3271
a (sort of short) story
3271
Rachel M. East
The wild flowers are in full bloom. I walk among them, the field stretching as far as I can see. I pick a few and take them into my dwelling, a large, old house located in the center of the blooms. Setting my bouquet on the table, I open the cupboard, find a vase, and begin to fill it from the sink.
This has been my home for as long as I can remember. Life is simple here. I keep busy with maintaining the house and the garden and amuse myself with the flowers. I’ve lived in this house in solitude, although every three-hundred and sixty-five days (I started counting a few years back) people have come for only a few minutes, asking me questions, and then just as quickly as they come they are gone, and I am alone again. I don’t know how they get here without any roads or paths through the flowers, they just do, and they are destined to come today.
The vase is full, and I shut off the water. The predicted knock at the old, wooden door interrupts my task, so I set the bouquet on the table, and make my way to the door. As I turn the brass knob the door creaks open. There they are. There are more of them this time, compared to the two that normally come, and they are dressed in grey clothes holding clipboards as always. In visits long past they’ve been older than me, but gradually they’ve gotten closer and closer to my age. A young woman in front with a tight knot of dark hair steps forward.
“3271?” She asks, looking up from her clipboard. I don’t need to look at the ink on my arm to know that it matches, so I say, “Yes, that’s me.” Her voice is smooth and confident, and I wish mine sounded the same.
“We are here for your six-thousand five-hundred and seventy-day inspection before releasing you into The Society.” She pushes past me into my home, and I follow behind her.
“What do you mean by ‘The Society’?” I ask, confused. This is not the usual procedure of these visits, and they have never mentioned ‘The Society’, whatever that is, before. She ignores my question.
“Please, have a seat,” she says as she pulls a chair back from the table. I sit as commanded. Beside me, the forgotten flowers are still on the table next to the full vase. They will begin to wilt soon if they don’t get water, but I can’t seem to make myself pick them up.
“This is standard procedure and shouldn’t hurt a bit.” The young woman kneels in front of me and takes a hold of my arm. She rolls up my sleeve and gestures to one of her accomplices who steps forward holding a syringe.
“What are you doing?” The woman doesn’t respond, but only positions the needle just above the number on my forearm.
“Stop. I demand to know what you are doing to me.” I say, attempting to sound in control while trying to pull my arm away, but her grip only tightens.
“Like I said, it’s standard procedure and shouldn’t hurt a bit. Now hold still.” She inserts the needle into my arm and immediately, fire surrounds it. My forearm feels as if it’s burning and the sensation spreads up my bicep until it reaches my heart. I cry out and try harder to jerk my arm away, but the woman only tilts her head.
“Odd.” She says. “2787, write it down.” One of the men in grey jots down a quick note on his clipboard, then, speaking into an earpiece, says calmly, “We have a code twenty-two. I repeat, code twenty-two with patient 3271.” There is a pause, as if he is listening to the person on the other end, then a response, “Yes Ma’am.” he says. He drops his hand from his ear. “She says to give her the secondary reaction shot.”
“What does that mean? What are you doing to me?” I ask, fighting hard to speak through the pain.
“That is none of your concern,” the woman tells me. I try harder than ever to escape, but her grip is like a vice, her fingernails digging into my skin.
“This is very much my concern, what are you doing to me?!?” The complete calm in their voices, and their expressionless faces aggravate me. They have no right to do this, but they aren’t listening to me. The woman is handed a second syringe, this one with a bluish liquid in it. The liquid, once injected into my veins, douses the burning sensation, like water on fire. My skin begins to cool, and I close my eyes in relief. After a brief moment, I open my eyes again, and the woman looks into them, studying me before saying to the assistants behind her, “This should knock her out like a light.”
***
Sunlight from the window above my bed wakes me. I don’t remember exactly how I got to my bedroom, or what happened at all the past day after I came inside from picking flowers. My memories are muddled and foggy, and there is a funny feeling in my stomach. I make my way unsteadily down the creaky stairs and into the kitchen. The blooms are still on the table where I left them, and I sit next to them in a chair, mindlessly watching dust motes drift through the morning sun. There’s something about the fresh-looking flowers that bothers me, but I can’t seem to put my finger on it. I’m just so tired, and it feels like someone is pounding on my skull.
