Chipped Heartz & Broken Smilez

Choice (1)

Yolinda's office was smaller than Fred's. A comfy black leather chair was tucked into a sturdy desk, the soft light of her study lamp reflecting off the glossy surface, splashing onto the metallic rust brown walls. She leaned back against her chair. Shadows fell across her face as she sighed and brushed strands of her long strawberry blonde hair away from her cheeks. There was no trace of the black dye she had used previously, but the brownish blonde mixture suited her better than raven black. It was more natural.

I sat in the chair across from her. There were two days before we would leave to patrol the distant edges of the border. 'Let me help you.'

I doubted she would voluntarily let me wring her neck, so how could she help me?

"Do you want to leave?" she asked.

"Even if I want to, I can't. It's mandatory; I have no choice but to remain here."

"It's mandatory unless you're sick or disabled...." She stared at me, waiting for me to fill in the blanks. "If we can prove you're unhinged, a danger to yourself and others, they'll let you go."

I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees. "And what do you gain from helping me?" Humans were selfish; I was selfish. We didn't do anything without looking ahead to see what could be attained from our actions. I had no money or prestige to give her, so the question remained. How did she benefit from aiding me?

She sighed and hummed softly. Her dark green eyes looked at the paper before her as she drew lines intersecting and swallowing each other, trickling, spilling towards the bottom. When her pen reached the edge, she met my gaze and shrugged.

I thought of Fred and the cruel games he played with people, treating them as if they were disposable plastic toys one could purchase from a fourth-hand store. My fingers squeezed the armrests. "I have no intention to be indebted to you."

"You won't owe me a thing. Consider this my way of apologizing for acting like an asshole earlier." She raked a hand through her luscious hair, brushing back the stray strands that had wandered forward.

Yolinda continued, "In terms of proving you to be a danger to the rest of the unit, something like intent to murder would get you arrested. And an inability to operate weapons or follow the procedure properly would result in either whippings or a demotion to grid Y. So, the only thing we can play with is mental instability or physical disfigurement, but how far are you willing to go? What price are you willing to pay to escape? And even if you do get out, you would be locked in a hospital for a few months or years, depending on how severe they deem your case to be, so...."

"So, I'm stuck either way." Being in a government hospital wouldn't make me any freer than serving in the army; it might even be worse. One thing no one wanted was for any member of their family to be labelled insane and locked away indefinitely.

Yolinda shook her head. "The hospital shouldn't be too bad. I know the army doctors well. If you were suicidal because of the sexual or physical abuse you suffered here, we could create an argument stating that these traumatic events prevent you from functioning properly, for lack a better term, and have also resulted in suicidal triggers. We would then recommend immediate dismissal so you could focus on recovering. You would be locked up for a few months, but then you would be free to go home once your doctor thinks you're healed."

If I followed her suggestion, 'Mentally unstable' would show up on my public record; employers would hesitate to hire someone they couldn't trust to stay calm and collected. If I applied to university, the registration department would likely dismiss my papers as soon as they saw the red letters 'mentally unstable'. People would talk about me behind my back and walk around eggshells around me like they had started to do with my mother. 'Tried to take her own life,' they would say. 'She's like cheap glass, cracks with the slightest pressure.'

***

I had never seen my mother's corpse; she had simply vanished for acting in a way that didn't befit her grid. It had started with white. A white scarf around her neck, then a white dress, and white shoes. Then escalated with the refusal to cut her hair when it neared the middle of her back. A pair of police officers had arrested her, but she had fought back when they had tried to cut her locks by force.

That day, she had returned home with her hair badly cut, split ends, the tresses on the right side of her head noticeably longer than the left.

Instead of her pretty white form-fitting dress, they had shoved her slender body into a grey frock that held her like an ugly box. There was this emptiness in her eyes when she returned home and closed the front door. She didn't greet the children who had been waiting for her. She ignored my brother's pleas for money, then locked herself in the bathroom. The shower ran for an hour; she had used more than we could afford with our meager earnings.

I was the one that opted to check on her, forced the door open, and found her lying in the bathtub with her wrists silt, complexion pale. Blood mixing with dirty water that spilled over the top of the tub.

My mother hated dirt, but there she lay, eyes closed, body and dress covered in mud, soot, and blood. My brother and I carried her to the hospital and pleaded with the doctor to save her while she still had a pulse. The older man had promised to try, but a few hours later, we had returned to the hospital and were told no patient matching our mother's description could be found.

Enraged, my brother had caused a scene, tossing brochures and cards that rested in plastic holders on the counter. He screamed at the poor nurses until officers came to restrain him.

I had heard a nurse in blue scrubs whisper as she ducked behind the reception desk, 'Mental illness sure runs in that family.' I had glanced at her, a sort of numbness running through me, a coldness that sapped my energy. She had spent the last hour explaining that the mother who had given birth to me never existed and threatened me, saying that if I continued to ask for my mother, I would also vanish from existence.

***

My scream hurt my throat and seemed to echo in the large forest. The trees shrouded me on all sides, rising far above my head. Snow's light touch covered the branches and green needle-like leaves with a layer of white powder that blew off with the slightest breeze and melted on my skin. I took off my boots and socks, placed my naked feet on the ground, and removed my jacket and underclothes. The cold chilled my bare skin and sucked the warmth from my body.

After a while, I started to lose the feeling in my toes and fingers. My skin cracked and stung as if it would bleed, but the pain was quickly forgotten.

***

A/N:

I got a cold last week, still kind of getting over, but I missed Friday's update. So here's one for today.