[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY FIFTY-FIVE

Number 6. Another woman. Well, at least I’m in a woman's body, but she doesn’t feel like Sugar. Not like a woman at all. It is strange. I can’t explain it. It’s as if I’ve been born in the wrong body, but then again, I don’t belong in here to begin with, let alone all the other bodies I invade.

I’m shuffling along a brick wall in a room with low ceilings and arches full of walking skeletons dressed in vertical blue striped uniforms. Some have yellow stars patched to their left breasts over numbered badges, others red or purple triangles. Mine is black, and the rest of the prisoners give me a wide breadth although it is quite cramped in here otherwise.

Amongst the crowd are men stationed in black cropped riding boots, and hats with shiny black brims and eagle winged insignias. A few hold rifles.

My head itches and I rub my bristling skull. As I find a scab the size of a straw-shaped hole, I notice a group of men looking at me. Doctors. In arm-bands. One is the man known to Frankie as Blome, only here he looks younger. But there are others beside. They all wear the same indifferent face.

One waves me over, and soon a guard is at my side escorting me over to them. And then I’m walking down a long corridor with doctors and guards, the pit of my stomach reeling.

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