Almost Human

Going Home

Louis stood staring at his reflection in the mirror, the yellow mottled skin, his colourless eyes, his hair laying flat against his forehead and the stark contrast of the black/blue veins that he sees run everywhere across his skin; nothing about it looked right. Clenching his jaw and resting his arm up against the mirror he frowned, he couldn’t recognise a thing about himself and he had no idea how his family was going to react to seeing him again. It had been three years since he had died and where they had aged he hadn’t he had simply started decaying and it had stopped when the rising had happened. He lifted his hand up, running it across his lips and letting a rush of unneeded breath fall from his lips. He knew he looked as bad as the rest of them in here, all of their skin and eyes were the same. But where they all differed were if they had hide open wounds on them, that never healed and seamed to constantly ooze black blood. 

A knock sounded at his door signalling it time for him to have his daily visit with a doctor. It was his most hated time of the day, he would occasionally see PDS suffers being dragged from the rooms. Their eyes black and foam streaming from their mouths, looking around frantically for a person someone they could get their hands on and kill. 

It was while he was zoning out he felt his shoulder be shoved and he looked up to see Aiden beaming at him. “How’ve ya been anyway? You don’t come outa your room at all anymore.” Aiden muttered, his eyes always following the guards that walked around. Their hands always on the stun guns they carried incase one of them suddenly went rabid. Louis could tell from that second that Aiden wasn’t interested, but was trying to make it look like he was really just talking to someone. Louis let his head fall down to look at the white plimsoles that covered his feet and he twisted his fingers together, he really didn’t know if he wanted to act like he was talking to Aiden. 

But he went against everything he had thought about and looked back up at him, “I’ve been okay.” his voice was softer than he had hoped and slightly less sure than he had wanted, “I found out I’m going home today, got to explain why I look like this to my sisters.” He let his eyes dart to where the line was heading and realised that in only a few minutes he would be in the office having the same thing he had heard everyday explained to him again. Aiden just hummed and his answers, showing how little he really cared at this point. Looking forward he saw there was only one person in front of him, a girl with milky coloured skin and a neck brace supporting her neck. He was always confused by her, she had died jumping off a bridge and breaking her neck; although all she needed now was a brace to support her neck. She could walk everywhere and everything worked, she just had to wear the brace otherwise her neck would fall back and not move. 

Louis shivered thinking of the time she had shown him, when they had been sitting discussing how they felt about being PDS suffers and Louis knew that if he was to see it again and had the ability to vomit he would. 

Closing his eyes for what felt like a second, he felt a hand grip his arm and pull him forward. He was dumped in a chair, facing a desk and the doctor he had spent the last three years speaking too. He forced a smile on his face as she rounded the table, keeping a bright toothy smile pointed his way and she moved so she was standing behind him. Snapping on a pair of gloves and using her hand to push his head forward; she started prodding at the port that allowed the medication to be injected into him. The medication that stopped him from going back to his untreated state. Louis could hear her getting ready to give him his daily dose, the pop of the cartridge being inserted into the gun and the twist of the new cap being placed on. 

Tensing slightly and digging his fingers into the hard plastic of the seat, he waited and waited for the feeling. He couldn’t describe the feeling that he got when the medication was injected directly into him, it wasn’t like something he could remember ever feeling before.