16+ for use of mild swear words.
“You love it here. Everything is perfect. The food is delicious. You don’t miss your friends or family. You don’t want to go home. Everything you could ever want is right here. You love the injections. The injections are great. They make you feel happy and relaxed. You will do anything asked of you. You want to follow orders. When you follow orders, you get the injections. You love the injections. You love it here. Everything is perfect…”
The words seemed to drone on and on forever, the same, monotonous voice repeated over a thousand times before I was aware of it. And even then, you could hardly call it aware.
I didn’t understand what the words meant, like I was just hearing them, listening to someone from another language repeat the same, unimportant phrase again and again. The words started to blur together, to become indifferent. To become one long, incessant sound like a fly ramming its head into the window, again and again.
I think I might have tried to ignore them, but I already was ignoring them. I wasn’t listening, but there it was – just the same words, melting into the background like a rising plume of steam. Always there, but never understood. Even when I became aware of them, when I tried to grab a hold of their sounds, the words slipped through my fingers, licking at them with certain warmth. The feeling lingered, but I was left untouched by the sounds, which were still flittering on the edge of my thoughts. Like a fly.
Always there, but never understood. No matter how hard I tried.
*_*
I woke with a gradual sense of awareness. Maybe I was always awake, but never realised it. My senses started to switch on one by one, but they were all on from the beginning. They were all off until the end. I could not say how long I was lying there, but it could have ranged from a whole night to a few minutes; maybe even a few seconds.
As my conscious started to warm up, the words were getting fainter. I tried to hold onto them, to grasp at them like the stream of smoke that they were, but by the time I realised what I was doing, I couldn’t hear the words anymore. They were gone; it was as if they were never even there.
I soon gave up even attempting to remember what I was doing, I soon forgot that I ever was attempting. I was just hanging there, in the void, somewhere between asleep and awake, but never thinking about it. Just lying there.
If only.
There was a warm blanket of content enveloping me, suffocating me of all my bad thoughts. It was to this subtle warmth that I woke up, and I snuggled deeper into my burrow of sheets and duvets, trying to keep a hold of that nice, soft feeling. I lay there for as long as I could, yearning to stop time and stay suspended in that moment forever, hanging in the balance of healthy and happy; a medium that is seldom ever achieved.
But all good things have to end sometime, and as soon as I built up the will to open my eyes, I was crushed by the world. Everything came flooding into my mind at once, swamping me with feelings and emotions, questions and thoughts. The torrent of awareness washed over any happy thoughts and drowned my blanket of contempt.
It was like watching the Titanic sink, slowly being covered wave after wave of reality. The salty waters lapped at the corners of my consciousness, enveloping every last morsel of happy thoughts I had, bringing with them the inevitable feelings of which I would ultimately succumb. Each individual bubble of air striking the surface meant another moment lost, until it was all gone. The happiness and content had been submerged and crushed by the weight of everything, tumbling further and further down into the depths of my subconscious.
“Where am I?” I yelled, as soon as I could see that this wasn’t my bedroom. Which was immediately.
The soft painted yellow walls, decorated with posters and pages ripped out of magazines, had been replaced with a bright white. It was almost as if the walls had been replaced with fluorescent light bulbs, illuminating the room with their impeccable coat. The ceiling was bordered by a slightly darker shade, a frieze pattern running around it where the roof meets wall. It looked Greek.
“Hello..?” I called into the silence, half expecting my echo to bounce off the walls back at me. At the same time I sat up and rubbed my eyes, flicking away a small fleck of sleep onto the slightly grey carpet. That was a lot cleaner than home, too. It was either vacuumed for hours yesterday, or replaced just before I arrived. There weren’t even clumps of dirt in the far corner, where the door was.
But why was I wasting time looking at the carpet? There were much more exciting things in the room. Like the television mounted into the wall opposite me. Now why would I want a television in my bedroom, I thought, when I don’t even know where I am?
As if it was tuning into my thoughts, it flickered to life - at once showing a beautiful island surrounded by sparkling shades of water. My eyes darted to the window on my left side, still covered by spotless blinds. I leaned forwards a little to take a peek out the corner. I was on the island. Well, that’s what it looked like, anyway. I could have been anywhere.
I tried to remember anything after last night, but I couldn’t. Mellissa’s sixteenth. Late night. Sneaking in. Falling asleep…
And then I was there.
But I wasn’t worried. Not at all.
Which should have worried me, but it felt like there was something to be happy about. I didn’t want to go home; not when I was on an island with the sun shining and the water sparkling. Won’t everyone be jealous when I get back with a tan? I thought. And then the picture of the island started moving, and it zoomed in on a small point.
Just to put it in perspective, they zoomed in on a hotel. It looked flash, with balconies on each floor stretching out onto the hill behind it. In all, it looked like a set of stairs running along the hill in length, until half way up it stopped. There was a helicopter pad on the roof, where the camera landed and did a panorama of the view.
The island seemed to be in the middle of the ocean, nothing in sight right up to the horizon. The bush looked like it had been there for hundreds of years, untouched.
A voiceover started, and instead of selling the island like a tourist location it said, “Today we’ve got a special guest here on Tau’tavaka Island.” It skipped to the camera slowly running down a hallway one of those dolly tracks. White walls, white doors. It almost looked like a hospital that had been stripped of all equipment.
A tiny seed of logic was sprouting in my mind; could the special guest be me? No way. I don’t even know how I got here. It will be some kind of celebrity.
It went half way down the corridor and swung around to face a door. 2015. I was suddenly excited; who is it? Will I know them? A celebrity from TV? A movie star? Who, who, who?
“Let’s see how they’re finding the place…” A hand reached in front of the camera and knocked on the door. But this was louder than the voice over had been. And, unlike it would have if it were on TV, it echoed. Around my room. There was a TV crew outside my bedroom.
No, I told myself sternly. You’re being stupid. You’re imagining things. Go back to sleep.
But I couldn’t help it that my eyes were creeping towards the door, then flicking back to the TV screen to see the doorknob being turned. A creaking sound as the springs moved inside the door handle…
The door opened at the exact same moment the TV turned off. A small woman dressed in entirely white walked a pace inside, and stopped. I didn’t notice it before, but my breathing was heavy, heart pumping fast. When I saw the door open I almost jumped in fright. But there was something there, trying to calm me down. I could feel it, tugging at my heart, dragging it down. My lungs made longer, deeper breaths and then returned to normal.
My eyes were still searching for the camera; I must be the special guest.
“Come along now. Time for your injection.” She held out a hand and beckoned me forwards. My eyes moved towards her lips, taking in the great smile she was supporting. Why can’t I be that happy? I thought. Maybe that’s why I’m here. They want to make me happy.Maybe it was a hidden camera? I checked her top - a button? Her abnormally large ear ring? Where was the camera?
“My injection?” I furrowed my brow and then relaxed. It was like a wave of calm washed through me, slowing my blood and telling me it was alright. “Injections are… great?” I had heard the assertion before, but no where that I could remember. If I didn’t hear anyone say it, then I must have thought it, I reasoned. The woman nodded and beckoned again. I smiled.
~~TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW!~~
