Five Years Later...
Her P.O.V.
"Jaynessa please, last one. I won't bother you for a week,"
"It's Jane! And you said that yesterday." I try slamming the door harder but she shoves on the other end.
"I know, I'm sorry, I'm trying do a good job so Tris doesn't fire me, please, just take it,"
"No, I said!" I throw my shoulder into the door.
Footsteps approach the door on her side and the door busts open. I take the blow to the head and get knocked to the tiled floor. Two guards stand in the doorway with her now.
"Jane, if you don't you know she's going to come in and force you," Charlotte pleads.
"I'm not scared of her,"
"Seriously, Jaynessa, you're going to be eighteen now. Stop being so immature." it wasn't Charlotte speaking.
It's Tris's voice. She steps into the room beside the guards. Her face smile plastered on her fake lips. Pencil skirt too tight, and hair done up. She kneels down beside me, placing her caked face too close to mine.
"Your birthday is tomorrow, let's not be moved to the top of the Treatment List so soon." she takes the small syringe from Charlotte's hand, "Take the medicine,"
"It's. Jane." I say through my teeth.
I slap the needle holding the cold drugs from her hand and run for the door. The guards were here to intimidate, none of the adults thought I'd actually try running. I push Charlotte's small figure into one of the guards and force my way into the hallway. I'm on my feet and running before they can exit my room. I push other inmates out of my way as I bolt through the community room.
"Making a break for it again, Jane?" I hear a fellow inmate call behind me.
I get to the end of the hallway to the lobby and yank open the heavy doors. All the while, footsteps behind me, chasing after me.
"Jane! Stop!" Charlotte cries echo in the white halls.
Not a chance.
Poor girl. Brainwashed like the rest of them. I shut the doors behind me locking them loudly. On the other side of the room the hallways divide into four ways. The hallway on the far right obtains my exit. Sprinting down it, panting as I run, I don't stop until I've reached the glass doors to the lobby. Just one more set of doors after that and I'm outside. The glass doors slam loudly with my hands as I snatch at them to swing open. A nurse behind a desk in the lobby shouts at me as I rush through the threshold, aiming for the exit doors.
"Hey!" Stop!"
"Oops,"
Fists closed at my running sides, I run passed her for the exit. But I don't make it. Just before I reach the interior of the door frame with my outstretched finger tips, someone slams into me from the right side. He's big and he tackles me to the white floor. I'm rolled over and pinned down on my stomach with my hands behind my back, just as Tris and the rest come rushing in, out of breath. I'm wincing from new bruises of contacting the tile in the way I just did and Charlotte gives me a look of pity as we both know there will be consequences. Tris's high heels click loudly on the tiled floor as she walks over to me.
"Tisk, tisk, Jane. What was your plan?"
I glare up at Tris.
"Make it passed the side doors? What about the fifteen foot electric fence around the perimeter, hm?"
"You've got lipstick on your teeth," my breath struggled under the male nurse on top of me.
"Two weeks. In the box." she says looking down at me.
"No. Tris that's too long, she-" Charlotte starts.
"She will have a usual punishment just as anyone else would," Tris cuts her off with a rising voice.
Her eyes go back to me, she's enjoying me on the floor.
"But-,"
"It's alright, Charlotte. I have friends waiting for me in there," I say to her.
Tris snaps her fingers at me and the guards at the door pull out a white pouch that I know too well.
"Hey. Hey, no, Tris, you don't have to do that." I plead to her, looking back and forth from her to the opening pouch, "Come on, I'm not fighting. Tris!" I shout louder as she walks away.
The guard steps to me. The pouch is opened, its contents pieced together.
"No, no, no, you don't have to do this. You don't have to-"I fight now away from them, "no, no!" I'm crying now as the needle digs into the back of my neck.
Charlotte looks away as the guards sit me up and push my head forward to stick the needle in my skin. I feel the cold liquid spread from my neck to my spine. Too soon it's in my head, my eyes spotting with black circles, and I fall into the guard's arms.
- - - - - – - - - - - - - - - - – - - - - -
When I come to a small light hanging above my small bed swings slightly high above. I turn my stiff neck to recognize where I am. The box. Solitary. A tiny metal toilet with a sink attached to the top of it sits in the corner. And that's it.
The door is thick and only has a small opening for trays of food to be sent through. I know a small vent sits on the wall under the bed that I lay on. The only other characteristic of the room would be a sky light, high above in the ceiling. The light bulb sways and will flicker off when the timer goes off, indicating it's daytime. Sun light will be my only source of light through that small skylight until dusk breaks and the light bulb flicks back on. I grunt and sit up, shaking away the lingering medication fatiguing me. They must've thrown on the thin bed in anger with the way the back of my head aches. Quick movements are a dizzying factor thanks to the poison trying to leave my blood. There's an itchy emotion that longs for me to open the window for air, but it's too high. I suppose that's the point of it.
