Variables (The Maze Runner) WATTYS2016

Chapter 1

Sleep is meant to be a safe haven from your thoughts, a temporary escape from the stress, the fears, the uncertainty. Not tonight. The nightmares used to come every night, making me fearful to even close my eyes, but as I spent more time in my new 'home', my new life, the nightmares began to lessen. Now they only come once or twice a month.

Faces. Covered in scabs, jeering at me, clawing at me, reaching for me. Faces clouded my dreams, the people - no, the creatures - neared me, called out my name, "come here Rosie, you can be one of us." They were cranks, the humans infected with the flare; the mutating disease that plagued the nation, eating away at your brain and slowly deteriorating any human qualities you have left. A government population control gone wrong. The wild eyes stare at me, the purple veins protruding from their arms as they reach for me, call for me, eerily human like with monstrous  actions. I fidget in my sleep, trying to run away, but I am locked in my mind. Just as one grabs my arm with a devious smile I jolt awake.

Sweat lingers on my forehead as I shakily climb out of bed. It's been nine years and the memories still haunt me. They always will. I press my ear against my door, listening for gaurd's footsteps, but there is only silence. Slipping out of the room,  I drag my hands against the wall of the blackened hallway counting two doors down until I finds my safe place. I reach into my pocket, grabbing the spare room key that I'm not supposed to have, and unlock the door.

"Newt?" I close the door, turning on the lamp, making him jolt awake.

"Bloody hell Rosie!" Newt groans, covering his face with his hands. "One of these nights they are going to catch you in the hallways after curfew and you are going to be thrown out with the cranks." I flinch at his words, Newts eyes soften when he notices "you had another nightmare?"

"I thought they finally stopped, but they came back and I can't stop them," I sit on the end of his bed, burying my face in my hands. "Why can't I stop them?"

"You need to let yourself forget," Newt crawls out of the covers and sits next to me, brushing my strewn curls out of my eyes. "We aren't those kids anymore, a lot of the kids here have been through way worse. We were lucky."

But I don't want to forget. I can feel it, I can feel my life fading, I can feel the struggle to remember. The other kids - they all wanted to forget - they let themselves forget. I have lost details, but the core memories are still here, and I refuse to let them slip away.

-

Everything started changing when we moved. My father got a new job, some government job that he described to me as "protecting the future". I never knew what my father's job was, but I knew every night he would come home looking more miserable than the next.

"Why does daddy work if it makes him sad?" I would ask my mother who would reflexively touch her stomach and sigh.

"To keep us safe," she would then tell me to go outside and play, refusing to answer anymore questions.

We lived in a government worker complex, thick fences lining the parameter, large machines at every street corner that, as my mother told me, "cleaned the air". One afternoon, after my mother had sent me outside for asking too many questions, I saw a boy my age sitting on the lawn next door.

"Did your parents make you sit outside too?" I walk over to the boy.

"No. They just wouldn't stop fighting and I didn't want to hear it," he answers with a soft voice. "I'm - "

I strain to remember our real names, or anything that followed, but something in me just couldn't. I couldn't remember my street name, where I lived, I couldn't remember if I had any pets, but I can remember some of the conversations. All I know now is that now my name is Rosie and his is Newt. At least thats what they tell us now. The memory is too foggy.