Softly, she sighs. The light bulb flickers and the spiral filament inside slowly dims into nonexistence. In the moments that follow, all the lights in the corridor fade as well. Her eyes are not accustomed to the darkness.
A distant memory percolates to the surface her aching brain, like the slowly rising water from a frozen well. Maybe her amnesia is getting better.
She recalls, vaguely, that when she was little, she used to be afraid of the monster that lived under the bed. And sometimes there would be a different monster hiding in her closet, too. If the door were left ajar, it would peer out from the crack, between the door and the jamb.
And this one time, there was a monster that sat, hunched in the corner, staring at her from the darkness, but then a woman would come in. Rose can’t remember her face, or who she was, but when she would come, the monsters would flee in a big hurry, all except for the beast hunched in the corner, who would suddenly transfigure itself back into a pile of unfolded clothing. But, it’s a distant memory, long gone and fading, as if maybe it never actually happened at all. Who was that woman? Perhaps she was a hero like Dr. Valentine. Perhaps someday she will grow up to be a hero, and chase monsters away, just like the woman she can barely remember, and just like Dr. Valentine.
A small sound creeps through the walls, from a place unseen. It’s coming from one of the rooms next to her own. She’s certain it’s the one occupied by, HAWTHORNE. She remembers from seeing the name on the plaque in the hall before.
She listens close. Her head tilts so that her small ear presses against the wall. She can’t hear it this way, so she switches to the other ear. She grimaces. Her ear meets the cold wall; cold and hard like everything else here.
Whistling, yes, someone is whistling. It’s so faint she can barely make out the tune. It’s a simple tune. She doesn’t know it, and soon it fades away altogether, disappearing into the darkness.
She lays on the gurney. Shifting to get comfortable. Her back and neck are stiff and aching. No way that she turns can she make herself find a decent spot to lay, but she settles for laying on her back.
And there, upon the ceiling, tiny stars glow a brilliant blue-white. Dozens of them. She wonders who might have taken the time to paint them there, and why, but she’s happy someone took the time to do it, because it makes her feel like she’s not locked inside a little room at all.
Instead, it’s as if she were sleeping outside, under the wide-open sky, with a light breeze blowing across her skin. She tries to find solace, pretending she’s laying in a sprawling green field, under little twinkling stars far overhead, she drifts into a fitful sleep and awaits the oncoming nightmare that tomorrow will bring.
Chapter Three
“What you see in me is what you don’t see… And what you don’t see is what I am.”
A small gasp escapes Rose’s throat. She’s startled from her restless slumber. Her head is sluggish and aching from a massive sedative dose hangover.
This morning there’s continuous barking in the corridor. She isn’t sure where she is. She emerges into a void; a bubble. Panic rises in her small body. She’s disoriented. But the events of yesterday quickly come back to her.
Sitting on the edge of the gurney, she does her best to collect the thoughts, which flit around like asylum patients at medication time. They’re scattered everywhere; an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.
Broken memories crawl back into her mind and settle like a blanket of wet ash. Her eyes remain sore, but not as painful as they’d been the night before.
Moving her hand to her forehead, she grimaces, gingerly pulling at the tape that secures the gauze dressing to her skin. It’s reluctant to peel away. She pulls insistently at the edges to loosen the gummy adhesive. The tape makes a gentle tearing sound as it separates from her epidermis like an old scab, glued to her skin.
Dried blood paints the inside of the gauze. A mad-minded psychiatrist had placed a Rorschach inkblot there for her to decipher. The patch of dried blood bears a resemblance to a twisted tree, rootless, and leaning too far over as if it means to fall to the ground.
The light bulb, hanging on the hook, is lit again. It hasn’t been turned on from the inside of the room. There’s a flat piece of metal bolted snuggly over the place where the switch should be. The light must be controlled from somewhere outside.
The dog continues to bark and whimper, the one that woke her this morning, and someone outside on the other side of her door says, “Shaddup Rex!”
After that, it’s quiet again for a long time, but Rose finally hears the noise again, she listens carefully. It becomes increasingly louder, she imagines it must be the sound of doors opening; doors to the other locked rooms, one at a time, one right after another. She listens carefully as each door is unlocked. Some have squeaky hinges, some do not.
Each time a door is opened, a green man calls out a specific room location, such as, “Wayfinder, R – Zero – One – E, Lily” now, Rose knows, R – Zero – One – E, is the Wayfinder assigned to someone named, Lily. She learns that R – Zero – Two – E is Aster’s Wayfinder, and, R – Zero – Three – E, is Cane’s.
Rose is most interested in discovering who resides in the two rooms that bookend her own and put a face to the names. She waits silently until she hears the soldier call, “Wayfinder, R – Zero – Four – E, sibling: Hawthorne.”
The next ‘Wayfinder’ to be called out is hers, and she listens as her name is called. Her door is unlocked and opened. She hopes the brown dog will be there again. She envisions, for a moment, how nice it would be if she and the dog could be friends, but it’s not the brown dog this time.
The dog in the corridor this morning is black with a white muzzle, and its front left paw has some silvery tufts of fur on each of its toes. The dog backs away from her, slowly, nervously. Lowering its head, but never taking his eyes off her, it half-growls, half-whimpers, forcing a high-pitched whining sound through its nose. She decides she doesn’t like this dog as much as she did the brown dog from last night.
Rose is taken from her room under heavy guard. The weapons pointing at her head are so close to her she can smell the brassy, gun oil the green men use to keep their rifles in tip-top operating condition.
When she emerges into the hall, there’s already a line of children, the exact number she had counted inside her head. It’s made up of boys and girls. Some older than her, some younger.
The children are collected and put into their group, or, what the soldiers refer to as a ‘section,’ every morning. You must do everything with your ‘section’ while you’re not locked in your room, or bad things might happen to you.
She’s moved to the line and tied to the others in the ‘section’. Her hands are cuffed, awkwardly, behind her back, like the other children, in various restraints; cuffs, ropes, wire, or whatever could be scrounged up from around the base.
Rose doesn’t like having her hands behind her back, it makes her shoulders ache, and after a while, her hands start to tingle, just like before, when Dr. Shaw had her secured to the gurney.
Each of the children has their feet shackled together, making it almost impossible to walk. They’re forced to adopt a shuffling gait, making them look less like children, and more like deranged primates. Metal rings fitted around their ankles rub the skin raw so that they are scabbed over and bleeding.