This chapter is dedicated to JoeRover2  (AKA: Mister Gadget)

[For best experience possible, play youtube video and turn on sound whilst reading]

§*§*§*§*§*§*§*§*§*§

Cleithrophobia ~ Fear of being trapped

Small spaces. Tiny metal cages. Chain wrapped straightjacket...

They were all fine, but what Mister Gadget couldn't stand was the thought of being trapped in the open.

Sure. If you were claustrophobic it was understandable. Many situations that included confined spaces lead to death so there was at least a reason for the basis of the phobia. However, Mister Gadget's phobia was quite to opposite. He loved small spaces or rather small things that he could tinker with such as microwaves, sonic screwdrivers and even those portable radios. He loved how such a tiny close-knit contraption could produce such a large effect yet that was the problem exactly. How could something so small create an impact so big yet things so big create results so small? For example ~ this paragraph.

Mister gadget could have easily summarised his thoughts in sentence or two but instead, he had to create a long winding article expressing the hypocrisy he was trying to point out. The hypocrisy of the fear of an intangible cage than confines everyone. The stagnation of the world.

Few things scared Mister Gadget but the way the world work terrified him to his core. Everything was just so soulless and he couldn't understand how everyone could just keep running the same hamster wheel of a Monday to Friday work week again and again until they became old, frail and dead. It just didn't make sense. If you were trapped in a lift the problem would be evident and people would try to get out but in the wide-open world when people are trapped in an office they don't try to leave, they try their very best to stay!

Mister Gadget twiddled his thumbs as he leaned back against the cool metal chairs in the psychiatric ward. The symmetrical comfiness set him at ease, isolating him from the world which knew only bounds. He'd been going over the reasons why they sent him here for the past hour or rather he had been told them just in the same way he was told to work the system and that if he didn't fit the cog well... That's getting off topic.

The thing was that he was being told two different things. Society told him that he was mentally ill - an overactive imagination - but the voice in his head told him otherwise.

'They're trying to turn you into a corporate slave. They'll steal your soul and stitch rules and false hopes of a better life in its place.' The voice clawed at the back of his mind. 'Can't you see that you're already trapped?'

Mister Gadget shook his head but his image in the reflective glass in front of him didn't mirror his movements. It merely looked sad. An empty silhouette of a ghost from a shell.

"No. You mustn't talk to me." Mister Gadget whispered furiously at his disappointed reflection. "You're the reason they sent me here in the first place!"

Mister Gadget's reflection tutted. It wasn't real. They said it wasn't real, it was merely a hallucination that needed to be ignored but how could Mister Gadget ignore it when it was as real as the people around him? How could he ignore himself?

'No. We're the reason.'

"No! Just shut up. The nice lady said she would be back soon and you know that. She was nice enough to give us our own room and said she would be back soon even if soon has been a few hours."

Again, the reflection tutted and sighed with shrug. Mister Gadget didn't understand how it did that, doing its own movements and all, but to be honest, it was a little comforting although annoying at times. Whenever things went bad he could always count on his reflection to turn things around, however, recently it seemed to have a voice of its own after he was bitten by a radioactive writer. That's what the nice lady said anyway. Shreya_VA was her name if he remembered correctly.

'Your own room? Stop trying to look at the bright side all the time! You know they haven't given you your own room. They've trapped you and are going to perform some weird "when I snap my fingers you will be another part of the matrix" mumbo jumbo. You'll lose your individuality and we both know how scared'

"Shut it!" Mister Gadgets fists trembled within the fluffy handcuffs. "I don't care if they have put me in solitary confinement! I don't care if I'm being classified as a nutjob. I don't care! I just want to be able to want to wake up every morning without the fear of living a meaningless life. I want my fear gone. I want the bliss of ignorance!"

'Ah, so that's what you've chosen...' The reflection's usual placid tone taking on a sharper edge and to Mister Gadget's horror, the reflective glass seemed to ripple slightly as if something was trying to force it's way through. 'I'm disappointed but I can't respect your choice.'

"What?" Mister Gadget choked on his words.

'I-' The glass rippled again and suddenly Mister Gadget could feel the metal chair being torn off the welds that sealed it to the ground. The belt around him stretched as its fibres tore apart from each other. 'Can't respect your choice!'

The belt snapped at the same time as the chair flew off the ground. Mister Gadget's body accelerated forward and his body collided with the glass, shattering it entirely. Shattering the bones within his body. Shattering the lucid state of sleep.

"Mister Gadget? Can you hear me Mister Gadget?"

A bright line shone in his eyes but Mister Gadget barely stirred. Great. It was his recurring nightmare. The nightmare that had haunted him ever since he had been dispatched to the psychiatric ward.

"Yes, I can hear you, Miss Rose." Mister Gadget slurred his words as he tried to sit up on the hospital bed.

"No, no. Don't overexert yourself. Just go back to sleep now. Go back to sleep."

Mister Gadget tried to resist but it was futile. Miss Rose easily slid another IV drip into him and before he knew it, he was as still as death.

To die, to sleep - to sleep, perchance to dream-