A Case Study of Cognitive Decline (Subjects: 1)
Title: A Case Study of Cognitive Decline (Subjects: 1)
Author: Tamoline
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Carmilla (Web Series)
Pairing: None
Spoilers for up to episode 17 of series 1
Summary: A study into unexplained periods of cognitive impairment, with associated loss of inhibitions and euphoria, their causes, prognosis and treatment.
Or:
The last days of Sarah Jane, and how she chooses to fight the inevitable
Summary: A study into unexplained periods of cognitive impairment, with associated loss of inhibitions and euphoria, their causes, prognosis and treatment.
Sarah Jane felt a little better as soon as she typed the words into her computer, like now, at least, she was a little more in control of what was happening. By the time she’d finished the word treatment, her hands had actually stopped shaking quite so badly. She was a scientist. She could handle this. She would figure out what was happening.
It had started yesterday morning - or, possibly more accurately, the night before. But yesterday morning had been the time she’d been in a fit state to think about… anything. She’d woken up from what had felt like the deepest sleep she’d had since the incident, only to have the memories from the night before press in on her like a clamp as soon as she’d fully awoken.
The fact that they’d only been fragmentary had just made them all the more terrifying. She had thought that she must have gotten drunk at a party or something, but that by itself hadn’t made any sense - she’d avoided anything resembling parties or even alcohol since the incident. Just the thought of leaving herself vulnerable again that way had left her scurrying for the toilet to empty her stomach.
In the end, she had told herself that it must have been a reaction to talking about the incident with that girl, Laura, the day before and had done her very best to just bury the whole of the night before as far as she could in her subconscious.
If she didn’t think about it, she had reasoned, then everything would be fine. Besides, she still hadn’t trained her lab imps up to her exacting standards.
But everything *hadn’t* been fine. Because it had happened again last night.
Introduction: The subject doesn’t have any familial history of dementia or mental illness. The only potential prior episode of cognitive impairment was a two day period of amnesia, coinciding with the subject’s disappearance from the university.
But that couldn’t have anything to do with what was happening to her currently, could it? That had had a completely different symptomology. Sarah Jane gnawed at her lip. She’d had a health checkup after she’d been found, but it had very much been of the tenor of ‘Can you remember what you’d had to drink?’ and ‘Do you remember what, if any, drugs you had?’ and ‘Do you remember eating or touching any strange substance?’ and ‘Did you read any forbidden grimoires?’ She still remembered the disbelieving look the nurse had given her when she said that she’d done *nothing*. They’d run some tests, but if they had revealed anything, no one had told her.
And she hadn’t told *anyone* of her only real - not memory - impressions? That there had been a person, maybe people with her whilst she was gone. Like she had been touched, been looked at, in the darkness.
It had just seemed too dangerous.
And now, now something else was wrong. Maybe it was a relapse. Maybe it what happened to her was progressive. But maybe it had to do with the questions Laura had asked her. Maybe someone else had noticed, maybe even Laura had been checking to see if they’d remembered anything.
Whatever was happening, the only person she could trust was herself.
Methodology: The first step is to take blood, hair and urine samples, and then perform a variety of tox screens to determine if there is a chemical cause.
“You want what?” asked the shadowy figure with red glowing eyes from the dim depths of the lab.
She smiled at him tentatively. The lab techs here certainly had taken some time to get used to, but Aza wasn’t so bad once she had. “It’s for a project,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions.
He looked at her for a long moment and then the eyes moved up and down in what was hopefully a nodding motion. Aza shuffled over to a computer that gleamed bone-white in the start-up glow from the screen, typed in a few commands and then the laser printer in the main lab started to go. “Thanks,” she said, and Aza muttered something incomprehensible and grudging in the way of lab techs everywhere.
The print-outs contained the protocols she asked for, and more besides. Some were for some drugs she hadn’t thought to ask for. And then there were the test protocols for an ultra dimensional intrusion, for possession and for being under a witch’s charm. She sighed and started making the appropriate preparations.
She managed to source the reagents fairly easier, but some of the more esoteric equipment took a little more work. She had to raid the Applied Theology lab for an appropriate bible, a cupboard in the Advanced Hilbert Spaces classroom for a device which *really* should have come with an Epilepsy warning and the Mile High Society greenhouse for the more unusual fungi.
