The Boy in the Gray Hoodie

9...

9…

The smell of bleach stung my nose while I was still unconscious. After the smell came the burning. My left arm was on fire. I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t move. My whole body ached but the pain in my arm was getting worse.

            Focusing on the pain, I forced myself awake. My eyes slowly adjusted to the waning light in the room. Slowly, my vision cleared enough to make out a dirty green door several feet in front of me. I was sitting on the floor next to a yellowing, filthy toilet. To my right was a cracked porcelain sink attached to rusted pipes that led into the sickly green walls. Above the sink was a broken mirror lit by a flickering yellow light bulb. It buzzed and clicked, plunging the room into darkness several times before hissing back to a soft, unobtrusive glow.

            Groaning, I glanced down at my arm. It was covered in cuts and bruises. Bits of blood had dried from the lacerations, covering my smoke-stained skin with blotches of dark red. My shirt was still chalky from the wall dust and my pants were torn in several places. A thick white bandage had been tightly wrapped around my left arm just below my elbow. Splotches of red seeped through the bandage. Whatever wound it hid must have been deep.

            Fear began to creep slowly up my throat until I started to feel it choking me. Where was I? This wasn’t my room, and it wasn’t the lab either. I had no idea how I came to be there or why. Where was Marley? Where was James?

            James. Everything he had said to me came flooding back. Marley was gone, and I would never see her again. James wanted me gone too. He hated me.

            I closed my eyes, my jaw clenched to keep a garbled cry from escaping my sore throat. It didn’t work. The low, broken noise escaped passed my gritted teeth and echoed off the green walls. Above the sink, the light flickered again.

            Unable to move, I sat there and to tried to choke down my sobs. A sharp pain accompanied every movement of my chest as I took in several shallow breaths. I couldn’t let myself think about what had happened. I glanced up at the ceiling and gazed at the words written in thick black paint. They spanned the width of the ceiling and trailed down every wall. I couldn’t read them, but looking at them distracted me for a moment and gave me a chance to catch my breath.

            The pain in my arm was finally beginning to subside when the doorknob rattled. Something clicked, and then the green door swung open. Brightness flooded the room and blinded me. I covered my face with my arm and waited for the door to close. As I lowered my arm I expected to see an orderly, dressed in white and wearing a mask. Instead, a tall unmasked man stood in front of me holding a bottle of water and a small brown paper bag in one hand. In his other hand was a large piece of wood with a small key attached to one end. He set the wood down on the edge of the sink as he turned to close the door.

            I flinched as he came toward me. I was terrified, but at the same time completely unable to look away from his face. A pair of calm brown eyes looked down at me beneath a head of graying brown hair. His nose was long and slightly crooked at the tip. His hair, about six inches in length, was plastered to his face, framing his cheekbones and square chin.

He was very tall, and wore a pair of dark blue jeans and a black, long-sleeved shirt. On his feet were what I assumed to be shoes. I realized I had seen them before on the orderlies, but had never asked anyone about them. Except for Marley.

“How is your arm?” the man asked.

I recognized his voice immediately and my whole body went rigid. It was James. The man standing in front of me was the same man who had spoken to me countless times from the lab outside of my room. I had never seen him, but he had always been there. He was the one who had given me countless injections and made so many unkept promises. But he had also given me rocks and leaves from outside; things that I wasn’t supposed to have but that I had cherished. But he had done something else as well—something I couldn’t understand. He had sent Marley away.