The Aftermath

Every Inadequate Word

I seldom have dreams. And when I do, when I'm fortunate enough to close my eyes to something other than the nothingness that seems like death, it's always the same; I dream I'm someone else. A girl in a world without pain and hunger. The dreams are nice, and I always dread waking. Not once have I had a dream I wanted desperately to leave the moment it began.

Until now.

I'm standing beneath short rows of fluorescent lights, gazing down at a white metallic machine. It's as long and as wide as the empty coffin Mia and I found on a street corner last year after a torrential storm, but one end is rounded and there's a thin glass panel running along the length of the top. Transparent tubes extend like tentacles from the bottom of the machine into even more machines with dozens of buttons and multicolored lights.

And on the other side of the glass, inside the metal casket, there's a body.

I watch quietly as a mechanical arm slides back and forth on the girl's bloody face, like a pencil scratching lines across a blank sheet of paper. The girl in the machine is so still and quiet, I'd think she was dead if it weren't for the slight shudder of her chest.

There's a loud beep behind me, and the metal picks up its speed on her skin. The machine begins to make a humming noise, and when I lean in close to the glass, the girl's injuries gradually start to change. Her skin is being made whole again.

Small forehead, V-shaped scar at the hairline.

Straight freckled nose.

Lips that have spoken my every inadequate word for the past several years.

I am looking at myself.

I want to run away. I want to end this dream now and go back to my world, a world that's filled with the type of fear that I understand. But instead of backing away, I tap my fingers on the glass and suck in an impatient breath. "This is taking too long." The voice I speak in is soft—almost childlike.

The voice is not my own, but I've dreamed of it before. I'm that other girl again.

"You would be better off going home to wait as she's horribly damaged," someone else says.

"She fell on her face after she was hit. It's nothing you can't fix."

"It's not her exterior that I'm so concerned about—we can easily repair that damage."

My gaze is finally dragged away from my broken body and settles on the woman speaking. She's bent over a desk, squinting down at a computer screen. She taps the screen a few times, and the machine behind me makes a grating noise. A see-through image of someone's head drifts up over the desk. Even though it's neon green, with grid lines running through, I can tell that it belongs to me from the round face and nose shape. The woman touches the screen again, and the projection changes to a floating model of a brain.

"Making sure she hasn't received any brain damage will take additional time," the woman explains.

I walk in a circle around the machine. This...thing that is slowly repairing my body's injuries. My shoes clacking loudly on the tile floor are the only sound other than a steady beep from the machines. Heels. Even if I could find a pair, I'd never wear them outside of a dream because there's no place for impractical shoes in my world.

"Spare me the technical shit, okay? How long will it be before I can have her back?" I demand.

The woman lifts her eyes to the side of the white machine where I'm standing over myself. She swallows hard and fumbles with the last button on her white coat. "With all due respect, Miss Olivia, there are other characters far more advanced and with the newest technology that—"

Even though this is a dream and I'm somebody else, that name makes me go cold. I want to wake up. I want this dream to be over now.

"I don't want another," the soft-voiced me snaps. "I want her."

"But her vitals are incredibly—"

"Maybe you didn't understand me, Dr. Coleman. Or maybe you lack the skills to perform what you were hired to do. This is who I want, so fix her!"

Dr. Coleman touches her screen again. The brain changes back to the image of my head, and then the entire projection sinks down, disappearing. "She came close to dying this time."

"If she dies, then you will, too. Make her right again."

Again.

Again?

Wake up. Wake up right now. This is all wrong...

Dr. Coleman sighs heavily and grabs something off her desk. As I step aside so she can walk past, I catch a glimpse of it. Long and silver—it looks like a square flashlight. She positions her hand over a blinking light and the machine beeps five times before the glass panel flips open. My body shivers visibly as Coleman brushes back strands of my blond hair.

"Are you sure you just don't want to wait until—"

"What I want is her functional within forty-eight hours," I say in the strange voice. "And don't shave her head this time. She looked like shit the last time you did that. And no new scars, either—she already has plenty."

Wake up. Please.

I want to turn away as Dr. Coleman presses the square black tip of the tool to my scalp. But my thoughts and actions in my dreams are just the same as reality. Severed. The body inside the machine comes fully to life when the doctor holds down a button on the device. Screaming, thrashing against dozens of metal arms sketching over the rest of its injuries. Somehow, I'd failed to notice them before.

Wake up!

At last, I untangle myself from the nightmare.

And the pain of the girl who is struggling inside the machine coffin with the broken body—now it's all mine.