Two weeks.
I've done longer. A whole month one time last year. I had been stashing doses, claiming I never received my dailies and building an inventory to sell to other girls. Tris was livid when I was caught with far too much of our currency in here. It was heard that she was demoted or something similar, something bad enough to make her rage incredibly so. Enough so, that I lost the few human rights I had left. My birthday passed in this box, as it will again this year. My tally marks for every last minute of being 16 are still behind the bed frame, I'm sure. I kept such special track for when we turn 18, extra treatments are added to our narrow window of effective dose from lethal dose. And I know Tris has been dying to see me try to handle another treatment.
Experimenting is all medical practice. Their new 'medication' is only successful through sacrificed inmates, which comes in waves. When they discover a new solution they'd like to test, they choose one of us to take the leap of faith. By law we are only supposed to get a maximum of 4 treatments, or experiments, before we are in lethal danger. No more until we turn 18, for when we reach that age, apparently we become invincible adults that can handle chemical torture. They give us as many treatments as they want when we reach what they call maturity.
There's been 19 girls dead from the treatments since I've returned to Bromley on that cold Saturday morning. Some of them good girls. Girls that were nothing but scared and alone. I've dreaded turning 18 ever since the first one went missing. Deep fear of death alone and humiliation up until the final moments lurks in my heart, for Tris would absolutely adore seeing me choke to death on my own vomit, while brutally hallucinating. But she hasn't been allowed to come for me just yet, that is, until tomorrow.
I don't remember how many doses I've been given. The last five years has been one long sickness, fearful of turning 18 and being killed by their drugs for surveillance. It's become a scarring obsession to be reminded how I had the whole waking world to explore just before being put back here to die under their circumstances.
I was found on the rooftop by a police search helicopter. Mother believed I ran away, somehow, through the entire city and on top of the highest building in only hours. She did exactly what she said she would do. She convinced the doctors that the bruises on my flesh were self inflicted. She managed to get her own bruises by then and claimed it was me that caused them. Her word against mine won out, in the eyes of everyone, I was a danger. So I caved and did as she willed. She wanted me to be a danger, a monster, so I became one. The only moment of opportunity I had I took it and dosed her right there in the office where she signed away my life. She was choking on her own stomach acid by the time I was being hauled to the back of the coo coo bus. I wasn't even 14 yet, and I'm not meant to leave here until I've improved completely, the nice way of saying 'never'. No exact number of days until I can leave. No release date or sentence. I'm here until forever as far as my mind knows. My constant sedated, treatment induced mind.
But my mind isn't complete trash. I no longer fall into depression or panic attacks. I suppose, that's their reasoning for proof of effectiveness. All panic and feelings of self pity are replaced with constant thoughts of the flying boy who called himself 'Peter Pan'. In the beginning I thought I'd dreamt him. I woke on the rooftop with immediate thoughts of the scary dream that took me across the city. Thinking it was some sort of deep sleep walk across the London streets. But my sleeve was still rolled up, where he had so curiously shoved it up my arm. Old faded scars now but I knew, then, that it was real. The whole morning, the flight, the magic, it was all real. He was real. I became obsessed with the entire morning I had and his ability. My entire mind was absorbed in the idea of him as a way out of everything horrible. Something about him was a real escape from life, for flying was a lie, and yet, he did it. He knew so much more than I did and I needed to know what it was. I was too wrapped in the thought of what he might know that I couldn't even try to fight my way out of being institutionalized. Not that it would have even mattered if I did try.
The obsession of an escape became a loathing. A powerful loathe for the escape that left me behind. I was certain he didn't save my life for no reason, and so positive he'd come back to finish the conversation. I went mad trying to think of how to even begin to find him when I'm a prisoner in one building. I believed he would return to be the escape I wanted him so badly to be. But time flew faster than he did, he never returned, and no one ever listened. No one ever believed me and I never got a single question answered. It would drive anyone mad. Hate grew in my heart because only I knew the truth. Only I saw it first hand. It is the one truth I still know. Therefore, I grew to hate the boy that called himself Peter Pan.
My days are spent wishing for revenge and a way out of this prison. I deserve answers after all these years. I'm consumed with understanding what he was, what he was thinking, what he did, why he did it. The boy should pay for what he's done. Had he never come into my life I wouldn't be a prisoner and a lab rat destined to die strapped to a chair, I was free. But that boy in green decided to save my life and then disappear without a trace, spiraling my life all over again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Next Day...
