What did we tell you Jimin.
Jimin had a fine finger scratched at a hung screw on the wooden table.
He grew discerned by the woman sat at a chair in front of him.
With her tea and sugar.
"May I hav-"
"Tell me what you see." A blotchy inked drawing was torn towards Jimin's face before he could proceed with the question.
"Pardon, miss?" Jimin looked through thinning eyes.
"Tell me what you see." She knocked at Jimin's head.
Jimin held the area, shameful before eyeing back at the art.
It looked printed, nothing drawn with intention. But he would be honest,
Tell her what you see.
"A rabbit."
The nurse held the paper, holes sworn through its upper edge from her grip.
"What color is the rabbit."
Jimin shook his head.
"I- Pardon?"
"The damn color Park." The nurses were always unkind. Maybe they treated him this way for him to be in-formalized with disrespect.
Jimin's eye blew with belittlement by the missing approval for him to speak much beyond the answer of her question.
But he didn't see much color. It was only ink anyways, so he told her what he saw. The color.
"The rabbit is white."
The ink was black.
She smiled, tossing the paper to wave at the floor.
Jimin looked down. He was done now, she would leave him with his pills.
She stood, Jimin's head raising further to follow.
He stared up at her, her position inanimate before she had a taser to his lower jaw.
His palms scrapped onto the timber table, that same screw tearing across the skin above it.
It dug further when the nurse released the tasing to begin again once Jimin hardly met his rehabilitated breathing.
He convulsed, his hair providing correction to his distressed appearance, holding over his face.
She let Jimin go, his body left to teeter at the reminiscing shock therapy.
"Reevaluate your conditioning. I will meet with you again in two days." She found her self-affection well approved enough for her to leave without misconduct.
Jimin's head bent back on his chair, hair laid back to allow the air to dilute the heat to his face.
He choked to lean forward, spiting.
He didn't move, restless in his own head as to how he could have responded instead to have never received the penalty. He didn't know what he did wrong. He knew she didn't like the answer, but it shouldn't have made him ignorant.
It never should.
He laughed, wiping his cheek before holding his palm up from the table, his other hand below to catch the dripping blood.
"But I saw the rabbit, he was white." He kept his smile.
"I am not wrong, nurse." His laughter was disquieting, enough for more punishment.
No discipline could right where he was not wrong.
And he
Was not
Wrong.
"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run." He'd sing to himself, swaying at the glamorized use of his mentality.
"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.
Bang, bang, bang, bang goes the farmer's gun..." He took a bleeding hand to shape a gun, bending it to point at his head.
"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run, run. Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run... Don't give the farmer his fun, fun, fun." And the hand pointed,
To the clock on the wall.
"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...
Bang goes the Rabbit's gun."
xxx
"Excuse me miss?" Jimin was able to find himself looking out for a while to catch a nurse that was walking by.
The nurse groaned, tearing her heels harshly to turn around and grimace.
"I believe my cell was skipped for dinner." He frowned, poking further through the rectangular window of the steel door.
"No, it wasn't." She walked off.
Jimin paused to cry out and beg for a meal, but he wouldn't get her to listen.
Never could, with anyone.
He stepped away, pulling at the weight of his shackles to wane over to the metal framed bed, a mattress perished enough to draw him sick and give him another night of bruises on the side he'd sleep on.
He'd ask for water from the next nurse, but that'd be hours before she'd come by, and he was sure that word was said to keep famine to the man behind his cell.
Him.
He hasn't had water in two days either. Not since the nurse that last saw him. He figured it was mere punishment to restrict him of hydration. Or maybe they saw the man hydrate him in secret the other day.
But nobody was around to see.
Nonetheless, now he was being denied meals.
His therapist didn't even show for the day she promised, so things might remain unmoving for some time.
Jimin peered to the water that leaked onto the windowsill from the rain.
After given thought to the silence of nurses and doctors, he fell to his knees to haul over and level his mouth below the drops, taking the bits of water that had remained.
His head sunk, and he rolled over to the floor.
The shackles still snared his ankles, and his stomach could hardly bare the presence of solitude.
He'd cry like this often, pulled up to grab his knees and lay unaware of the abiding wails of other patients.
And it gave him the ability to delude his body and mind.
He would sleep like this. Sleep towards his free will, or misplace it even further.
His attempts to daze himself were often bound by the motion and noise of time, an unattended clock fixed to the wrong hour he'd always count.
10:06 was the time now.
How many times could he sing the rabbit to run before the hand could move to a new numeral.
Ten times. His singing fell low and unclear.
Down that rabbit hole.
He'd fallen asleep.
xxx
The sun kept discrete, but many could tell it was morning.
Jimin had cut his face again.
He was awake.
He had to clean himself quickly though, since another doctor had come into his room.
It wasn't the day for blood tests, the time for medication, nor was there an occasion for group sessions.
"You have a visitor. Move to the showers beforehand."
He was allowed to bathe, he'd count the blessing.