Finally, she’d run all the immediate tests she could and started all the ones that needed preparation time, and was left drumming her fingers, a sense of unease filling her as the sun slowly edged towards the horizon. She’d taken all possible precautions about making sure that no-one could interfere with her lunchtime meal, she wasn’t in any of her usual hangouts and whatever had happened hadn’t affected her until… midway through the evening, at least.
She should be safe, at least for now, but she couldn’t stop that sense of foreboding washing over her.
You’re in control, she told herself. You can handle this.
And to prove it, she started writing up her methodology, detailing all the experiments she was running and the results she’d got back so far, negative or inconclusive. And then…
Then she woke up in someone else’s bed with someone else’s arm wrapped around her and almost screamed. She managed to slide out of bed and started to scramble into her clothing.
“Babe?” came a muffled male voice from the bed. “Anything wrong?”
The name Hirsch floated at her through the misty clouds of her memory. “Sure,” she said, flashing him a nervous grin. “Just got an early class.”
He pushed himself up and gave her a sleepy grin. “Just want to hope that you had as totally awesome a night as I did.”
She couldn’t think about that right now. “Yes,” she said. “Totally.”
There was a rustle from the other bed, and Hirsch’s roommate - Will? - stuck his head up out of his covers, and all the while Hirsch was giving her that sweet, warm and slightly dopey grin. She felt her throat tighten up in something like panic. In another life, at a different time,she might have even liked him, normally. But not like this.
Definitely not like this.
She was just about to make her apologies when a wave of euphoria hit her, like electricity running up her nerves, energising her, making her want to move and dance and *feel*, and then it hit her brain and everything apart from the moment seemed to fade away.
She was standing in front of the bed, Hirsch reaching up towards her, a shooting pain running up from her left foot.
She had to get out of there.
She grabbed the rest of the clothing and scuttled out into the corridor before Hirsch could do much more than let out a confused grunt at her behaviour.
Okay.
Okay.
That… attack had only lasted a few minutes at most. The pain must have snapped her out of it. Maybe she could use that somehow. Somehow.
On the other hand, she couldn’t deny that yesterday afternoon had been the earliest attack yet, if she didn’t count this morning, and she was trying not to, because otherwise that’d just be too terrifying. Even taken the other way, that the attacks were now lasting long enough to affect her in the morning, made her queasy thinking about it.
Her condition was rapidly progressing. She was running out of time.
She almost sprinted to the lab, and immediately shrugged into a lab coat and started taking results. Negative, negative, negative. Last night, she’d been here when it had struck. Not in her rooms, not in the cafeteria. Here. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything that she hadn’t unsealed herself. Even without the final few results, she had to admit that this wasn’t the effect of some drug that had been slipped to her somehow. The additional tests Aza had printed out for her hadn’t helped either.
She retreated to the toilets before the tears could flow.
Okay.
Okay.
She had new information now. Pain could help focus her. If she… regularly pinched herself, or something, then maybe she could hold it off. Keep control of her own mind. Keep herself from drifting off into that euphoric haze, where, looking back through what hazy memories she had, it felt like she was almost an onlooker rather than present, watching whilst someone else moved her body.
She could control this. She could.
Pinch. Ouch.
Okay, all she had to was carry on doing this.
She woke up as the sun struck her eyes. For a moment, all she felt was delight - honest euphoria. She had done it. She’d pinched herself alert until she had been too tired to stay awake any longer. And here she was, conscious and herself the next morning.
And then the memories of the past three days hit her and she slumped, drained of hope, against the bed.
This time, she couldn’t even muster the energy to fight the euphoria when it came again.
Conclusion: …I have nothing.
She was standing in front of a door, cool air blowing at her back, her hands hurting as if she had been thumping against it.
Hurting.
It must have been what had woken her.
She felt a tugging deep within herself, pulling her downwards, outside the building. She resisted the urge to thump against the door once again.
She wouldn’t give in.
She wouldn’t.
She felt the euphoria encroaching on her mind again, like a whispering enemy just waiting for her guard to drop. She realised with a drop in her stomach that this could be the last time that she was awake, that she was truly herself.
That she might not even have had this much if it hadn’t been for this tugging.
She couldn’t go on like this.
Cool air. She looked around at the room she was in. There was a balcony over the other side, and she smiled, hopelessly.
