In My Hands, Know Suffering

33: Chill and Kill

Sievetech was the very name that brought a shiver down Abrielle's spine. She knew the struggles of living in Seivetech's Institution for the Gifted. She knew the hardships that the young souls lingering in their halls have been through. To her, they weren't trials. To her, they were the punishment given to synthetic lives that never knew humanity outside their walls.

One day of thirteen years ago, a man all dressed up in black had approached her parents. She was told to linger in the playground of the neighborhood. It was a bit odd because they never had any visitors in so long. They lived in a rundown apartment building that barely supplied them anything. Even the landlord wasn't very lenient on the bills when the time arrived. She had a pretty normal childhood until the day the man in black knocked on their door.

She could see them talking from where she played. Through the window, she saw her mother had a face of disbelief. Her father glanced her way briefly before looking back at the man. The man appeared old and respectable, yet, she was terrified just by looking at him.

He didn't look comfortable to be around with. He didn't seem friendly either. Why was he talking to her parents anyway? Before she could go back to her parents, a teenage boy appeared to the man's side. He held the files given to him by the man after her parents signed it.

When Abrielle met the boy's eyes, there was no life in them. It was like he begged to get dragged back to the world of laughter where every child belonged to. His expression knew no glee whispering in the depths of unfortunate circumstances. In his eyes, all he knew was perhaps a kind of hurt that clawed out all the malice in the world. He was older than her by at least a decade or so.

It had been a week after the man visited them. Abrielle had no idea why her parents were huddled together protectively the day she wore a white hospital gown and entered an underground facility. The walls screamed at her in every room she passed by. She was led to a room and was urged to lie down.

Even with thick walls, she could hear the undying screams that echoed through the hallways. Sometimes she wondered if they were going to make her scream that way too. She didn't know what was happening or why children her age was singing as if the devil conducted such chorus.

When the doctors entered the room, their voices resonated a calming bedside manner. They've reassured her that everything was going to be fine. They smiled at her and caressed her small head. They kept talking to her in smooth voices.

She thought they were good doctors for being that way. She thought that maybe her parents were crying because she had a sickness that was about to be cured. On what sickness that was, she didn't know. All she knew was that her parents struggled to pull them off an excruciating life just to give her a bed to sleep in, a roof above her head, and food for supplement.

Inside the room she was strapped in, she stared at the ceiling. She waited for the doctors to execute their enchantment, but doctors don't really perform magic. They did science. They believed less on the rambles of imaginary occultism. But not all doctors are the stereotypes.

She saw a syringe pass by her line of vision. A doctor hovered over her small form and tapped her right arm repetitively. Like the bite of an ant, the needle slipped through her arm. As the liquid flowed through, she continued to focus on the white ceiling. Everything was white. She thought they liked their interior that way. But that interior was soon spoiled by the life of the innocent as the days passed by. She had no idea when they'd ever get out of that place.

She was lucky to be with her parents. Most of the children she knew didn't have anyone. No one. She learned to make a few friends, Marci, Lunah, and Frehd. Marci was a curly blonde and freckled face girl who gave Abrielle her first jointed doll. Marci told her that one of the kind doctors who once worked there gave that to her. Lunah was a brunette with hazel eyes and she was a tough girl who would stand as guard whenever one of her friends got in trouble during breaks. Frehd was a gentle and sweet redhead. He would act as their defenseless big brother sometimes but would fail to execute it properly.