Prototype by Brian Hodge

her hospital sat a young man who by turns sought to tear himself and other people to pieces, the worst of his impulses held in check by a fragile grasp on the hope that he might learn to become something better. Whether a noble quest or a fool's errand, Clay Palmer had seemingly yet to decide, but the outcome was largely up to her. If she was correct, Clay might only be months away from committing the ultimate irrevocable crime, after which intervention would become a moot point. His future would consist of prison, or death.
    He had looked to her for help. And she was going to have to look him in the eye and tell him the truth, along with the words she hated most of all:
    I'm sorry … I don't know.

    *

    And how inadequate these words sounded to her ears. Who, though, among healers of body and mind, felt adequately trained in dealing out disappointment? Who felt comfortable admitting there were syndromes beyond their expertise, beyond even their knowledge? What pompous pretenders they all were at times. Their understanding of the totality of human life was barbarously crude, not far beyond using leeches and trephining holes into the skull to release evil spirits.
    When Clay looked at her, it was with the same lost melancholy another's face might have worn after being told a parent had died, or a sibling, a favorite grandparent … someone who had always been there, now gone. It was the face of downward spirals, and Adrienne pictured Clay sliding helplessly along a coil of double helix.
    Thirty-two thousand miles. He might never hit bottom.
    "It's me, then." His whisper was as soft as the sound of a knife on a throat.
    His room felt cold for no good reason, or was she the only one who noticed? It was Monday afternoon, hell of a way to start the week — you seem to be coming along nicely in our sessions, and by the way, did you know you're a freak of nature?
    "I thought it was something I could work on, try to beat," he said, "but it's me …"
    "Clay, please listen, there's no reason to believe that. It's too early to conclude what effect this might have on you, or even if it has one at all."
    "It's me, it's me ," and his voice curled into a low chant of loathing, "it's me," weighted forearms beginning to clash against each other, the casts striking as hammer and anvil, each blow harder than the last. Eyes wide, an acute madness brought on by knowledge — he had looked into deformity and found himself staring back. Black hair in tangles that fell into his eyes, he burned upon a pyre of his own fears, and she had no way to assuage them.
    "It's me and it's in every fucking cell in my body !" Clay screamed.
    He was off the bed before she realized what he was doing, lurching across the room to the far wall, throwing himself whole-bodied into a murderous swing at the chain link over the window. The cast — his right — rebounded with an atonal twang of metal, and he battered away at it again as she went for the door, holding it open, nodding into the hall while in they came, the enforcers of the asylum she'd had waiting just in case. He was code blue all over again, and succeeded in impacting the chain link with enough force to drive it into the window behind. Glass shattered, but if he wanted shards he was out of luck, nothing had fallen inside, so he sagged down the wall while turning on himself. Reddened fingertips hooked just beyond the ends of the casts, ragged nails in need of trimming. Clay seemed to regard his body as something hideous beyond tolerance, head straining on neck as if to distance itself from torso. With those heavy, clawed hands he ripped at the T-shirt under his robe, shredded through to the skin beneath.
    He tore.
    He tore.
    The orderlies were on him before he knew they had entered the room. Arms seized, he was dragged away from the wall, sobbing. His last recourse at venting the corrosive rage was to snap, and try to bite.
    Convulsing and nailed to the floor by other hands, enforced cruciform pose and