I dull my fingernails to add another tally mark to my collection behind the bed. Today I've turned 18, and I wonder just how many minutes I have left before Tris unlocks the door to take me to the lab. I just know she's been waiting for today. And I just know, my days have been numbered and that number has never been closer. I don't let myself cry as I hear footsteps come close to the door. I shove the bed back into place to hide the tallies and I wait. The small door opens and a food tray slides into my cell. I exhale, and the tears are harder to keep in somehow. I ignore the tray and again when another comes in, hours later, for dinner. The sun sets and still I haven't been seized. I begin to wonder if Tris is purposely building the suspense, to add to the mental strain, the worst type of torture.
I lie on my back on the bed, with my hands under my head, ankles crossed. I had moved the bed with its side to the wall. I sit thinking about the papers and journal I have behind a tile in my room. I long to get back to my room to add to it. Writing thoughts down is critical here, for the medication is unpredictable and thoughts can be lost forever. And I know they will not let me out for a single day without dosing me. I miss seeing ink on paper, wet as I write then dry behind my hand as it wipes across the paper. As I'm reminiscing in the aesthetic, the light above me flickers, then shuts off. My room now pitch black with the exception of the moonlight shining through the window on the ceiling. I sit up.
Cheap asylum, can't even have decent light bulbs.
The moon casts a faint blue light through my tiny window in a squared stream. The rest of the box called a room is black. I sit up to lean against the wall, still on the bed. I stare at the darkness, where I know the door is but it's too dark to see. My jaw clenches with fear of the door opening any, just any second now. A real fear in my bones that produces the fake belief that the door is opening. Further and further it opens. Waiting to take me to the lab to receive the next treatment. My heart wants to shutter from the fake visions until the stream of light suddenly flickers.
A shadow of some sort passes over the skylight, causing the flicker. The stream blinked for just a second, I'd've missed it had I not been staring right through it. I suppose the shadow might have been a bird or a bat. Still, I sit up taller, studying it closely. The stream of light flashes again, as if someone, maybe, jumped over the window. But I hear no footsteps or thumping around up there. The third time the shadow appears it partially covers my small source of light and stays in one spot. I stare frozen in terror.
A person's shadow sits in the middle of the window. But for some reason I don't believe that shadow is attached to anyone. I jump to the end of my bed to look up into the glass of the window. What I see runs my blood cold and pounds my head with hot panic. It's not just a shadow. It's the shadow. It's the demon. The spirit that chased me when I was 13. Its eyeless face stares at me through the glass way up there. A scream tries erupting from my throat but the frozen fear stops it as a whole breath caught. The demon rises its arms up over its head and dives through the glass without so much as cracking it. It sinks right through the glass, and all I can do is blink. It calmly seeps all the way down, looking third dimensional instead of creeping on the surface of anything, until it's hovering above my bed. I'm stiff, staring at it, feeling like I might wet myself.
Not. Again.
Shock freezes my body as it lowers lower, and lower, slowly. It meets my level, a small breath leaves me lips as a second of silence passes, dread and fear filling the air in the room. Then in an instant it grabs both of my ankles. It yanks forward, pulling me from the bed. I flinch but it's already taking off upward with a very firm, very painful grip on me. The scream finds its way out and rips from my throat, pain stimulates up my legs from the demons cold hands. The floor suddenly in front of my face as it shoots up through the window with its tight grip on me. The glass shatters around me. I cover my head with my arms but it does nothing to stop the shards of glass from scraping and cutting into my skin. I slide through the window upside down, just behind the demon. It grips tighter, I see the rooftop of the asylum lowering further and further away.
I'm screaming in fright as my mind is trying to figure out what is happening to me. The demon flies with such speed, I become flat, cutting through the air, no more pain in my joints. A feeling returns, I've only ever felt once before, the glee of flight. The rush of thrill. The tiny growing sense of fun eating up the fear, or the fear becoming something I really, really like. The sense is destroyed when the demon dips down, throwing it's grip on me upwards, at the same time letting go of me. I'm forced up into the sky, screaming like a little girl, midair. The demon tosses me up, only to catch me by under my arms, and carry me by my pits with its forearms.
More terror fills my stomach as I look down at the country far, far below my dangling feet. The terror quadruples in heavy strength as the demon lets go of my right arm, only holding on by my left. I scream again and reach to hold onto it in pleading fear. The clouds behind surround us now. My hair whipping behind me. My skin cold and my patient outfit fly about, showing off skin. With the spirits free hand it holds out a fist in front of my face and opens it. For one fraction of a second I stare at the fist in confusion but then I realize what's about to happen.
