#2 - Nikki Smith

1. A New Kind of Birth

When I first woke up, I gasped for breath. My lungs were suffocating. I couldn't see anything, but I could feel... liquid all around me. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. I couldn't immediately open my eyes and see anything. When I finally forced my eyes open, they stung from the liquid that was surrounding me.

I could... hear something too. It was a consistent humming type of noise. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't far away, and it didn't sound like it was going away. It annoyed me.

After a few moments, my eyes adjusted to my surroundings. Only a few feet away, there was a person staring at me. I think I was... encased in some sort of a container. The person was not in the container, but he was writing something down on a pad right outside the container.

I slowly moved my head around. There were a couple of other people, and there was a second liquid container with another person inside it. What was going on? Where were we? What... what were we? I had so many questions about what was going on. Why am I awakening now? I have no memory of anything before this moment. Was I just born? Was I just created?

I tried to move my arm. It was difficult, but I managed to make it twitch. The person staring at me immediately started writing on his pad again. What was he writing? What was I to him? Just a pawn to observe and take notes on? The thought of this made me angry. I exhaled out of my nose. Bubbles came out of my nose and flew to the top of the container that I was in. I was otherwise breathing through a tube that was attached to my nose.

The person quickly looked up and down and continued to write in a fury. He called over another person to also observe me. The third person went over to a device. They all looked like they were talking to each other while watching me. It made me more and more angry. Why don't you help me?? Quit looking and staring at me like I'm a freak.

A long time seemed to pass, and they all just wandered around the room continuing to do the same things: observing, doing something on their devices, talking, and not helping me. Finally, the water in this container that I was in started draining. I think I could tell who it was that did it. But what was going on? What were they going to do?

All the water drained out, and my body went somewhat limp. I didn't have the strength to keep my own weight up. I tried with all my might, and I did make some progress! I lifted my head and put my hands on the ground. I lifted my body back up. One of the individuals opened my chamber.

OH MY GOODNESS! The air outside of the chamber was so cold that my body immediately started shivering when the cold air touched me. Two of them came with a couple of towels and placed the towels over me. They felt warm and helped me stop shivering. I couldn't hear anything at first, but after several moments, my ears adjusted to the air around me. The three people were talking, but I couldn't understand them. I tried to say something, but I just coughed up some water. Even trying to talk took a lot of energy out of me. One of these people took the tube that I was originally breathing into and put it up to my mouth to help me breath. I took a couple of deep breaths, which considerably helped.

With each minute that passed, I could feel my strength increasing. I could feel my body slowly come to life. I moved my hand in front of my eyes. I turned it around and softly squeezed my hand into a fist. The freedom felt so great and refreshing.

I looked over to the other person who was still in the container. None of the three other people had interacted with that person. I wonder why he's not awake right now. We were both in containers for some reason, so we were bound together in some way. I'll figure out those reasons later, though.

The three people continued to talk to each other. One of them tried talking to me, but I couldn't understand him. He said, "Ty menya ponimayesh'?" I'll remember those words for the future, but I don't know what they mean right now. I just looked at the man trying to communicate with me, and then I looked around the room. I was in a relatively dark room with a lot of devices and two doors. There were a lot of medical devices and sharp objects. These three people were all much bigger than I was, which made me mad. I don't know why, but I feel like a lot of things make me angry. I looked at several sharp objects. I could use them as weapons if any of these individuals tried to hurt me. Would it come down to that?