For the subject, the moment when the legs stop belonging to them usually does not arrive when the mechanism closes.
It arrives a few seconds later.
At first there is still the habit of believing movement is possible.
It is a strange habit.
The body takes time to accept certain pieces of news.
The restraints are closed.
The anchor points no longer have any play.
The posture has already been decided.
And yet some part of me keeps issuing commands.
Small commands.
Ridiculous ones, even.
Move a foot a few inches.
Shift the weight of a hip.
Find a more comfortable position.
Nothing happens.
Not because it hurts.
Because it simply does not happen.
I think that is what always surprises me.
Not the stillness.
The number of movements I keep attempting afterward.
The Master does not seem interested in the legs.
At least not in the way I once imagined.
He does not watch the ankles.
He does not watch the restraints.
He watches everything that happens afterward.
The way the back corrects its own posture.
The way the abdominal muscles begin working without being asked.
The small tremor that appears in a thigh and disappears before it becomes visible.
There comes a point when I start noticing absurd things.
The inner seam of my clothing.
A faint pressure beneath the left heel.
The fact that one knee is carrying more weight than the other.
I do not know when I begin thinking about those things.
Probably when I stop thinking about escape.
That should bother me more.
And yet it doesn’t.
Something else is happening.
The body begins reorganizing itself around a fact it can no longer argue with.
The legs remain where they are.
The pelvis finds another way to hold the weight.
Breathing relocates itself.
Even the shoulders seem to settle into new positions.
As though everything is negotiating the consequences of a decision already made.
There is something almost humiliating about discovering how much movement exists inside stillness.
I thought it would be different.
I thought the experience would be about remaining motionless.
It isn’t.
It is about noticing everything that continues moving when you can no longer go anywhere.
After a while I begin recognizing sounds.
Not because they matter.
Because I have been here too long.
A faint intermittent hum.
Some piece of metal cooling.
The sound of fabric shifting when I breathe deeper than usual.
I do not remember when I started paying attention to such things.
I only know they now feel as much a part of the mechanism as the restraints themselves.
I look at the floor.
There is a dark mark near one of the anchor points.
It has probably been there for years.
I cannot stop looking at it.
I think that if they released me right now, I would still know exactly where it is.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
