Alice in Wonderland

Chapter 31

I'm seeing maybe three more chapter here, but I'm not sure yet. Still figuring it out.

Chapter 31

I can't sleep.

All I can think about is what those people said on the stand today, what they discovered when they raided our home that night. How they found a wooden chair in our basement with restraints still attached to the arms and legs. The supplies they found in a trunk beside the chair; needles, pills, saline bags, IVs.

I was a human experiment.

My biological father sold me to my kidnappers -if they're still considered that since I was handed to them- with the deal that he got to see me over the years to conduct experiments with medicines and other weird things he wanted to invent. He would tie me to the chair and fill me with mixed chemicals, using my reactions and side effects as notes of improvement or what to warn future consumers of.

Even as I was told this in the courtroom today, even when I saw the pictures of the basement, the evidence in plain sight, documents of my father's findings -I still don't remember any of it. I think maybe his chemicals messed with me or he made sure I was knocked out the entire time so I wouldn't remember, but either way, I have no recollection of this happening to me.

It's terrifying enough that it happened; all the things that could be wrong with me now, all the side effects I could still have without knowing. But for me not to remember it? That's the most terrifying part.

Since I can't remember ever being tied to a chair and tortured, even with the marks on my arms as proof, I need to see it for myself. I need to see the basement with the chair and the restraints and the trunk filled with medical supplies I'm sure Jessica helped get a hold of.

I glance over my shoulder at Mrs. Sharpe, asleep in the bed behind me while I sit on mine, just thinking. I think about everything all at once and all I want to do is scream and cry and hurt someone as badly as I was hurt. I want to lock my parents away for seventeen years and torture them, so they can finally get what this was like for me. They'll never get it, but it'll be close, I suppose.

I silently stand from the stiff sheets and comforter, moving towards the hotel door where my shoes and coat are waiting for me. It's a little colder in Oregon than California so I know I'll need my coat, especially this time of night. I carefully pull on my sneakers and gray coat as I watch Mrs. Sharpe's body rise and fall as she continues to sleep, not knowing what I'm about to get myself into.

The halls of the hotel are so quiet that I worry my movements are loud just because everything around me is silent. After I close the hotel door behind me, I pull up my hood over my head as if it will make me invisible and make my way to the elevators.

After we first checked into the hotel and were headed to our rooms, it was the first time I was ever in an elevator. I held onto Kyle like he was an anchor and stared wide-eyed at the numbers ticking by above the door, swaying slightly as the movement of the elevator made me dizzy. Josh laughed at me the whole time, since it was something he has done a million times and probably seems like no big deal to him. Going on an elevator for the first time at seventeen is definitely a big deal.

I keep my eyes closed the whole ride down, unable to get through the quick ride otherwise. When the doors chime, signaling I arrived on the first floor, I hurry out before the doors close on me and scurry towards the front doors with my head down.

Thanks to my lack of ability to sleep, I've had time to think everything over and come up with my plan. All the Sharpe boys have helped me to better use my phone in ways that will make my life easier and I honestly haven't seen how that was possible until now. I've been told there's an app for everything and that was proven true after I searched 'Taxi' and was given many different options on transportation. The app I used doesn't even need cash and all I had to do was give the card information of the credit card Josh hooked up to my phone for emergencies.