500 - Part I - Distorted Shadows and Monsters

Chapter VIII - News Studies

"All of you inside your classrooms now!" she hollered above the sea of whimpers. Tension was palpable and light was untouchable. Fear was everywhere. Even with a strong, courageous heart, love and joy was forever out of reach and by a thousand miles. "Or you'll be blasted to smithereens!" Waterwood threatened, fingers sweaty on the trigger. Her nails scratched against the steel and her skin burned with the intense heat of the weapon. Inside the tube, a glistening rod gleamed a blinding, radiant, ruby red. There was light, but it had no empathetic value whatsoever, nor a rare glint of happiness. The gun released magnetic signals that drew the children towards Waterwood's control and she had a sickening force over many innocent, traumatised lives.
Waterwood turned the handle and paused. She turned another handle and then another. Each and every child reluctantly stomped into their designated classroom. Her eager lions followed her and entered one of the few rooms, after the children were securely inside. Waterwood announced she was going to see Dr. Grayden and slowly faded into nothing. A pile of dust swirled around in the air, lik a twisting, terrifying, turning tornado. The silver particles drowned the air in fear and suffocated the corridor in an inescapable and inevitable fist. It was only until the colleagues of Waterwood had bolted the doors, when everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
However, peace only ever lasted a second. It was always that way. Everybody knew that. Nobody knew if anything was real anymore and they were all devoid of meaning. Their only purpose had not yet been discovered and even the bravest wanted to back away. Powerless. Defenceless. Suffering.
"I want you to listen carefully now. Obviously this is News period. Bug today will be different. Allow me to explain," spoke a tall man, with greasy, grimy, grizzled, grey hair. "Firstly, take your seats, children, and we shall proceed." His voice was oddly smooth and velvety, despite his peculiar appearance: he had wonky, discoloured teeth, wrinkles all over his face and a n ugly birthmark covering his left eye. He was one of the nice ones and Daniel craved that comfort in his unbearable anguish. The demoralised children surveyed the spacious room. The walls were industrial, as almost everywhere else, with the iron panels all corrugated. Screws, nails and nuts lined areas of the ceiling. The floor was made of rotting, decaying driftwood — probably multiple decades ancient — with patches of some sprouting and crawling fungus. Slime green moss and ugly plants grabbed chair legs, as though they were snatching fingers. Several dozen chairs stood fixed to the floor. The room was no wreck — except for the floor — yet it felt so desolate. A screen covered one wall entirely. A flat, black, lifeless screen. A disturbing blue light buzzed on and off, like a starving firefly desperate for food. The screen seemed to engulf everyone and dragged them away to an unknown and petrifying new reality. This was surely oblivion. Daniel's mind throbbed with a sense of loss. His body had a special, unique place reserved for one individual thing: he craved a full heart. Pieces remained, but were discarded and deposited in foreign lands of an echoey dimension.

Daniel remembered light vaguely. It was challenging to picture, but he could see the Sun in his head. He'd see. The Sun in its personal blazing glory surely millions of times, but the star was severely distant. Here. The shadows had entirely swallowed up the Moon and now the celestial body was the burnt, smokey wick of a extinguished candle. Daniel could only describe the psychological and physical pain as a lost segment of a precious constellation and he knew he'd always be disconnected from people like himself — young, supposedly innocent humans. Arlo was a flicker of hope, but even he didn't think like Daniel. He'd accepted fate, but Daniel — on the other hand — had been risking it all for information. Never give up. Ever.
Row five. Seat six. Daniel's mind instantly recognised his place and where he belonged. His mind didn't even focus on his tiny footsteps and before he knew it, he was perched on the edge of his chair made of bones of some mythological beast. His desk was made of ancient stone and he honestly admired how beautifully carved the piece was. However, the desk was exceptionally frigid and numbed Daniel's fingers, as soon as they came in contact with it. Daniel awkwardly sat and waited patiently. His discomfort was only continued by a leather strap that snaked around his waist and buckles around his ankles, which devilishly followed on cue. Nowhere to run.

Daniel focused his mind elsewhere and thought about the unsolved mystery of the first day here. He couldn't remember his family or even if he did have a family and he was scared, very scared. His brain couldn't think back to before the bone-chilling experience of arriving to this facility, but he also wanted to know more. So did everyone else. Longing to know a forgotten last and forced to live a new life. Of course everybody would be frustrated – who wouldn't be? Daniel thought back to the atrocious journey, as he relived the memories of the first day. He distinctively remembered how they all travelled in the Boxbus, a prison-like vehicle, with these long chains hanging down menacingly from the ceiling, inside, Fourth Winter trees with no Autumn leaves to shed. Permanently dark, spooky, crooked and gloomy. Vexed medieval lanterns encaged roaring, glistening, water blue flames of ice and trapped souls. They emitted smoke, which polluted the Boxbus like thunderclouds reverberating around a vast, endless ocean. The thick clouds of smoke spread and mixed, paint on a palette creating dark streaks across a blank canvas.
The seats of of the petrifying Boxbus were log benches, which were rough, scratchy and unbearable for the passengers's skin. These benches were connected to the walls, with rusty, silver rungs and rigid rope. Daniel definitely remembered how when he was reluctantly perched on his so-called 'seat', an unimaginable and persistent force encroached on him on all sides an angles, meaning there was absolutely zero chance of escaping from there. He would always end up here. Here. He despised being fixed and under somebody else's complete control, but he equally hated fear tearing through his flesh and sending shivers through his bloodstream. Daniel didn't like seeming useless or worthless; he wanted to matter and to be cared for, or at least acknowledged among the other children. To rise above the rest of the crowd. Grayden provided his own packaged vision of love, tied up neatly in a velvet bow, but the corrupt doctor was severely untrustworthy and mostly appeared to have no respect for anyone. Anyone else that is: he walked in the looming shadow of his substantial ego practically everywhere he treaded. I Hate Children And Have An Ego The Size Of The World Grayden, many had guessed as his full name. Daniel supposed Alistair didn't match the beast of his personality at all. No, no, no.
Daniel avoided both contact and communication wherever it was possible – literally almost every person living and breathing around him was untrustworthy and in some way villainous. Except for Arlo, he had no friends, or people he could trust that he could speak to for vital support. If it wasn't for the curly-haired lad, Daniel's mind would be an eternally galloping stallion, with no sign of slowing or calming down at all. All Daniel gladly knew was that Arlo's friendship with himself was beautifully true and was no illusion at all. Not Grayden's hallucination of a beating and loving heart. A world with no Arlo was not a world at all. That reality stung Daniel's eyes and ached his bones. His helplessness mocked him all over and always beat him to his knees.