After his wash, he panicked to find a stopwatch beneath his pillow. One he carried whenever he'd be placed somewhere where there'd be no clock to hear.
The doctors found him, the watch hidden in hand before they dragged him out of his cell.
He was still strung by chains and the humming of his song before he was let go and hauled into the visitation room.
He grudged his temper to sit in the chair, pushing forward to look up to the visitor.
"Hi Jimin."
Jimin did not know this man.
"Hi." He didn't beg a question though, because he had company.
The man looked to Jimin's hand, ignoring the fresh scar across his face.
"What's that you got?" He pointed.
Jimin looked to his hands, the stopwatch he held to subdue his anxieties kept between them.
"A um, a clock."
"Let me see." This man was happier than Jimin.
Jimin put the clock down, the face of the clock dusted with remnants of exclusion.
The man smiled, pleased by the use of sentiment for the clock.
"Look, it's like mine. Take this, it will last you longer." The man handed away the clock of his own, reaching out to take Jimin's before a hand gripped his wrist to tear it aside.
"Do not touch." Jimin was stoic, the utterance enough to insistently apprise the man.
"This, is a fair trade." The man grimaced, unmoving underneath Jimin's grip.
"Your management of time has no value to mine." Jimin would not let go.
At all.
"Oh Jimin. Jimin. You have no idea." And the watch was torn away from him.
"Give it back!"
"Jimin, one of my dearest, don't pester me of a trade to which you have been given something unparalleled to what I have taken." The man reigned on a taunt to look at Jimin and instill a cowardly appearance from him, swinging the stopwatch.
"I care nothing of price. I have nothing to do with it. I want my clock-" He jumped to reach for his watch again.
"Ah, to use simpler terms, you have taken something from me, and I am giving you something to replace what's mine, just to get it back." The stranger dialed a finger, proving Jimin to appear naive when he proceeded with a snarky tone.
"Excuse me!?" Jimin began to scratch at the desk, his nails already having been more than receded.
"Ahh, Jimin... Never, take the gun from the rabbit."
Jimin paused.
"What..?"
The man smiled, kneeling forward at the glass phased between them.
"Run rabbit, run, run, run..."
Jimin shoved his seat back.
"Run Jimin, run Jimin, run, run, run. Don't give the rabbit his fun, fun, fun."
"Nurse-!" Jimin turned back only for the man to grab his hand again and pull him forward, gently.
"Shhhhh, wait wait no, no... I heard you humming it." He was meant to reassure Jimin.
He didn't.
"You're threatening me-"
"And what grudge do I hold above you for me to gesture a threat." The red hair of the other became a distraction whenever it allowed a red eye to finally peer through.
"I wouldn't know, I don't even know you! I've lost my memory since I've come here. So I lack reason." Jimin had an appearance of his own, so a rogue eye was the least important thing to him now.
"Your memory is unwanted now. It didn't do much but feed sadism before, hm?" His finger continued to tap the back of Jimin's hand.
"That's threatening." Jimin shook, finding himself not wanting to take the physical touch away.
"How so?"
"Times up-" The man stuttered, stuck with open lips and a still body.
The man had clicked Jimin's, his stopwatch.
The hands on it stopped.
He smiled, waving the clock side to side to twist where Jimin's eyes would follow.
"We want to help you gather yourself Jimin. You'll be released on good behavior in two weeks, if you so choose to behave..."
"I am good, I behave." Jimin stood slightly, enthused by the idea of release.
He'd have his free will.
"Behaving isn't being well-mannered and honest. It's feeding the people who want something from you. You tell your nurses what they want to hear, and you ask them for nothing. You will starve and hurt during this time, but you will live." The touch was gone, and so was Jimin's thrill.
"I don't think I should leave."
The man snickered, holding the clock up to cover one eye.
"I don't need two able eyes to seek fiddling truths. In time, I've learned how to use an eye, for..." He pointed to the clock blinding half his sight.
"An eye."
Jimin parted his hands to scratch the cracks in the glass. The clock remained over the others eye, time seemingly deposited into that man's possession.
"Wha-" Jimin looked back at the inert doctor.
He wouldn't move, and seemed to miss the conscience to do so.
"What do I do when I leave? I don't have anyone to take me-"
"You'll know exactly where to go. Follow the white rabbit-"
"Or." Another man set a cigarette aside Jimin's wrist.
"You follow the feline. He'd know better."
The man that sat to visit first looked up, roughly offended.
The red hair of one and the very deep cyan on the other came to Jimin's attraction, but it would never stray his curiosity.
"The finest cigarette, a gift from a friend. He couldn't come today." The new visitor was quieter. Kept with intriguing, playful manners, rather than someone who's simply shy.
"Whichever you decide to follow, will lead you to the same place. Your experience with getting there, may just vary." The shorter of the two remained standing, momentarily before the red-haired man stood too.
"But... How will I know which is better?" Jimin figured that if his option came to two, one had to be a bit more gracious.
"Follow whichever you'd like,
They're both mad."