A whistling sound catches my attention, and I turn to see the kettle on the stove blowing steam. I quickly turn off the flame and remove the hot tea pot. It’s odd how I don’t remember boiling the water. Truly I couldn’t have, I just woke up. I try to figure it out, but my brain is just so foggy and my head aches so terribly that I don my shawl (the morning is chilly) hoping the fresh air will help clear away this overwhelming headache. But as I wander outside, I look into the forest that skirts the edge of the colorful wildflowers. Something is terribly wrong. The birds aren’t singing. The air is still; it is utterly silent. As the pounding in my temples begins to subside, my mind flashes back to the tea kettle. And the flowers. The flowers on the kitchen table, next to the vase. The flowers that should be wilted by now. A paranoid feeling tickles its way up my spine; something isn’t right. Just as I begin to realize all of this, the blossoms a few yards away begin to sway in a nonexistent wind, then disappear. They are dropping into the earth as a hole opens beneath them. I turn to run, but the hole expands, taking with it the dirt beneath my feet.
That sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach when you are falling catches up with me as I plummet through darkness until I land softly on a springy net. The net is sticky, like a spider web, and I am stuck with my arms and legs pinned down. Dirt and flowers rain down around me but seem to be deflected by a dome-like shield, seeing as how they curve away from hitting me. The debris suddenly stops, and immediately following, the hole in the earth above begins to close, the dirt and roots repairing themselves. The strip of blue sky I am stuck staring at shrinking smaller and smaller until the rift in the earth is mended. Spotlights click on to illuminate a large, man-made cavern. The net begins to rotate until I am vertical, and a face comes into view in front of me. It’s a woman with sharp features and a critical gaze.
“Ready the transport container.” She keeps her eyes on me as she orders around men and women in black military uniforms. Someone touches me with a cold metal rod and I am paralyzed. A lever along the far wall is pulled downward, and whatever stickiness that had held me to the net suddenly disappears. I fall, still unable to move, to the ground, landing on my nose, which smarts immediately. Rough hands pick my limp form up off of the cold, stone floor and cram me into a cage. As soon as the bars close and lock with a decisive click, I am given control over my body again, and I sit up in my prison and peer out at the soldiers around me. They all appear to be the same age as I am, and although they all have differences, the uniforms and similar hair styles cause them to blend together.
The cage beneath me jerks, and it’s all I can do to stay upright as I am lifted in my prison and the sea of blank faces begins to swirl. I can’t tell if they are standing still and I’m moving, or maybe we are both moving. It makes me dizzy. Something jolts me free from whatever shock I was under that had been keeping me wide eyed and quiet. I am disoriented and terrified, screaming and yelling. I reach for the bars, but as I grab hold of them a buzzing sensation reverberates through my arm. The cage is electrified. I cry out in pain as my arm and hand pulse with a mind of their own. This fact only adds to my terror, and I am crying hysterically, but then a young man melts out of the soldiers surrounding me, stands beside me, and whispers,
“Shhh… it’s okay. Quiet down before they sedate you. That’s it.”
I latch onto the look of him, the faint smile he gives me, his unruly hair, his eyes. They are kind eyes, framed by soft freckles.
“What’s happening?” I ask. My voice is trembling. “What did I do wrong? Where are you taking me?... Just tell me what’s going on.” It comes out so plaintively, that the soldier looks around at his comrades, making sure none of them are paying attention, then leans in close.
“You didn’t do anything you could control. There’s something different about you. You reacted differently to the Serum. The way your type reacts, it’s your only similarity. We’re trying to control the variables though.” He’s studying me, deciding how much to say, and I interrupt his thoughts, asking, “What do you mean ‘Serum’? What does it do? And what does ‘your type’ mean? I didn’t know so many people existed until today.” I’m beginning to dry my tears on the edge of the shawl I’m still wearing as my cage is jostled down the corridor.
