reality kidnapped him and took away his jump rope. No more yard games for him…

            “T-TaeMin…” Onew’s voice registered in his head at last. The desperate wail in his broken tone had him pondering over what could have happened in his brain lapse. Could he have said something awful…? “Are you okay?”

            What was ‘okay’ and when was the last time he had felt it? It must have been a long, long time ago since Taemin had absolutely no recollection of being anything other than horrible.

            “Y-yes…” he still whispered. An unexpected tremble interrupted him. His lips paralyzed for a second and found their place, though not without snickering at its prank.

            “You look… Really red,” Onew noticed.

            Did he? His body felt like it was on fire. Every muscle roared in agony, chomping off bits of his flesh as it devoured the oxygen around him; the cracking sounds reached his joints. Everything else simply tried to escape and failed miserably.

            “I-I’m burning,” TaeMin murmured.

            With closed eyes he wasn’t much ready to admit to anything else. Onew could have said something else but he was mesmerized by the cinders flickering above the flames. Behind his eyes, where nothing but the pitch black dark of nothing cozied up to him, he watched their dance, wishing he knew the steps so he could join in. instead, he held back, one hand cradling his tummy the other his lower back.

            1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and snap.

            The dream TaeMin had had could easily be classified as one of the worst nightmares he’d ever had. In fact, it was the worst. Thankfully he couldn’t remember anything that had happened during his sleep. Still… He felt it in his bones like someone had nailed it to him and then reinforced it with crazy glue.

            Onew shuffled beside him, his slumber mostly undisturbed by the dark images in his mind. There were voices outside of the room that sounded like grunting. Pigs speaking to each other. Ha ha.

            A flush of heat killed of his laughter (as if it had meant to survive anyway). He coughed slightly, wishing he could move off his back to stop the pain intensifying down there. With all this time to dote his thoughts on his body he seemed to feel the throbs more. If only he had something to treat it…  Nip it at its source. Without hurting his baby of course…

            A door creaked…

            “Something’s wrong…” a person commented. The she-devil… TaeMin recognized her voice automatically. It wasn’t difficult to recognize the words blowing out of her nose.

            The man who was placed by Onew’s bed hardly twitched a muscle. His mouth moved, but TaeMin couldn’t hear what he said.

            Someone’s hand brushed his forehead. The coldness of the person’s skin shocked him to the point he grew stiff. His nightmare came barrelling back into him, rendering him floppy. If anyone wanted to use then they had only to hook him up to strings and drag him across the floor.

            “He’s hot.” The she-devil didn’t spare TaeMin a look. She was angled to her partner, features pinched together. Her lips were pursed, thin eyebrows furrowed above her beady eyes. As the man turned around she appeared to freeze, nearly trembling from some contained emotion she was unwilling to share.

            “What do you mean?” Dr. Park asked, finally visible to TaeMin. Though his voice was sticking to a quiet level it rumbled like an incoming hurricane.

            “He appears to have a fever.”

            Onew murmured something incoherent. The doctor was momentarily distracted and his lapse in attention made him less intimidating if only for a second. The simmering look her gave the she-devil spoke louder than what he was preparing to say, TaeMin was sure.

            “Do not play naïve with me,” he grumbled. “If he has a fever, why are you still standing there? Call the medical staff and prescribe an antibiotic! Do I have to do everything around here?”

            She hardly flinched at his words. TaeMin suspected that she was no stranger to the abuse Dr. Park pleasured in dishing out. Instead of lancing a sharp retort at him she turned and left the room.

            The absence that took her place frightened TaeMin. He lay mortified in his bed, trying to predict the doctor’s next move. A bomb. He was a bomb waiting to explode… The earth almost quaked as his anger built, bubbling up one level at a time until it was leaking out of his ears and erupting out of his mouth.

            “Why do you always do this?” Dr. Park demanded. The air whizzed around him as he rushed to reprimand TaeMin for falling ill.

            “Every single time!”

            Something fell over and the noise blew up around the room. The sharp sound made TaeMin’s ears ache. Before the tantrum could expand into something truly frightful a shaking came from the bed. The springs on the bed opposite squeaked. Its support creaked as the bed on it convulsed.

            Dr. park forgot about the fever the carrier was sprouting and closed in on Onew. He was convulsing himself, folding on his body in an abnormal way. TaeMin looked away to save himself the torment.

            He was sicker than he had originally thought. While the seizure trapped his roommate, TaeMin tried to carry himself off to another place. But his ears heard everything… Gurgling… Gasping… Shouting and foot stomps…

            1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.