Grave Lies

A Book

"It takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations."

     I couldn't move. My legs trembled, my eyes were blind. The darkness was too dense. My pupils darted from side to side as if hoping for someone. My nails scratched against the metal, convulsive and feverish, but I wouldn't be able to free myself. I never could.

No one would come to save me. No one would answer my screams. My temples throbbed, my throat burned, my skin cracked beneath the leather, and I was alone... alone...
Alone...
I widened my eyes with a choked sob.
The room spun, and my stomach twisted. I pulled myself up with gasps like a drowning person, trying to calm myself, but sweat froze my back, trapping the terror in my skin.
Sticky shivers slid over me, and my heart threatened to explode from my chest.
I huddled against the headboard of the bed and clutched the caterpillar-shaped stuffed toy that my mom and dad had given me, like when I was little.
I was safe. That was another room, another place, another life...
But that feeling remained. It crumpled me. It bent me in on myself, and I returned there, to that darkness. I returned to being a child.
Perhaps I still was.
Perhaps I had never stopped being one. Something inside me had broken long ago, it had remained small, childish, naive, and scared.
It had stopped growing.

 And I knew... I knew I wasn't like the others because as I grew up, that deformed part of me remained a child. I looked at the world with the same eyes. I reacted with the same naivety. I searched for light in others as I had searched for it in Her when I was little, never finding it. I was a butterfly in chains. And perhaps... I would be that way forever. "Nica, are you okay?" Billie stared at me with her head tilted, her bushy hair held back by a headband. I had stayed awake all night, trying not to sink into my nightmares, and my face showed it. The darkness didn't give me peace. I had tried leaving the bedside lamp on a few times, but Anna had noticed and, thinking it was a forgetfulness on my part, had come into the room and turned it off. I didn't have the courage to tell her that I would have preferred to sleep with a little light on like a small child. "Yes," I replied, trying to appear natural. "Why?" "I don't know... You look paler than usual." Her eyes studied me carefully. "You seem tired... Did you not sleep well?" Anxiety stretched me like a wire. Instantly, an unfounded agitation began to stir within me. I was used to such reactions; I was often overwhelmed by exaggerated worries that fueled my most fragile and childlike side. It was always like this when it came to that. My hands were sweating, my heart strained as if on the verge of tearing apart, and all I desired was for no one to see me. "Everything is fine," I replied in a thin voice. I wondered if I sounded convincing, but Billie seemed to genuinely believe it. "If you want, I can give you the recipe for a relaxing decoction," she suggested. "My grandma used to make it for me when I was a child... I can send it to you on your phone!" When Anna gave me a cellphone, Billie immediately asked to exchange numbers, and she gave me some tips on how to set it up.

 "I'll put the butterfly emoji," she had informed me, saving my name in her contacts.

"They're emojis," she explained excitedly. "See, my grandma has the rolling pin. I put the panda for Miki, but she doesn't even deserve it. She saved me with the poop emoji..."
There was so much to learn that for now, I could barely send a message without getting confused.
"Are you done socializing?" an indignant voice began. "I didn't bring you here to chat. This is a lesson like any other! Silence!"
The chatter faded. Professor Kryll scrutinized each student filling the laboratory.
He ordered us to put on protective goggles, promising suspension to anyone caught misusing the equipment.
"Why do you write your home address on the book covers?" Billie whispered to me as I pushed my biology textbook into a corner of the table we shared.
I looked at the label with my name, course, year, and everything else.
"Why? Is it weird?" I asked, embarrassed, remembering how happily I had written my home address. "So if I lose it, they know who it belongs to, right?"
"And isn't the name enough?" she chuckled, making me blush. "They might get confused..."
"Are you all ready?" Kryll barked, drawing everyone's gaze to him.
I adjusted my goggles, tucking my hair behind my ears.
A part of me was electrified.
I had never done a lab before!
I put on the plastic gloves, studying the sensation on my fingers.
"I hope he doesn't make us gut eels like last time," someone murmured behind me. I furrowed my eyebrows with an uncertain smile.
Gut eels?
"Good," Kryll announced. "Now you can place the materials on the table."