With much patience, he begins his lengthy explanation: “The Serum is something the Ancients came up with, designed to keep you alive eternally. Every three-hundred and sixty-five days in a certain individual’s life, what the Ancients once called a ‘birthday’, a special team checks in on the Outliers, those who haven’t received the Serum yet. And on the eighteenth check in with a particular Outlier, that patient is given the Serum, then introduced into The Society to live forever in peace.” He sounds as if he is reciting something from a book.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this. I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I just...I didn’t want you to be punished for being confused when they haven’t told you anything in the first place.” He begins to pull away, to fall back into his place and march alongside his fellow soldiers, but I reach nimbly between the bars and grab the collar of his uniform. My head is clear now, and I am fully aware of my need for someone to talk to. Someone to trust.
“What’s wrong with me then?” He sighs, then comes closer to the cage.
“Some Outliers are different, reacting oddly to the Serum, experiencing pain and a burning sensation after which they continue to age regularly. Seventy-nine years ago, the OIR started gathering those patients for research. That’s what’s happening now, to you.”
“What does OIR stand for?” I ask timidly; I’m still so overwhelmed.
“Outliers In Recovery.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. They’ll just fix me and then introduce me into The Society like normal, right?”
He looks doubtfully at me. “I’m afraid that it sounds better than it is.” The look in his eyes, it’s concern. He’s concerned for me. I’ve barely even met him, but I hate to see him pained like this. I don’t even know his number, yet I already care about him. I think of something, “What about the numbers? Do all Outliers have them? Do Society members have them?”
“Of course they do. What would we be without them?” He says it as if the idea is ridiculous. He holds up his arm with the sleeve pulled back and I see a tattoo similar to mine, but he’s walking next to the cage, and his arm is jostling, and I can’t make out his number. “The Ancients,” he lowers his voice, “The Ancients used to have names, sort of like numbers, but far less logical. I mean, some people had the same names, which, of course got confusing, thus, we started using numbers, the superior way.” His words jog my memory. This concept feels... familiar. And right. And all of a sudden I know. I know what names are.
“Kaitlyn.” I say it beneath my breath, but he hears me and looks up. Our eyes meet, “Can that be my name? Kaitlyn?”
“You are so different. Why would you want a name? You already have a number. Are you not content?”
“Are you?” I ask. There is a pause as he thinks about what I’ve said. “What about you, what’s your name?”
His voice shakes, “I have a feeling we are breaking a lot of rules…” He looks around, “But if I have to have a name, I-I would like to be called-”
“Halt!” My cage jerks to a stop, and I look around at the tunnel of stone. The sharp-faced woman in front is examining a map. We’ve come to a junction, and if I crane my neck I can make out the general shape on her tablet. The tunnels look like legs on a spider’s body, and I can see from the map that we are heading towards the heart.
The woman in front looks back at us.
“3252, do not speak with the prisoner. That’s an order.” He melts back into the group with a submissive nod, becoming just another soldier. Just another number.
We spend what feels like an eternity in the tunnels, stopping to consult the map at every junction. At some point along the journey I fall asleep, curled up in the middle of the cage, trying to avoid the electrified bars.
The thunk of the door unbolting followed by being dumped out of the cage wakes me. I land on a hard white concrete floor and look around at white walls and a single white chair. The walls are seamless, but I look up in time to see a panel in the ceiling close above. It becomes one with the rest of the room. I look away, and when I look back I can’t find it again. I feel out of place in my dirty shawl with my tangled hair, so I huddle, terrified, in the corner under the harsh lights. I stay like that as time passes, first hours, then days, maybe even years. I’ll never know how long; there is no night nor day in this pristine room. I open my eyes eventually and food sits neatly arranged on a metal tray, so I eat it, then try sleeping, but people keep interrupting my rest. Some try talking to me, but I don’t answer. At first, I try to fight back, to avoid the needles and the doctors, but they always punish me with slaps and fists, so I eventually stop trying. I sit curled up in a ball, bruised and afraid. I’m in a sort of stupor, and it’s just so hard to stir myself, that I let them stick me with needles. They always leave eventually, when I won’t answer their questions, or they’ve injected enough things into my veins.
