The Pharmacy (UNEDITED)

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

            Roses are red,
            Violets are blue,
            I have made I promise I cannot keep,
            I don't know what to do.

   This past week, I realized that what Ezra said was true. 3 days ago, I attempted to enter the, what I now call, P-Room. If I can correctly recall, it went like this.

  

        7:00 AM, the perfect time to enter the labyrinth beneath me. If I must be honest, I must say that there are at least 6 other rooms I haven't entered, all labeled with atrocious diseases that I dare not get near. I have passed vials on wooden tables that were, strangely, full of engravings and little drawers. I go down there wearing a mask now, but I take it off as soon as I enter the P-Room. It is super isolated.

   After taking the memorized path down the maze-like fake basement, I found the P-Room door looming over me, an inch away from my nose. I bit my lip, filled my lungs with dusty, stuffy underground air, let it out like an old vent does with its last breath, and set my hand around the rusted door knob that awaited me so.

   The cool light that cascaded from the wide opening of the door swinging open was quite disorienting. Immediately rang out the indistinct whispers and audible voices of the polio patients that lined the walls. I awkwardly tottled in and adjusted my eyes to the jarringly bright light, and my ears were still getting stuffed with the non-stop murmuring of everyone around me. Raising my eyes, I realized that something was obviously different, something that I actually don't know how I didn't see right in front of me.

   The middle of the room was dim, eerily dim, which explains why I had to adapt when I first stepped in. From a badly lit corner, I could see Igne, staring at me with eyes which held such weeping terror that I was physically taken aback. Renate wasn't too far away from her, just about three seats, or rather floor spaces, away. Her eyes bore the same expression, but she motioned with small flicks of her fingers, on a hand which barely seemed able to stretch further than a foot. The chains were much shorter than they were a few days ago. I forced myself to look where she told me to, but it would be an understatement to say that I was deathly afraid.

   There was a chair. Someone was on it, their arms strapped to the handles, their feet cuffed to the legs. The weak, white light shone upon him and highlighted all the deepened and risen spots of his body. His tan skin looked terribly pale under it. The expression on his face was one of a look of shock and fear that I hadn't expected to be on him specifically.

   Ezra.

   "What are you doing here?!" He hushedly hissed at me, panickingly surveying me from top to bottom. Some of the people around us looked at the floor with wide eyes, and when others would try to look up at us, their heads would be pulled back down by whoever was seated next to them, as if we were some sort of blinding species.

   "I thought you guys wanted me to come! And why are we whispering?!" I replied with the same shrill tone he spoke to me in. He rapidly glanced at the wall to his left, which I couldn't for the life of me understand why since there was no one sitting there anyway. With a brisk turn of his head, he quickly flipped his attention back to me.
  
   "Forget it, just smush yourself into the closet or something, before he comes back and sees you!" He relayed his message with such speed that I almost couldn't understand it, but I processed enough of it for my fight-or-flight response to immediately
activate.

   I sprang for the closet, nearly slipped on a towel left on the floor in front of it, and pulled its doors so hard towards myself that I nearly sent them flying in their own directions. I shuffled into it, stuck myself to the wall, and shut the doors just as I heard a clicking sound from in the room. I peered out of the shutters on the closet door and tried to find the source of the click, and I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the same wall that Ezra kept watching slowly push forward-- a secret entrance.