Beyond Control

Chapter 13

As if getting pulled out of the water, I aroused from sleep with a heavy breathing. There's tears all over my face though I didn't feel myself crying in the dream.

I threw my hands around and smashed it against the wall, touching my surroundings to assure myself that I'm not in a dream anymore. The frigid wall against my skin, I feel my heart calming down since I know that I needn't worry about my mother dying again.

Then, clutching against the wall, I wept. Tears continued rolling down my eyes incessantly the more I rub it off. I felt a lump in my throat whenever a sob left my mouth, causing me to choke on my own tears.

In a moment, I could recall all the good times I shared with my mother. Every time she grabbed my hands and put it in her grasp because I was feeling afraid of something. Every time she had been by my side when I needed her, she'd never leave my side and let me walk off independently since she understood my fear of being alone.

Looking back then, she'd moved us to a new house nearer to my college instead of letting me stay at the dorms. Though my fear of being alone could be annoying to her or anyone, she'd dealt with everything patiently and allowed me to rely on her.

There's a time when I was bullied for my old and cringy school bag at elementary school since we didn't want to waste money on new and good looking stuff when the old ones are still good to be used. Left alone in the class, I sat under my desk and hid my face, waiting for everyone in the school to leave so that I could drag myself and that school bag out of school without anyone looking at my tear soaked face.

After half an hour came the echoing footsteps down the school hallway alongside rushy and anxious talkings of two people. When the footsteps stopped by the class and the door pushed open, I stood up instantly, regretting my decision.

There stood my teacher and my mother, one glaring at me furiously and the other rushing towards me. Instead of yelling at me for being silly, my mother wrapped an arm over my shoulder and asked if I was alright. She sounded calm and her expression was undisturbed by anger, but her eyes told me how concerned she'd been when I was missing.

"Are you scared?" Was the first thing she asked, then proceeded to ask the next, "Why were you alone?"

For my whole life, the person who'd been the closest and cared about me the most is my mother. She'd taken up a part time job at a convenience store and worked on night shift when I was at high school to fund my studies. However, that was before she discovered the illness that she was diagnosed with.

After that, everything crumbled down, including our financial status, my academic performance and more on our relationships. I'd never wanted to have a father, since my mother's love is adequate for this family. However, when my mother was ill then, I'd hoped to have my father back in the family.

At the age of 4, I was told that my father died unfortunately in a car crash when he was drunk driving back home at midnight. My mother commented that my father was a caring man who loved her a lot so she'll pass the love onto me so I'll be able to feel what she'd felt. He passed away when my mother was pregnant for 6 months before I was born, so I only get the chance to see him through photos.

At a certain age I'd figured out that if my father's heritage had been given to us just a little bit more, our financial status may be more stable than how it was back then. I was told that more than three quarters of my father's heritage went to his parents and siblings. When asked to spare a bit more, my mother lost touch with them and gave up.

After years of hard work to raise me, I ended up in a laboratory as an experiment subject instead of a student studying in university. I wondered how my mother would feel when she sees me again, or she never will, I wonder how she would feel when she knows what her daughter had ended up with. I didn't want to imagine her facial expression when she sees her daughter locked up in a laboratory cell, who's now partially human since she represented the role of an experiment subject.

The daughter who she'd spent half her life raising and loving is now captured, separated from her and disappeared from the world within a day. I knew that it wasn't my fault that I was abducted, but there's something which made me feel guilty. I didn't want my mother to be concerned about my safety, I wanted to tell her that but at the same time I would break her when she realized that all her hard work had gone to waste. Most importantly, I hoped that she'd had a concussion and forgot that she'd ever had a daughter since I didn't want her knowing that she lost a daughter who she'd fought most battles for.

I sat in the darkness with the lone I'd always feared, my eyes gazing into the darkness as if there's something fascinating and captivating. My hands were fidgeting and playing with the ice formed on the ground which represented a sign of my sadness.

The silence was occasionally interrupted by my hiccups after a long time of weeping, it echoed throughout the room for a second then shifted back into silence.

I stood up eventually after sitting for an extended period of time. My bare foot sliding against the layer of ice formed on the ground. I kept walking myself forward and forward though I couldn't see what's before me, since I wanted to know how far my influence was.

Until I saw a wall before me and still felt the frigid ice underneath my feet, I placed a hand on the wall, perceiving that it was covered by ice entirely.

I revolved around the ice rink and began sliding around on my bare feet frivolously, and pretending nothing else exists in this world. I threw myself around freely as if the lively soul within me still exists, as if I'm finally free and released into a world of freedom.

I shut my eyes and feel the frigid air from the ice brush against my tearful cheeks.

One moment I was sitting against the corner of the room, crying about my dreadful life and another I was skating across the room on the ice created by nature. Happily skating as if all that worries had vanished for good.

I didn't want to snap out of the feeling I'm expressing currently as it felt way better than all those time I spent crying, but something drew me out of it.

A creak on the upper floor in the observation room. My gaze switched to the upper floor abruptly, snapping out of my fantasies instantly. It shouldn't be strange to know that someone's arrived at the observation room since I'm nothing but a subject trapped in this room. However, it felt strange since the observation room on the upper floor was never used by anyone before.

After that, I heard footsteps by an unknown, walking in complete darkness. Those footsteps weren't meant to be loud, but the loud footsteps were made purposefully to alarm me and inform me of someone's arrival.

I stuck my back against the wall and sat quietly with a calmed heart beat, which then rose to a rapid one when I recalled what Kaysen had said.

A worker's trying to kill you.

I felt the wall vibrating against my skin upon my emotion influencing its nature. A cold shivers down my spine as I begin overthinking the situation. As in the darkness, I couldn't see anything around me which caused me to think that anyone could be in this exact same room I'm standing in without my consent.

When that thought crossed my mind, a knock landed on the glass wall on the upper floor. Not only did it echo in the room, the knock looped in my head incessantly.

I pushed myself up instantly and sprinted towards the observation room on the lower floor where I remembered it to be whilst screaming, "Help!"

I reached a blank wall and began finding my way to the door as the knocking continued impatiently telling me to be silent.

"Kaysen!." I shouted.