Food appears, and to quickly disappears down my throat. My sole comfort is my name. I repeat it to myself over and over, trying to make it real. Trying to make it mine. Trying to prove that I’m not just another number.
“Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn. My name is Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn.”
“Kaitlyn?” It takes me a moment to realize that it was not my voice that said the name. I look up with tears in my eyes. He’s standing in the middle of the room, staring with horror at me as I am stooped in the corner with red, puffy eyes, muttering to myself. All of a sudden, I am aware of how I must appear to him. I look like a fool. Like a lunatic. I let them win. I let them break me.
I stand, straightening my twisted shall, brushing my dark hair out of my eyes. I look around, carefully checking for cameras, and when there aren’t any, I feel safe enough to talk.
“What are you doing here 3252? Did you come to rescue me? Oh please take me away from here.” My voice is hoarse from the cobwebs of not enough use.
He glances around. “Look, I’m not supposed to be here. But…It’s just...” He looks over my ragged frame. “I thought you’d be different. I didn’t think we could break you.” The disappointment in his voice makes me feel ashamed and defensive.
“You didn’t. They didn’t—you’re not like them.” I say, attempting to defend my dignity. He doesn’t seem convinced. “I’m going to find a way to get out of here. Will you help me?”
He thinks for a long time, then looks up with a sad expression. “You know I can’t do that. Kaitlyn, you were an Outlier, then you were brought here. This is your home. Where you belong. Where everyone like you belongs. Why would I take you away from someplace where you finally belong?” He pauses to gather his thoughts. “I’ve done this a million times, but you’re more than just a patient. And I can’t figure out why you actually mean something to me.”
“It’s because I have a name, isn’t it?” A few moments of silence follow before he speaks.
“About that… I never told you my name. I want to mean something. I would like to be called Jasper.” His voice comes out shaky and uncertain, and he turns to leave, his mission complete.
“Jasper, before you go,” he leans closer eagerly, “what time is it?”
His face takes on a puzzled expression. “Twelve o’clock. Why?”
“Just wanted to know. Thank you Jasper.” I try to maintain as much dignity as possible as I sit down in the single chair with my back to him. After his refusal to help, I am not sure if I can trust him. When I turn around again, Jasper is gone.
I get up from the chair, feeling like I’ve come out of a dream. All those days spent huddled in the corner, paying no attention to my surroundings, who came in and out, and how often food was delivered. All that time I could have been gathering information. But I have to remind myself that I can start now. I have a base line. I know it is twelve o’clock. I can start by looking for a door. Walking towards the nearest wall, I begin to run my hands along its surface, hoping to find something other than smooth white. After finding nothing, I move past the corner and onto the next wall. Then the next. There. I don’t know how I haven’t noticed it before, but a peep hole the size of my thumb is in the wall at eye level. I squint through, but can’t make out much… is that maybe a catwalk?
Someone clears their throat behind me, and I turn, startled, to see three men and one woman all dressed in white coats with clipboards. All the same age. All looking at me as if looking at an alien. I regain my composure, tuck a long strand of hair behind my ear, and ask, “Can I help you?” The tallest man steps forward.
“2544, head of the research team.”
“I’m Kaitlyn.” He regards me with a skeptical look.
“Odd, since I have you written down here as 3271,” he gestures to his clipboard.
“I know you do, but I just thought-”
“And you will remain 3271. Patients don’t think.” He continues as if he hadn’t interrupted me. “We have a few tests to run. Will you answer our questions now?” I know he won’t take ‘no’ as an answer.
“Sit.” I do. He instructs one of the other research workers, “Record that the patient is responding to human interaction now.” After one of the research team members pulls a few empty vials from a case, 2544 takes a hold of my wrist, and wipes my forefinger with a cold swab. The woman steps forward holding a small contraption. I figure they won’t answer my questions, and struggling is no use, so I watch closely, trying to gather as much context as I can relating to the tests they’ve been running on me. She presses the contraption against my finger tip and pushes down on the top. A sharp stab in my finger causes me to inhale, but I keep my eyes fixed intently on my hand. 2544 begins to squeeze my finger with his gloved hands, containing the drops of blood in the vial that was handed to him. He seals the vial, placing it back in the case. Removing his gloves, he begins asking me questions, and writing my answers down on his clipboard. Once they are satisfied with my answers, they pack up their supplies, then just disappear into thin air. Startled and confused, I jump up to run my hands through the empty space where they’d been standing. But they’ve just vanished.