Down and outside.
There was a way out after all.
Author: Tamoline
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Carmilla (Web Series)
Pairing: None
Spoilers for up to episode 17 of series 1
Summary: A study into unexplained periods of cognitive impairment, with associated loss of inhibitions and euphoria, their causes, prognosis and treatment.
Or:
The last days of Sarah Jane, and how she chooses to fight the inevitable
Summary: A study into unexplained periods of cognitive impairment, with associated loss of inhibitions and euphoria, their causes, prognosis and treatment.
Sarah Jane felt a little better as soon as she typed the words into her computer, like now, at least, she was a little more in control of what was happening. By the time she’d finished the word treatment, her hands had actually stopped shaking quite so badly. She was a scientist. She could handle this. She would figure out what was happening.
It had started yesterday morning - or, possibly more accurately, the night before. But yesterday morning had been the time she’d been in a fit state to think about… anything. She’d woken up from what had felt like the deepest sleep she’d had since the incident, only to have the memories from the night before press in on her like a clamp as soon as she’d fully awoken.
The fact that they’d only been fragmentary had just made them all the more terrifying. She had thought that she must have gotten drunk at a party or something, but that by itself hadn’t made any sense - she’d avoided anything resembling parties or even alcohol since the incident. Just the thought of leaving herself vulnerable again that way had left her scurrying for the toilet to empty her stomach.
In the end, she had told herself that it must have been a reaction to talking about the incident with that girl, Laura, the day before and had done her very best to just bury the whole of the night before as far as she could in her subconscious.
If she didn’t think about it, she had reasoned, then everything would be fine. Besides, she still hadn’t trained her lab imps up to her exacting standards.
But everything *hadn’t* been fine. Because it had happened again last night.
Introduction: The subject doesn’t have any familial history of dementia or mental illness. The only potential prior episode of cognitive impairment was a two day period of amnesia, coinciding with the subject’s disappearance from the university.
But that couldn’t have anything to do with what was happening to her currently, could it? That had had a completely different symptomology. Sarah Jane gnawed at her lip. She’d had a health checkup after she’d been found, but it had very much been of the tenor of ‘Can you remember what you’d had to drink?’ and ‘Do you remember what, if any, drugs you had?’ and ‘Do you remember eating or touching any strange substance?’ and ‘Did you read any forbidden grimoires?’ She still remembered the disbelieving look the nurse had given her when she said that she’d done *nothing*. They’d run some tests, but if they had revealed anything, no one had told her.
And she hadn’t told *anyone* of her only real - not memory - impressions? That there had been a person, maybe people with her whilst she was gone. Like she had been touched, been looked at, in the darkness.
It had just seemed too dangerous.
And now, now something else was wrong. Maybe it was a relapse. Maybe it what happened to her was progressive. But maybe it had to do with the questions Laura had asked her. Maybe someone else had noticed, maybe even Laura had been checking to see if they’d remembered anything.
Whatever was happening, the only person she could trust was herself.
Methodology: The first step is to take blood, hair and urine samples, and then perform a variety of tox screens to determine if there is a chemical cause.
“You want what?” asked the shadowy figure with red glowing eyes from the dim depths of the lab.
She smiled at him tentatively. The lab techs here certainly had taken some time to get used to, but Aza wasn’t so bad once she had. “It’s for a project,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions.
He looked at her for a long moment and then the eyes moved up and down in what was hopefully a nodding motion. Aza shuffled over to a computer that gleamed bone-white in the start-up glow from the screen, typed in a few commands and then the laser printer in the main lab started to go. “Thanks,” she said, and Aza muttered something incomprehensible and grudging in the way of lab techs everywhere.
The print-outs contained the protocols she asked for, and more besides. Some were for some drugs she hadn’t thought to ask for. And then there were the test protocols for an ultra dimensional intrusion, for possession and for being under a witch’s charm. She sighed and started making the appropriate preparations.
She managed to source the reagents fairly easier, but some of the more esoteric equipment took a little more work. She had to raid the Applied Theology lab for an appropriate bible, a cupboard in the Advanced Hilbert Spaces classroom for a device which *really* should have come with an Epilepsy warning and the Mile High Society greenhouse for the more unusual fungi.
