C.A.R.M.A

18

I jolted awake several hours earlier than I would have liked due to a broad hand pressed over my mouth and nose. The forefinger and thumb pushing on my nostrils, constricting any air.

"Did you seriously not wake us up when you got home from the mission?" Becca's incredulous voice fills my room. "After you got home from the mission of missions?"

I gave a pointed look at her hand, still over my mouth as I hear Quinn say from the other side of my bed, "Yea, Thea, what the fuck."

I bat Becca's hand away while she adds, "And why were you so late?"

"Max took me for a drink after", I fingered a loose thread in my white duvet. "Like old times."

Becca and Quinn exchanged a look with each other and sat on the foot of my bed. A silent demand for all of the details I could muster.

I rolled my eyes, swinging my legs over the bed's edge, searching for some socks, "I'll fill you in over coffee."

Both squeal with delight as I shove my feet into plush white socks.

White, what an ironic color for a Murderer.

I jolted to a standing, defensive position, staring at Becca and Quinn wide-eyed. As if I would be able to see who said those words in my head.

As if they didn't come from my own head.

"What is it?", Quinn asked, looking alarmed.

"I-I don't know", I ran a hand through my messy hair. "I heard a voice. In my head. Almost...like it was lamenting last night."

Quinn rolled her eyes, "that's called a conscious, Thea."

But Becca looked at me with concern. "You've never heard a little voice whispering to you like that before?"

"Before training, yes", I said, cutting Quinn a dirty look. "We're trained out of it during our lessons." I turned away from them, searching for a cardigan and to avoid another glance I'm sure they're sharing right now.

"Thea", Becca begins, but I cut her off.

"It's fine, really, let's just have some coffee and I'll tell you the story", I pushed past them and into my bathroom.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror, listening to the sounds of my roommates making breakfast.

My red lipstick was slightly smudged and my massacre streaked down my cheeks in thin tracks.

From uncontrollable, useless tears.

My white cardigan, I realized while I brushed my teeth, had a hole in the shoulder and my hair hung limp down my back, which seemed to give my skin a ghostly hue. I looked like a -

Fallen Angel. The voice, my re-formed conscious I supposed, whispered in my head.

I charged out of the bathroom and swigged coffee to burn down the bile rising in my throat.

---

I tried and failed all day to shake the annoyingly superior voice in my mind. Luckily, I was in the midst of a very long day to distract my reborn consciousness.

I watched Taylor's long ponytail sway as she led Max and I through a tour of our headquarters. Despite both of us growing up here, it was important to see it from a commander's perspective. Or something like akin to that, which Taylor brattled on and on about. She kept an endless self dialogue going about the importance of knowing everyone, and that no job was too small to keep the machine going.