Son of a bitch, that's twice now! I think.
Then it opened its fist and all this blue powder flies into my face. The blue dust flies back into my face, forcing me to want to sneeze. A familiar scent of shampoo fills my head. My eyelids drop and the throbbing, warm pain of being held by one arm disappears. My head falls, I see the sky below my feet, then black.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I hear loud wind in my ears. Hearing it wakes up the pain deep inside of them from the cold. My hair licks and pulls against my scalp. Under my arms increasingly grows warm with soreness and I finally open my eyes. The clouds are all gone. All I can see is blackness speckled with bright stars. Millions of shiny stars cover where the ground should be, to the left, and to the right. Sky in a complete 360 degrees. The stars burn with fire, clear detail in all colors. The blazing orbs glow with deep red flames that lick blue then purple, but it's also a neon yellow fading orange, green, blue and all the rest. A heavenly core peeking through magical flames.
Stars aren't white at all...
My situation not coming to mind at all until I become dizzy when I try to find where up and down is. I didn't even feel the delicate layer of ice forming on my skin, or the ice flake shards growing from my strands of hair and face. The darkness morphs with a dark blue crawling through the black. The dark blue becomes a shade lighter, then another shade. I am able to make out a black figure in the far distance ahead of us. A large figure, not really a shape, but a land mass. The blue becomes shades lighter, the mass nears faster than I feel us moving, and the stars beneath me sound like waves. I look down to see black and blue waves only reflecting stars, and I'm unsure how long the waves have been there. I look up at the figure again. It's instantly closer and the demon releases my arms entirely.
I war cry out at the demon. My stomach jumping to my throat. I fall through the sky, looking down to see where I'll land but I already hit it. I land hard, hearing water. Waves. The night sky displays the bright stars and an even brighter moon, lighting the scene of a beach. I lay on my back for a moment, choking to get my air back. The wind slammed out of me, head vibrating with dizzying pain. I let out a tough and long cough. Then snap upward gasping. I cough and sputter, my eyes tearing up, air slowly getting easier to come. My heart finally slows down the less I cough. I realize my fists are full of sand. I release, dusting my palms together then wipe sand from my face. I examine my surroundings, choking on a sob.
A forest, thick and dark, sits in the night behind me. The moon is too big it looks unreal, the huge body of water is a sickening dark blue. An ocean by the salty smell. The demon had disappeared into the night sky before I hit the ground. The moon shines white on the sand. No sign of people or civilization anywhere.
What the fuck...
The cold begins to hit me. I hold myself. My skin is ice cold. I stand up looking around seeing the land curve inward into the water on the far left. The wind blows cold in an ominous whistle echoing from the lagoon. I begin walking down the beach, confused, cold, dizzy, and hurting from fresh bruises. I rub my arms but the goosebumps remain. I feel warm bruises on my under arms, especially the left one.
Where am I?
Am I free?
I wonder if the asylum life is over now. Nothing of my night makes any sense, I don't know where I am. I don't know why the spirit dropped me on a beach in the middle of the night. I begin to think I died and this is what hell is, maybe.
Maybe the demon drops souls here to be eaten by Satan himself...
Maybe the hell is that I will be alone on a cold beach for all eternity...
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
I fail to make sense of anything or come to any conclusions. My feet stop walking and turn to face the woods. I stare at it completely hypnotized. Then I walk into the woods. Scary woods, in an unknown place, at night, alone, is a bad idea. But I'm following something. A noise. A sound. A song. A pitched whistling from a pipe or a flute of some sort. It's faint and hard to hear behind the wind. But the soft peaceful song, lures me right to it.
I trip over fallen logs and large roots. My feet getting caught in vines and bush bits. My arms gain small scrapes, tiny slices. I step on sharp rocks, sticks and stickers that cut my feet. I push pass heavy leaves, and thick bushes that leave cuts in my hands. None if matters, the song is so luring. I'm still in the institution clothes. The white shirt and white pants that are distributed to us monthly. My once white socks have turned brown from the dirt under my feet and blood from the hike. The song gets louder with each step so onward I push, up and down uneasy hills. I'm not sure how long I'm tripping and stumbling through the woods, basically blind from the night, when the song stops. I stop with it instantly in my tracks. As if I were sleepwalking and just woke up the second it stops, my sense snaps back to me. The forest is dark. Darker than dark. Barely any moonlight seeps through the thick canopy.
Why the fuck did I just venture into pitch black woods?