Knowing that my time with the research team took close to an hour, food comes at roughly one forty-five. I eat the small piece of bread and the apple on the metal tray, then sip on my glass of water. After exploring the small room and finding that the peep hole I discovered earlier is the only break in these white seamless walls, I decide that sleeping is the only thing I really can do. So, I curl up in a ball and close my eyes, hoping that sleep will come easily.
A different research team wakes me from a dream of spiders chasing me through the stone tunnels we had traveled through. I can still hear the skittering of their many legs echoing through the caverns. The team pokes and prods me and asks as many questions as the last group. Before they leave I ask the woman who seems to be in charge what the time is and she begrudgingly tells me that it is one o’clock. Once they have disappeared, I do the calculations. In forty-five minutes food will arrive on a metal tray, then I will have a little over ten hours to myself before the next research team arrives.
The days are beginning to fall into a rhythm: food, then sleep, then tests, then food. Two meals a day. Two slots of free time, one for sleeping and one for thinking.
Lately during tests, they’ve been more interested in injecting colorful substances into me than drawing blood out. It’s becoming worrisome, the things they shoot into my veins. One day it was a dark green liquid that caused my skin to itch all night long, preventing sleep until morning came, when the research team wrote down my symptoms then gave me a glass of water. Before they handed me the water, they mixed a white powder into it, tapping the stirring spoon on the side of the glass and making a musical clinking sound. Never had I felt such relief in my life.
Today I was forced to drink a bright pink sludge which tasted surprisingly like peaches. Now my fingers are beginning to lose feeling, but my eyesight is impeccable. There, a fly lands on the far wall, his intricate wings going still. And there, a drop of water I must’ve spilled earlier sits upon the floor, and I can see the entire room reflected perfectly in its rounded surface. How many more tests must I endure before the damage is irreparable? Before I am no longer myself, but a freak with useless hands and advanced vision? And who knows what else they might do to me? No. I will not let them break me, turn me into something beyond help. Turn me into a creature instead of a human. It will wear off. Morning will come, and you’ll be yourself, then you can think.
Morning does come, and with help from the research team, I am myself once more. But my fingers are stiff, and my eye still twitches in a fashion that is hard to ignore. Given time, the side effects go away. But how many more needles and glasses and tubes will I go through before the side effects stop wearing off? I know now what Jasper meant. This isn’t a rehabilitation center. I am never going to be a part of his society. This is a prison.
***
Jasper begins to visit me. He comes after I eat, and helps me cope with whatever new mutation has been inflicted upon me. Some days I’m strong in front of him, but on others he’s the only thing holding me together. We’ve warmed up significantly to each other, and I am sure now that he is the only person I can trust. When I’m exhausted by my circumstances and can’t bear this reality any longer, he tells me stories of his life. His voice is calming to me, and when he is beside me I feel a sense of security. He will surely protect me. Jasper can’t come everyday, but he visits as often as he can sneak away without being noticed. We’re sitting side by side against the wall as I finish my bread. I swallow the last dry chunk and sip some of my water.
“Jasper,” I say, “I need to get out.” He stays quiet, and stares down at his hands neatly folded in his lap. His uniform is crisp as always, but his hair remains uncombed.
“You know I can’t stay here any longer. I have a plan. I need your help. You’ll have to make sure the coast is clear then do whatever it is you do to make yourself disappear, and make me reappear on the catwalk next to you. Then you can guide me out of here. And maybe...” I summon the courage to look at him. “Maybe you can come with me. We’ll make a life for ourselves. We don’t need the Society.” His face is hidden as he contemplates my words, then he suddenly looks up at me. He has tears in his eyes, and swallows hard in order to speak.
