𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐀 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝

XXVI

Janes pov
It's the twenty-eighth, I think, or the twenty-sixth. The nurses all say different things, just to play with me. One even said it was the twenty-fifth this morning, and I almost broke at the cruelty of planting a seed of hope into my brain.

I can't even tell if it's day or night–having been sedated too often in the day to keep track. My reality is their will, the time whatever they make it. All I know is that every night at three am, they roll me into Dr. Martinez's room to continue their examination. I hear a knock on the door, and I try to kill my mind, disconnect from my–their body, from what'll happen to it, what they'll make me do, what they'll make me witness.

Still, I hear his voice. I'm full of cracks and you're the glue, he once said. For a boy so smart, for a boy who's never wrong, he sure had that all backward. I'm the one full of cracks, I'm the one who needs to be pieced back together, and whether he's a fragment of my imagination or not, he's helped me more than any pill has.

As I'm forced to take the pills, the syringes, as I'm being strapped down tightly to the chair, I have one thing in mind. Whatever they do to me, I will do worse to them. Two can play this game of fear, of power. I've never been a loser, and I don't plan on starting now.

THE EXAMINATION OF JANE IVERS
Taken on December twenty-five, 2022
Birch Psychiatric Hospital.
66732 Manhattan, New York.
Video transcript time: 3:09 a.m.
Examination by Dr. Isabella Martinez
ISABELLA: Do I start cutting her?
[EXTRACTED]: No, don't cut it yet.
ISABELLA: Why not?
[EXTRACTED]: We have a few difficulties.
ISABELLA: Is it the intern? Why are they–
[EXTRACTED]: Are you questioning me?
ISABELLA: No, boss. But why are they even here for this?
[EXTRACTED]: They need to know the field, but they've requested a different...experiment today.
ISABELLA: Is it safe to show them? What if they tell anyone?
[EXTRACTED]: He'd die, and even then, he knows his place. What'd I say about questioning me?
ISABELLA: Apologies, boss. Are we burning her today?
[EXTRACTED]: No. He's watching from the surveillance. He wants to start slow from the beginning, a study, if you will. He's a psychology major, he wants to be in charge of the examination.
ISABELLA: What are we doing first?
[EXTRACTED]: Wake it up first.
ISABELLA: Jane? Jane, can you hear me?
JANE: [unresponsive]
[EXTRACTED]: How is it that its eyes are open, but it can't hear anything?
ISABELLA: She's like a shell of a body. Jane?
JANE: I can't breathe-
ISABELLA: But you're awake?
JANE: Yes.
ISABELLA: Let's begin.
[End video examination: 3:15 am]

I stare up at the mirrored ceiling, staring up at myself—my dead eyes, my hollowed-out cheeks. I watch it for so long, even as my eyelids weigh down, I watch it until I think my reflection blinks before I do. I watch it again, watching my lids to see if it'd do it again, or if I had just imagined it. I focus so long on my green eyes, that I don't realize the mouth is smirking. I press a shaky hand to my mouth, to feel it, to see if I'm smirking without even realizing it, but no. It's her.

I haven't had a hallucination since I've gotten here. Not since I've started taking the medications, and although that should make me happy—that they're working–it doesn't. Because it's another finger pointing to the same conclusive label I've had on me since I was a child. Crazy. Insane. Not right in the head. A few screws loose. Wired incorrectly. As if I were some toy, some machine they could fix by taking me apart and putting me back together over and over again.

They've been doing that a lot; taking me apart limb by limb, putting me back, trying to fix me. What they don't realize is that they're just making me worse. What they don't realize is that I'm not the little clueless girl anymore. I know now that what they're doing to me is wrong, that even if I'm not human, I shouldn't be dehumanized. I still have the voice they've tried to trick me out of, strip me of—and it'll be the very thing that kills them all. I promise.