Short Story (and poetry) Collection

~Safe House~

They call me special. Not the good type, but the bad type.
They think I'm crazy, but they don't know the meaning of that word.
I sit in the house, staring out the window. I can't call it home. I know they are watching.
Every other child here is dead. Not physically, but mentally. They are no more than empty shells; hollowed out, deprived of their personality.
That won't happen to me.
I am the only one who knows. I am the only one who is aware. They won't get away with this.
They won't fix me like they fixed the others. I won't let them.
I sit in the room by myself. The dead children play with each other. I won't talk to them. I won't play with them.
I try to blend in by drawing pictures of animals on paper, but they know that I am different. I do not fit in.
I see two women with expressionless faces watching me.
"Alfie," one of them calls my name. Her voice reminds me of my mother's, but her face is wrinkled and pale. My mother is beautiful and this woman is not.
I hesitantly follow the women to another room. All four walls and the ceiling are a very pale blue colour, the paint uneven, slightly stained with crayon. There is a single chair in the middle of the room under the light.
"Sit," the other woman instructs. Her voice is brash. I do not like the way she speaks to me.
I do as she says and sit on the chair. The second woman leaves the room, and the first woman stands in front of the door as it closes.
"Why am I here?," I bravely ask.
The woman did not respond.
"I want to go home," I say and fight back the fright and anger in my voice.
The woman looks at me, our eyes meet. Something is familiar about the sparkle in her eyes and it disturbs me.
She moves towards me and lays her hand on my knee and I flinch away. She withdrawals hesitantly.
"Do you know why you're here?" The woman asks me, bored, as if she had asked the same question a hundred times but even so, her voice...
I shake my head. It is true that I don't know the reason I am here. I'm not really sure that I want to know either...
"Do you miss your folk, Alfie? Do you want to go home?" The woman asks, trying to comfort me with her voice: I do not feel comforted.
I do not answer. I look away from her, forcing my gaze to the floor beside her feet.
"Why don't you play with the other children, Alfie? Don't you like your friends?" She places her chill hand on my knee again and my eyes meet hers again.
I don't dare speak; whatever I say is wrong; they don't want me to miss Home, they want me to forget, they want me to be like the others.. Dead.

Later, after fifteen minutes of questioning, I am sent to my room. The walls are the same dull blue colour though less care is taken with these walls.
My bed is small and the mattress thin. When I lay down, I can feel every spring. When I move, the whole frame wobbles. I do not ever sleep well here.

Some people have tried to escape here before they are hollowed out. They try and try and try but nobody is gone for longer than three days.

Then they come back hollow.

I know better than to try. I know I just have to survive until I am released from this nightmarish place that wreaks of cruelty and suffering.
I have to. I don't want to lose myself.

But I am afraid.

I am afraid of what might happen if they break me. I'll become one of them; hollowed out, dead children.

I won't let that happen. I will escape... One day...