Lies & Harmony Trilogy

Chapter Two: Breaking Captive (Part 2)

I don’t doubt that, and I know I won’t run. Where would I run, anyway? If I run, I won’t know where to go, and I might get shot anyway. I don’t even know where I am and how far I am from the hospital and which direction the hospital is in. Thinking plans thoroughly is better than charging blindly into enemy lines.

     I follow after the boy through the door, and a sigh of relief escapes my lips. The spiders should only be confined to that room. Whenever I have hallucinations inside, the objects are usually confined to one place. They will not follow me once I leave that room. If my hallucinations continue after I leave the room, another one will take its place.

     Unlike the hospital, the door does not lead to a wide hallway or even a hallway at all. In fact, it leads to another room which is much larger than that room I was confined in, and there are several doorways leading from the room. There are people dressed in a myriad of colours walking around and talking. The smell of food wafts up my nose, and I realize how hungry I am. People that I have no recognition of are strolling around the room. The boy smiles at them when he walks in and they smile back at him and wave. I see Tabitha immediately. Her pet snake isn’t there with her. Of course it isn’t. It is part of my hallucination, and it appeared near the hospital. It won’t be here now.

     “How was the crazy girl?” Tabitha asks. I’m right beside the boy, and she doesn’t see me at all. That’s because she has her back to me and is sitting at the blue table. “I swear that all I could hear was her screaming like she was being murdered. For one second, I thought it was true.”

     “She’s seeing things,” the boy says, “and she’s right here.”

     Tabitha whips around, her black hair falling down her shoulders and her angular dark eyes meeting mine. She gives me what I suppose to be a friendly smile, but I can see discomfort in her eyes. “Oh good morning…,” she trails off, her eyes looking downwards, not wanting to look into my eyes anymore.

     I usually don’t like speaking but my lips move of their own accordance. “Seven,” I tell her. “My name is Seven.” For once, my name comes easier and more familiar to me, like leaving the hospital was emerging from dark fogginess. Everything I know feels a bit clearer.

     Tabitha purses her lips like she wants to say something and then decides against it. I see her eyes look at the linen piece of paper just like the boy did, and I grab it defensively. What’s so interesting about my name on paper?

     “Thorpe,” she says, jerking her head to the boy in front of me, “examined you when you were out.”

     My body suddenly feels icy cold, and my fists clench at my side. My breaths feel short and shallow but all too loud. “Examined me?”

     Thorpe turns red, quickly saying, “No! I looked for injuries!” He places both hands on his cheeks and rubs them like that will make it less obvious. “I didn’t do anything else, I swear.”

     Tabitha laughs, and I don’t know how she can laugh when one of her own is feeling embarrassed, and I’m feeling violated. I remember being told that laughing at someone else’s discomfort is a horrible and selfish thing to do. The black hatred begins to stir with only sadness and the desire for pills to hold it back. I glance at her grey boots, wondering if the remnants of the mauve pill still exist underneath the sole. It may not be much but I’d rather have something than nothing. My fingers twitch, itching to grab her furred boots and find the remaining parts of the pill. In a few hours, I’ll be desperate enough to do that.

     “I mean, he saw your medical bracelet thing. Whatever it is. We wanted to make sure that you weren’t being tracked.” Tracked like the tracking devices. Why did Mr. Lawrence tell the doctor that we needed them remove that day? If that hadn’t happened, the doctors would find us and the intruders will all be dead or in prison. “That linen paper is strong so we thought there could have been something underneath that but we’re wrong. It’s just really thick.”