Nonconformity | Henry Creel

The Great Escape

I smiled softly at Number Four, relishing in the scowl she sent in my direction.

Truthfully, I felt bad for her.

There was a clock in my room. When I asked Papa to install one, I had entirely expected him to laugh in my face. When he didn't, and instead promised to have one in my room by week's end, I thought he was lying.

Yet, when I arrived in my room that night, I was met with bright red LEDs that belonged to a digital clock. I had nearly collapsed right there on the spot. I don't know why the clock made me so emotional, but I had barely managed to hold in my tears as the orderly bade me goodnight and closed my bedroom door.

Through my short, awful stay here, I had forgotten that I was a teenage girl. That I was just barely an adult, with no memories of my own and no concrete identity or morals to cling onto. I had been poked, prodded, lied to, manipulated. All in the span of four days. I was not equipped to deal with the emotions that came with it. I hadn't wept once.

But now I had my own clock.

And so the fury of a million oceans fell from my eyes, drenching the front of my nightgown and drowning out anything else. There was this raw pain in my chest. I didn't know where it came from or why it was there, but now that I was aware of it, I felt like it was spreading through my entire body. Fueled by confusion, paranoia, desperation, and helplessness. I almost didn't mind the syrupy, liquid warmth that crawled beneath my skin and infected my entire body.

I laughed a short, biting laugh as I stared at the clock in my empty room. "I'm losing my mind," I whispered to the darkness.

That all had happened nearly seven hours ago. Now, I was sprawled on my bed, languidly watching as the minutes ticked by. My eyelids grew heavier as time went on, and I began to worry that I was going to thwart my own escape attempt by dozing off.

I immediately perked up at the sound of boots echoing down the hall. The clock read 3:08 a.m. when I unplugged it from the wall. My room fell into complete darkness as the bright red numbers flickered off. I felt around for the cord, winding it up in my hand and taking the heftier part of the clock in my other.

I took a deep, steadying breath and visualized the hallways ahead, charting which turns I would take and which I would not. I didn't have time to come up with a better plan, and I could only hope that the universe would take pity on me.

And so it begins.

As the footsteps drew closer, I inhaled mightily and began coughing. As violently as I could, I wracked my throat and coughed against the door. I heard the footsteps slowing down on the other side of the metal, but I didn't stop. In fact, I began coughing louder and more aggressively than before, selling it with my very being.

"Are you alright in there?" The guard's deep, monotonous voice was muffled by my door as he called out to me.

I brought my voice down to a weak, wrecked whimper and strained to cry out, "Help." And then the coughing resumed, boisterous and ear-piercing. The guard acted quick, throwing open my door and running to the middle of the room. As light flooded through, he looked around wildly, searching for the source of the coughing.

I emerged from beside the door, and we made eye contact. He looked vexed, for a moment, and then his eyes fell to the clock in my hand. Without hesitation, I took the cord and swung it at him with as much force as I could manage. The clock hit him in the head, leaving him to cry out and stumble backward against my bed. I hit him again, harder. And this time, his body fell limp and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Crimson dripped onto the floor beneath him. The room was blanketed in silence, broken only by my panting breaths and my heart beating in my ears. When I stared at him, I felt as though I had left my body. I watched his blood stain the floor beneath him, the first and only blemish I had seen since my arrival. I was transfixed.