Alive
and Kicking
Layla
Have
you ever noticed that things go wrong in threes – weird, isn’t
it? In the space of a month, three things of yours might break down.
Sometimes it takes less than that and, perhaps in the best cases,
more. Occasionally, each issue is worse than the one previous.
Whatever happens, it’s always threes.
About
a week after where Mercy left off, my third problem
presented itself. Aiden seemed truly out to get me.
“Ah!
Miss Watts, we need to have a
serious
conversation.”
Doc’s
tone of voice grabbed me by the ear. Way to initiate a conversation.
I
paused and faced him a moment. “Haven’t we already had
several?”
I asked, gritting my teeth.
What
could he possibly want now? I’d done this kind of thing for the
last hour, in talk therapy with the others.
“It’s
about something else”, he called after me, for I had resumed
walking.
“And
if I don’t want
to talk?”
“Then
we’ll have a shouting match in this very room, if that’s
what it takes!” His voice rose, as if to show he’d make
good on his word.
‘He’s
going to keep a promise? That's a change’, Mercy commented. ‘What am I missing though?
Oh… yes, he’s the one who said that shouting solves
nothing.’
I
couldn’t help myself; I smirked at the double dose of irony. Of
course, now was precisely
the wrong time for
a private joke.
“This is what I’m
talking about”, said Doc. “Grow up!” The words
stopped me in my tracks.
‘Tell
him to stop it’, Mercy laughed, ‘this is killing m-he-e.’
She burst into hysterical giggles.
“You’re
sixteen”, said Doc earnestly, beckoning me to come closer.
Sixteen…. It hit me like a wave of freezing surf. I’d
spent longer in here, incarcerated, than in the real world.
“You
ought to know better than to take your imaginary friends seriously
by now. They’re not real - am I getting through to you at all?”
“Wouldn’t
you like to possess the imagination to guess what’s really going on in
my head?” I retorted scornfully. “Besides, when have I
ever gotten through to you?”
“Come
with me…” He cut off the exchange, soon to make me eat
my words.
I
guess I should have seen it coming.
I’m
not sure what about it made me follow him. Doing so seemed the most
sensible option, but simultaneously, I was asking myself what could
be more idiotic.
A
few minutes later, we turned down a (rare) unfamiliar corridor, my
outlooks dimming along with the strobe lights above. I noted that
they were older than the rest of the fluorescents. Had no one been
down here?
The
corridor’s entrance was so easily missed it felt more like a
secret passageway. Where it led, I had no clue…
“Where
are we going?” I asked, hoping my voice wasn’t shaking as
much as my body. I rubbed my arms to warm them as we came to rest
outside a heavy looking door.
‘I
don’t want to stick around and see what’s behind it’,
said Mercy. She wasn’t the only one.
He
unlocked the door, held it and motioned for me to go in. The walls
were lined with what looked like really deep, silver pigeon holes,
which blended seamlessly with the clinical colour scheme. Immediately
I noticed a faint but distinct rotten
smell, like
compost, but worse, hanging in the air.
“What
is that?” I asked him, disgusted.
I
leant on the metal lockers a moment, reeling back when I discovered
they were ice cold to the touch. In the next moment it clicked; the
smell had increased as I neared the lockers, and they were overly
frigid.
‘Like
- like on purpose’, stuttered Mercy. ‘Something is
purposefully being kept in these locker things, something that needs
to be kept cool’, she said, the pieces falling into place for
her too.
‘A
morgue – seriously? I had no idea they even had one’,
said Mercy with chagrin that wavered until it became a note of fear.
‘Last I checked, we’re alive, so can we go now?’
The
same thought crossed my mind as I backed across the morgue. Doc
blocked the door menacingly.
“I
– I don’t like this”, I simpered, hoping to evoke
some sympathetic reaction.
He
still looked ready to jump me. “I doubted you would”, he
replied, turning me by the shoulders so I was facing away from the
door. “You can
run but you can’t hide”, he
whispered in my ear, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on
end.
‘Ha bloody ha’, said Mercy. ‘Bite me!’ Sometimes I was glad
that I was the only one who could hear her.
I
was too paralysed with fear to even think coherently anymore, let
alone do anything.
At
that point, some survival instinct kicked in; I managed to shrug off
the doctor’s hands and I stood unsupported. After rebalancing, I
darted round him.
It
looked like I would be running after all…
Calmly,
he prised my fingers away from the door that I’d not long
reached. He pulled me with him by the wrist towards the middle of the
room.
Still
running on adrenaline, I kicked, screamed and struggled against him
but it would take more than that to save me. Next I knew, he let go
of me and I was cast to the cold floor, dazed. What was to happen to
me next?
“You
can’t have a place like this without some… casualties”,
he said conspiratorially. “It simply must
stay quiet though.
Don’t wish to – ah – alarm anybody.”
Translation: don't breathe a word.
That
made two of us with secrets, then. Two of us… more alike than
it seemed; I couldn’t tell if this was actually good or bad.
‘Takes
one to know one’, said Mercy in a sing song voice. She had
rested her case.
Suddenly
I became hyper-aware as he began walking away. The door handle made a
definitive sound as he twisted it that I scrambled to greet. However,
my feet still wouldn’t carry me fast enough, not even with the
spur of hope.
The
door’s locking sounded as if it had been amplified a
hundredfold and felt like a slap in the face. I thought better of
kicking the door, despite my exasperation, but I couldn’t stop
a bottled up cry from escaping.
The
lights winked, leering, taunting me with an opportunity I couldn’t
take. What are you
going to do about it? they
mocked. You
should’ve fought back. When
they shut off altogether, having had out their joke, I got an eerie
feeling like the place was in league with him.
‘Come on!’
growled Mercy.‘Seriously?’ The chagrin was back.
‘How did it
get to this?’ she sighed. ‘He despises you so much, he’ll
do anything to keep you here. How that works when he clearly can’t
stand the sight of you, I’ll never know.’
‘What I
don’t understand is how he shows no remorse whatsoever’,
I replied, grateful for the distraction. ‘He couldn’t
feel sorry for his own flesh and blood if they were in here. He’s
so… detached.’
‘And to
think he’s in the midst of a bunch of sociopaths’, said
Mercy. Again, I got the impression she found this quite funny. All
the while, I tried to ignore the pitch darkness and the nauseating
thought of the corpses in the walls.
Mercy had very
little left to say, apart from ‘It takes one to know one - I
told you so.’
Points: 1093
Reviews: 177
Donate