Finally, she’d run all the immediate tests she could and started all the ones that needed preparation time, and was left drumming her fingers, a sense of unease filling her as the sun slowly edged towards the horizon. She’d taken all possible precautions about making sure that no-one could interfere with her lunchtime meal, she wasn’t in any of her usual hangouts and whatever had happened hadn’t affected her until… midway through the evening, at least.
She should be safe, at least for now, but she couldn’t stop that sense of foreboding washing over her.
You’re in control, she told herself. You can handle this.
And to prove it, she started writing up her methodology, detailing all the experiments she was running and the results she’d got back so far, negative or inconclusive. And then…
Then she woke up in someone else’s bed with someone else’s arm wrapped around her and almost screamed. She managed to slide out of bed and started to scramble into her clothing.
“Babe?” came a muffled male voice from the bed. “Anything wrong?”
The name Hirsch floated at her through the misty clouds of her memory. “Sure,” she said, flashing him a nervous grin. “Just got an early class.”
He pushed himself up and gave her a sleepy grin. “Just want to hope that you had as totally awesome a night as I did.”
She couldn’t think about that right now. “Yes,” she said. “Totally.”
There was a rustle from the other bed, and Hirsch’s roommate - Will? - stuck his head up out of his covers, and all the while Hirsch was giving her that sweet, warm and slightly dopey grin. She felt her throat tighten up in something like panic. In another life, at a different time,she might have even liked him, normally. But not like this.
Definitely not like this.
She was just about to make her apologies when a wave of euphoria hit her, like electricity running up her nerves, energising her, making her want to move and dance and *feel*, and then it hit her brain and everything apart from the moment seemed to fade away.
She was standing in front of the bed, Hirsch reaching up towards her, a shooting pain running up from her left foot.
She had to get out of there.
She grabbed the rest of the clothing and scuttled out into the corridor before Hirsch could do much more than let out a confused grunt at her behaviour.
Okay.
Okay.
That… attack had only lasted a few minutes at most. The pain must have snapped her out of it. Maybe she could use that somehow. Somehow.
On the other hand, she couldn’t deny that yesterday afternoon had been the earliest attack yet, if she didn’t count this morning, and she was trying not to, because otherwise that’d just be too terrifying. Even taken the other way, that the attacks were now lasting long enough to affect her in the morning, made her queasy thinking about it.
Her condition was rapidly progressing. She was running out of time.
She almost sprinted to the lab, and immediately shrugged into a lab coat and started taking results. Negative, negative, negative. Last night, she’d been here when it had struck. Not in her rooms, not in the cafeteria. Here. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything that she hadn’t unsealed herself. Even without the final few results, she had to admit that this wasn’t the effect of some drug that had been slipped to her somehow. The additional tests Aza had printed out for her hadn’t helped either.
She retreated to the toilets before the tears could flow.
Okay.
Okay.
She had new information now. Pain could help focus her. If she… regularly pinched herself, or something, then maybe she could hold it off. Keep control of her own mind. Keep herself from drifting off into that euphoric haze, where, looking back through what hazy memories she had, it felt like she was almost an onlooker rather than present, watching whilst someone else moved her body.
She could control this. She could.
Pinch. Ouch.
Okay, all she had to was carry on doing this.
She woke up as the sun struck her eyes. For a moment, all she felt was delight - honest euphoria. She had done it. She’d pinched herself alert until she had been too tired to stay awake any longer. And here she was, conscious and herself the next morning.
And then the memories of the past three days hit her and she slumped, drained of hope, against the bed.
This time, she couldn’t even muster the energy to fight the euphoria when it came again.
Conclusion: …I have nothing.
She was standing in front of a door, cool air blowing at her back, her hands hurting as if she had been thumping against it.
Hurting.
It must have been what had woken her.
She felt a tugging deep within herself, pulling her downwards, outside the building. She resisted the urge to thump against the door once again.
She wouldn’t give in.
She wouldn’t.
She felt the euphoria encroaching on her mind again, like a whispering enemy just waiting for her guard to drop. She realised with a drop in her stomach that this could be the last time that she was awake, that she was truly herself.
That she might not even have had this much if it hadn’t been for this tugging.
She couldn’t go on like this.
Cool air. She looked around at the room she was in. There was a balcony over the other side, and she smiled, hopelessly.
Down and outside.
There was a way out after all.