“Kaitlyn, I can’t come and see you anymore. They told me-” He breaks off when three officers appear in the middle of the room. They spot us and the largest soldier’s voice booms out, “3252, this is your last infraction, you are coming with us.” They drag Jasper up from the floor, and suddenly I’m up, too, trying to stop them, but they brush me aside like an ant at a picnic. I hit the wall and slide down. What will they do to him? Will they treat him like an Outlier and lock him up until he’s no longer recognizable? No longer human? Will they execute him? Will I ever see him again? As they pull him into the center of the room, I realize this is goodbye. I am desperate for one last embrace. I run towards him yelling his name, but they disappear right as I reach them. Instead of clutching Jasper in my arms, I am holding thin air. Tears fall freely from my eyes as I collapse to the floor. My sobs are the only sound to accompany the last echo of his name.
The thought of Jasper being held in a prison similar to mine is what drives my escape. I’m itching to get out, to set my new plan into motion, but I must wait. My hands shake as I try to slow my breathing. I don’t exactly know where I’ll go, but I know that I can’t stay here. No, here where they poke and stab and torture those who are different form them. Here, where anyone who thinks in other ways than they do is a threat. Here where they punish those who see the truth, because really, Jasper finally saw through the lies that had been engrained into the core of his being since his first introduction to the Society. And once he saw the light, they dragged him off to who-knows-where.
Once they took him from me, I briefly relapsed into my previous state of numbness. The world was not colorful, not even black and white, but merely a swirl of gray. Time passed, food was eaten, but by the end of it all, a plan was formed.
The tray arrives and I devour the food and drain the water from the cup, knowing this might be my last meal for a long time. Quite possibly my last meal ever. Once the tray is empty, I begin work, knowing that I have roughly ten hours to get out of here. After much grunting and effort, I break the thin leg off of the single chair that adorns the room. I carry the leg with me as I scan the walls for the peep-hole I found previously. Once I’ve located it, I begin jamming the chair leg into the small hole, which is roughly the same diameter as the leg. Over and over I do this, and soon, the peep-hole, and a small amount of wall surrounding it, has been pushed out and lands on the other side of the wall. Using my hands, the chair leg, the tray on which I received my food, and anything else I can get a hold of, I slowly but surely create a hole that first fits my fingers, and then my hand, and then my arm.
I’ve worked for hours. This wall is thicker than I thought, and I am afraid I’ll run out of time before the next research team comes, when I have an idea. I stick my arm out of the gaping hole in the wall and begin groping around. I’m up to my shoulder pressed against the smooth white surface, feeling the other side of the wall. It’s a stretch to think this might work, but I’m nearly out of time, and this is a last ditch effort. My hand catches on something, and I yank down on what seems to be a lever. The world goes blank for a moment, then it all comes crashing in again. I am on a metal grate catwalk, staring from the outside wall through the hole into my previous prison. The white is contrasted with the darkness in this place. The black metal catwalks crisscross each other like a web connected to uniform white cubes that I assume hold other prisoners. There are too many to count, above and below and all around me, and they fade into the darkness in the cavern, so I am sure that there are many that I cannot see.
I hear many sets of feet behind me and begin to panic as I am reminded of my dream where I was chased by spiders. The sound of numerous spider legs against carved stone does not sound much different to me in my frantic state than the sound of numerous boots against the metal catwalk. I turn and flee. I can hear them behind me, shouting at me to stop, saying that they don’t want to hurt me. Lies. Lies. Lies. My feet match the rhythm of my quickened heartbeat. The catwalk splits, one path continuing on this level, the other going down a flight of stairs and turning a corner. My feet fly down the stairs, and as I turn the corner out of sight of my pursuers, I run past a door in the cavern wall. I pull the door open, duck inside, and quickly close it behind me. The sound of boots diminishes as the soldiers stomp past my door. I look around and find myself in a stairwell. Not knowing where to go, but sure that I certainly can’t stay here, I begin to descend the stairs. My legs are shaking and my lungs can’t seem to gulp enough air. I turn the corner and begin on the next set of steps. I didn’t realize how thin I had become, and how few calories they were feeding me until now. My hand massages my protruding ribs as the other clings to the railing. I turn the corner. This stairwell seems to go on forever, and I begin to consider the possibility that instead of descending to ground level, I am going deeper and deeper below ground. I turn the corner. I am focused on my feet, trying my hardest not to fall on my trembling legs when my body comes to a jerking halt as I collide into a soldier. I gasp and am about to run when I recognize his face.
