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Where’s the shotgun?
Once I find it, I zip up my pants, grab my gloves and duck out through the back. There’s no way I can go home now. I’ve killed three people.
It feels like my chest is crushing itself as reality sets in. Three. People.
I barely remember the first, but Sam and my mom never let me forget it. Liam. He was my friend, even if I can’t seem to picture exactly what he looked like.
It’s just the scream that haunted my nightmares for years afterwards.
My mother tried to prevent it, but I am apparently walking on a path of darkness already predestined for me.
Why fight it?
Chapter 4
Hope
I miss the times when they are blurry. Now, they stand in vivid contrast. Thin, brutal, they vein from my arms and snake into obscurity beyond my view.
It doesn’t matter if I can see them or not. When the world is blurry, the pain isn’t as intense. They stopped being vague so long ago, they’re burned as a relief into my mind.
Like a recital, it’s a predictable pulse. Something that they swear is nutrition pumps into my left arm, while my body pushes blood from the right.
Cyclic. Eternal. I’ve been in this chair, this room, with its maddening rhythmic noises, my entire life.
Forever.
Except the days I’m not. Those are worse.
When the melon shaped head of the acne laced tech appears by one of the sinuous lines, I know what it means.
Agony awaits me.
“It looks like we need kidneys and a cornea today, Hope. I asked Dr. Falen to up your dose again, but she said she’s worried about toxicity.” He scratches at his chin nervously. A fresh bead of blood streaks down his thin stubble as he tears the scab from one of the pustules.
“You know, Paul—” My fingers tingle after he removes the tight restraint. “—you shouldn’t pick at those. You’ll leave a scar.”
What would it be like to have a scar? Do they hurt? Maybe a little itch because it didn’t heal?
I want one. Someday.
A deep and jagged one on both of my arms, so I can look at them every moment and be thankful they exist.
Yes, a roadmap over my body. Bumps and ridges I can touch. I’d love them. My marks. Memories.
Paul keeps his sleeves down around me, I’ve noticed. Since my nails left furrows on his arms once. He has proof. Reminders.
Permanent and unhealing.
Maybe I should spit on him? Bite my finger off and shove it down his quivering mouth?
Next time. It would help.
Temporary perfection. If only I liked him more.
Disconnected and upright, I follow the familiar path through the white halls. Paul and his fleet of faceless men herd me. They don’t walk too closely, but the clodding steps their boots make lull me. His fear ripples through the chain that wraps my waist and clamps my wrists.
All for me. Little ol’ me. Half their size, a third their weight and they parade me like a prized bull. Stallion? Huh, I would say broodmare, but they know better now.