𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐀 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝

XXXIII

     Janes pov
I'm being choked.

Hands are around me—around my throat, fingers curling around my ankles and pulling me back, nails seeping into my skin, gripping my body, and weighing me down. Limbs are pressed against my neck, my mouth silencing the screams that are never voiced. I can feel a cold skin-like phantom against my own, can feel them tugging, pulling, shoving me, and yet, I can't see them.

The alarms blare but I can hardly hear it over the voices in my head. Hands are covering my ears, my eyes, pulling my legs down underwater. I can't I can't I can't see anything as I run down the aisles in my hospital gown, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind me staining the perfect pearly white walls and floors in crimson—in blood. The blood that belongs to my mother.

"CODE RED." I can make out over my racing thoughts. "PATIENT LOOSE." The lights in the corners are flashing, and I run, I run so fast through the dark hallways lined with numbered boxes—cells that they call patient rooms. I run so fast through the maze of cages because if I don't I'll be caught and I can't, I can't be caught. I can't be silenced. I won't be silenced. Not again. I wasn't going to let them pull the strings of my body like a puppet in their play. Not anymore.

I run further down the hallways, and I can hear the other patients through the deafening alarms—can hear them banging on the doors, wiggling the doorknobs, their pleas, the desperation as they scream bloody murder for help. I want to stop, I want to cry because I want to stop, I want to help because It's not fair. It's not fair we're the ones being locked up when the real monsters are out there. Hell is empty and all the devils are here, Shakespeare wrote. He was right because I can't. I can't stop to help patient 112, or patient 98. I can't help one of them without helping the rest. I can't help the patients in the other franchises scattered across the country. I can't help them without first helping myself.

You'll get them out, I promise. You're not abandoning them, I try to comfort myself from the nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me I'm being selfish–that I am just like the others. That I'll forget them like the ones that have forgotten me. I'll get them out, I'll get them out, I'll get them out.

"PATIENT ON THE LOOSE." The alarm sounds again over the sirens and I pant as I run faster, as I take a turn to the laboratories—a place I've spent more time at than I ever have at my own home. I run through the endless walls that are covered in floor-to-ceiling glass shelves. Shelves filled with numerous cylinders, jars, and containers of chemical mixes, acids, and human bodies. Jars filled with the neurons of a brain, others with various colors of skin—we're experiments. We were never going to get help, were we?

It's an act of cleansing, I think. Overpopulation is a recurring problem, and people with various mental health issues—we were deemed the lesser human. Beyond repair. A waste of resources we were already limited of, if not given to the study of science. Animal testing, case studies and ethical experiments weren't enough for them. Nothing feeds a curious mind. They needed answers and they needed them as fast as possible, so now these men in suits with PhDs are the ones in charge of who dies and who lives. And I? I was never human to begin with. I was their miracle. A special weapon, a reusable tester, the only one that could give them the fastest results. At the cost of me. It isn't an act of dehumanization if they were never human to begin with, they say. But I wonder if they ever thought of me. If they ever thought of me beyond a recyclable body to do with as they wish.

I sprint past the maze of toxic substances, all the failed trials and graphs of test runs. I sprint through the perfect floors, the perfect wallpaper, the perfect image of a perfect institution and I hope, I hope, god, I hope they see this place for what it is. I hope they see the blood on the walls they tried to cover with glistening wallpaper, hope they see the small cracks on the polished tiles. I hope they see how fake the smiles they make us wear are, hope they see the tapes where I screamed no before they shocked me enough times to get me to say yes. I hope they tear this place down, hope I get to be the one to light the match that sets it aflame.