I hold my breath, listening. I hear animals in the distance. Close distance. Loud, monster sounding animals. Dangerous, rabid sounding animals thumping between trees in every direction but remain unseen. Something doesn't feel right, besides fear, and besides uncertainty, something else. An icy shiver spikes down my spine and spreads to cover each and every bone in my body. Hard. And painful. But just for one quick second, then it's gone completely. But before I can think about what that icy feeling was, I feel a second feeling. A more familiar sense from behind me. This one I recognize as the sixth sense. The sense that hints that someone has their eyes on me. Or that their right behind me.
I spin around throwing my fist at whoever is standing directly behind me. My fist comes in contact with someone's palm. He's a boy. Hooded in a dark cloak. A mask, hard to see in the darkness, covers his face except for his mouth. His curving-into-a-smile mouth. He twists my fist forcing me to turn the other way with my arm behind my back.
"What the hell-" my own cry of pain escapes as he kicks the back of my knees, knocking me to the ground and shooting pain up my shoulder with the arm that he holds.
My knees dig into the dirt, both wrists now in his one hand. A second boy steps out of the bush in front of me. He to is hooded but I can't see his face in the dim, almost nonexistent, moonlight behind him. His hands at his side, I feel the sick smile on his face.
"Aw, damn, what is this?" the boy holding me down complains.
He's not asking me but asking the second boy in front of us. I hear rustling around us, fearful the scary sounding animals have found us. But now that I focus on it, the animals have gone completely silent.
Don't be scared. Don't cry. I tell myself.
I start struggling to stand but the boy pushes me back down sending pain up my shoulders.
"Who are you?" I demand.
The boy in front of me replies, "That's not how this works, love."
I freeze.
That phrase.
That voice.
It can't be.
I look up but he's just a cloaked silhouette. The rustling stops when boys surrounding us step from their hiding spots and light lanterns. Every single one of them masked and cloaked. All masked except the one in front of me. The lamps lit, and I see his face.
"Whoa," slips from my lips as I stare at the boy in front of me.
His smirk hasn't changed. His face, somehow, older. His figure, bigger, stronger, he looks older. His brown eyes somehow darker. His clothes no longer green and brown, but everything replaced black. A small lock of brown hair is fallen between his eyebrows with the rest of it stuffed in his black hat. It is him. His eyes fall on me and his expression changes. From prideful and energized to confusion and discomfort, his face falls. His eyes widen and his jaw almost, just almost, drops. With his guard down for that one instant I lose all confused fear and gain control.
"You!" I yell suddenly overflowing with anger.
My stomach heats with a rage I've never felt before. I fight to stand, stronger this time with anger as fuel. The boy in all black backs up, his breath increasing. Obviously, uneasy, I take it as a win and nearly stand all the way.
"You. What are you doing here? How did you find this place!" he switches to anger.
His fists ball and he walks to me. His eyes burn with the same rage in mine. I stare at him confused at the very faint red glow around his entire torso, chest, arms, hands, all of it. I look at it blinking and thinking it's a trick of the very faint moonlight. But my eyes go back up to meet his and seeing his anger only infuriates me more. He has no reason, no right, to be angry.
"You! You're the reason! They put me back because of you! It was all cause of you! It was your fault! All of it!" I'm so angry I yell only what I can.
My thoughts flying through my head I can only yell unexplained nonsense. I've never felt anger like this before. The red glow lightly pours off my own skin and I take notice to it. I compare it to the glow coming off of him. Suddenly, it's an instinct to allow the anger to explode. In doing so, the red glow is taken from his chest as I absorb it all and throw it out in all directions. I yank down, away from the boy holding me just as the red glow gets torn from Pan, absorbed into my hands, and then thrown out all around me. All the boys surrounding us stumble but not by much and the one holding me gets knocked back, I'm free.
You die now, Peter Pan!
I don't waste not one second trying to figure out how the red glow listened to me and blasted into everyone around me. I charge the boy who ruined my life. Only two masked boys are already running at me. And it only took one to take me down. He slams into my chest with his outstretched arm, running passed me. I hit the ground, back first, wind yet again taken from my lungs. The boy in black stands over me.
Pan. His name repeating in my head.
"I told you, that's not how this works," then he brushes his hand over my face lightly.
My eyes fall. Relaxation grabs all my muscles. I breathe deep and slip into unconsciousness.
A/N: Welp, that's it for Part 1! Hope someone out there is enjoying this! So, so, so much more to come, but we're here now! She's in Neverland! No more boring Mainland stuff...
The rest of the book will be in the next work, Part 2!
Please, please, please comment so I can feel good :)
And vote if you want to !
-Jae.