“Jasper?! Jasper, you’re alive.” I embrace him but he pushes me back. “What’s wrong?”
“3271, go back to your cell.”
“But Jasper it’s me, Kaitlyn. I got out. We’re free!” He continues to regard me in a cool, calculated manner.
“3271, you should not have left your cell. Go back to your cell,” he says sternly.
I look him over. The freckles. The eyes. But no. It can’t be him. His hair never would lay down, but now it is neatly combed. His eyes have lost their shine, and they stare blankly into mine.
“Jasper,” I say warily. I am beginning to back away slowly, as I would from a wounded animal. “Jasper, this isn’t like you. Don’t let them break you.” Tears begin to fall from my eyes. “You let them break you.” I say it quietly.
“3271, you never should have left your cell.” He grabs my wrist tightly, and I sob, trying to escape the monster they have created. Reaching down to his belt, he detaches a gas mask that hangs from his waist. Jasper, or should I say 3252, because this is not Jasper. This is not the kind, confused boy that I have grown to care about. No, this is a creation of scientists. He has no thoughts of his own, only those that were implanted into his mind by the Society. 3252 presses the mask over my face, and I am forced to breathe in an artificial scent. Like some sick joke, it smells like the wild flowers that were a staple in my previous life. Before I was brought here. Before they tortured me and ripped away the only thing I ever cared about. Before they stripped me of my home, of my friend, of my name. Before they turned me into just another number. I give up the fight. As the world turns to black, the last thing I see are the dull but determined eyes, the cold stare, the freckled face, of the boy that I once cared about. The boy that I thought I knew. The boy that, in another life, I thought I could love.
***
When I wake beneath my covers, my head is pounding. I can remember nothing after I picked flowers yesterday. Was that really yesterday? It feels like weeks, even months ago. My bare feet slip down to the wooden floor, and I carefully make my way down the stairs. I collapse into a wooden kitchen chair when the dizziness becomes too much. My head is reeling. I’m lost within my thoughts, trying to fight through the thick fog when a whistle catches my attention. The stove top is lit and a tea kettle is telling me that its contents are boiled. By some compelling unknown impulse my eyes flicker away from the kettle and towards the kitchen table. Resting next to a full vase is a freshly cut bundle of flowers. No, not freshly cut, they just appear that way. For surely these are the flowers that I cut yesterday, although it feels like an eternity ago. They haven’t wilted a bit. In fact, they look much better than any of the flowers that I’ve picked from these fields. This nags at me, and I know dots are not connecting in my brain. Oh well. I plop the flowers into the full vase and turn my attention to the kettle. I extinguish the stovetop and pour myself a cup of tea. I grab my shawl, which is cleaner and newer than I remember, and set off for a walk amongst the flowers, hoping my unusual headache will subside. But when I make it outside to the field, the sheer amount of blooms lets out a scent that the small bouquet inside could not. I instantly vomit, choking out what little I had in my stomach. My temples pound and I squeeze my eyes shut as I sink to my knees. The tea in my hand spills onto the moist earth, watering the flowers that have brought back this terrible memory. Cold eyes. Warm freckles. A broken spirit. He brought moments of laughter in days of gloom. He was comfort when I had no refuge. He was safety. He was loyalty. He was the only thing I had left to care about. And they broke him. He betrayed me. He was changed, going from first a number, to a name, to a person, to a comrade, to a monster. A weapon. Something meant to destroy me. My lips part and a desperate almost imperceptible cry escapes as my reality fractures entirely.
“Jasper.”
If you read all the way to the end of this story, thank you so much! I hope it was entertaining, and made you feel something🫶🏻
I've been reading this bit by bit every day 😅