Free Existence by James Frey

lids, and they wonder if, in his state, he can dream.
    He dreams of a different life.
    He dreams of a different An Liu, one who has a mother, not a father. He dreams of a 10th birthday full of cake and presents and love, a mother’s radiant face and gentle kiss. He dreams that he goes to school, has friends, sleeps in a room with a window and posters onthe wall.
    He dreams of warmth and joy and human touch.
    He dreams himself into a fantasy world, and when the images dissolve in a shower of blinding light, when he blinks himself back to reality, a stranger aiming a flashlight at his pupils, a voice asking if he knows who he is or where, a stabbing pain in his head unlike anything he’s ever known, he wishes only to return to the dream or, even better, to the mercy of death that lay just beyond it.
    After, things are blinkblink different.
    An Liu is shiver-SHIVER different.
    The world jumps and jitters, will not blink-shiver-blink sit still. His tongue is clumsy in his mouth; his limbs are numb blocks of wood. And when he blink tries shiver to blink focus, to shivershiver stand, to BLINKblink read, his mind jitters, his body rebels; he tics and shudders and eventually blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​blink​BLINK loses himself to frustrated rage.
    Anger makes it worse.
    Everything makes it worse.
    An has spent six years learning to control his body and mind—the only two things in his life he has any control over at all—and just like that, it’s all gone. He’s been a prisoner in his father’s house, but now he will be a prisoner in SHIVER his own body.
    His doctors tell him to be patient.
    His father, who visits only once, tells him to be a man.
    The blinkblinkSHIVER tics are blink much SHIVERshivershiverBLINK worse when his father is there.
    â€œD-d-d-d-d-d-id y-y-ou you you dooooooo this-s-s-s-s t-t-t-to m-m-me? ME ME ME?” An asks, cursing his halting and stuttering tongue.
    Losing patience, his father walks out before An manages to finish the sentence. Maybe this is for the best, but An blinkblink doesn’t care.He’s not afraid of SHIVER his father anymore.
    He’s not afraid of anything. Except living blinkblink like this.
    For three blinkblink months he lives in a secure private rehab facility. He SHIVER learns to walk again, one jerking step at a time. He practices with a speech pathologist until blink-shiver-blink he can force his tongue to make the right letters again. He retrains SHIVERblink his brain to retrieve the words he needs to express his anger.
    It’s blink-blink-blink slow.
    Thoughts flutter away from him; words escape him.
    An Liu could once shiverBLINK multiply matrices and solve quantum wave functions in his head. Now his blink studies blink are blink simpler.
    He looks at pictures, tries to remember the words that go with them.
    This is a clock .
    This is a dog .
    This is a . . .
    â€œA-a-a-a-a-a-apple!” he finally screams, and throws the fruit across the room in frustration. It goes only a couple feet.
    His body is as weak as his mind.
    What they did to him, what they took from him: it is irreplaceable.
    What is left behind: a steel plate, a Swiss-cheese brain. A fragmented memory of his father’s angry shouts and a rod slamming down, again and again. Pain, in his body, in his head, throbbing pains, stabbing pains, aching pains—and the perpetual fog in his brain from the medicines intended to take it away. And, shiver forever blink with shiver him, tics and stutters, stutters and tics.
    â€œK-k-k-k-ill memememe,” he asks his physical therapists.