Lars swung out in pure rage.
Even though his eyes didn’t work his mind could see emotion. Sadness was a throbbing continuation of the black that defined his universe. Fear came in jagged blue shocks that raced through his mind and left smoldering and scarred tissue. He had long forgotten what love looked like. And now, as he thrashed and swung, rage was a red conflagration, tentacles of flame that stretched out from his fingers, manifold tongues of pure consuming hatred that were never sated, never quenched. This emotion curled in on itself, spun and burned until whatever humanity was left in him scattered as white ash before a fierce wind. Rage was all he had left and he gave himself over to it, an empty vessel licked clean by fire.
*****
The orderlies watched though the window as this former man gyred in an incomprehensible and inhuman dance, his arms loose, his head tipped back to reveal scarred sockets where he’d clawed out his own eyes. Droplets of sweat were released from his fingertips, mercury spheres that spattered on the padded walls and ticked across the small observation window around which the two orderlies watched with half-lidded interest. He gave good sport, this one. Been in here for years and only got worse until he was pure action, a tendony spider of a thing, rank and dangerous. The chemicals they fed him only enraged him until it was all they could do do keep him from harming himself.
They said he’d been a doctor once. There was even the rumor he used to run this facility. The orderlies waked away, the thumps of his arms against the walls fading into a rhythm that was overtaken by the sound of their combat boots squeaking on the steel floor. Better not to ask questions or linger. Each experiment had gone wrong in some way, each fought with demons in its own way. This one had just become pure blind emotion.
Writer, architect, father, husband.