One
???
Once upon a time,I had a name, but I can’t remember what it is.
I know it's not any of the things the humans call me. Not “subject” or “specimen” or, in the case of that one beady-eyed man who mops the floor, “mongrel.” Whatever my name is, it's lost, stolen from me by drugs, time, and disuse along with all the other pieces of my past.
Somewhere in the very back of my mind, my instincts and basic knowledge of the world still survive, but the idea of anything beyond these walls seems almost too intangible to be real.
I know there was a time before this—before the humans in white coats with cruel eyes and cold hands—but the persistentmental haze makes my memories of anything but this place, this cage, and this sterile room faded, colorless, and nearly impossible for me to grasp.
I can’t remember what it felt like to not be a wolf, but I know I have a second form that’s similar to that of my captors.
I can’t remember what the sky looks like, but I know that it’s blue.
And I can’t remember anywhere but here, but I had a home once, somewhere I was happy and loved, and something that’s more of a feeling than an actual memory at this point.
And that feeling, that idea of home and the thought that maybe one day I’d be able to go back there, is the only thing that's kept me going in this place.
But it’s been…
So.
Long.
And any hope I had of ever seeing anything beyond the bars of this cage is fading.
The days… months… years all blur together anymore, and I don't know how much longer I can last.
Something's wrong with me, something more than the so-called treatments they force on me and something the people in white coats don’t understand and can't seem to fix. Over the past few months—or maybe even years, the passage of time is hard to judge in this place—my limbs have grown weaker, my fur sparse and brittle, and my vision blurry.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to die in this place.
Maybe even soon.
A shiver wracks my body, a physical manifestation of the bone-deep cold I can’t seem to shake, and I curl into a ball in the corner with my nose tucked under my tail, the grating of the too-small cage digging into my side. The dim lighting casts most of the room outside the cage in shadow and the scent of chemicalssits heavy in the air, blinding two of my most useful senses and making my tiny, freezing prison seem even more bleak.
Before I started to fade, they at least afforded me a kennel large enough to walk around in and a blanket to sleep on. The blanket came with me into this cage, but they took it soon after to wash away the consequences of their last experiment and never brought it back.
The humans have never been kind, but now they don't seem to care what happens to me at all. Where once there was a kind of malicious curiosity from them, now there’s only bland disappointment.
And I have no idea why.
I don't know what they want from me. I never have. Otherwise, I'd gladly give it to them.
I’m sure whatever knowledge they want has something to do with how I’m different from them, how I have two forms opposed to their one, but they’ve never actuallyaskedme anything. Even though theyknowI’m sentient, know I’m not just the wolf I appear to be, they don’t bother explaining anything to me; not what they inject me with or why, not what they’re looking for, and certainly not why they all seem to hate me so much.
What have I ever done to them?
I wish I knew.
The door to the room swings open, and I squint against the sudden flood of light from the hallway. A man stands silhouetted in the doorway for a moment, the only thing I can clearly make out is the white coat he's wearing, and the sight twists my stomach with fear and nausea.
All the humans here are bad, but the ones who wear white coats are always the worst. The man who mops the floor might sneer and call me names and sometimes even poke at methrough the cage, but the people in the white coats are, more often than not, going to do much more unpleasant things.
Early on, they just took blood and hair and fluids for testing. Later, they cut tissue from my body and sent electricity through my muscles and my brain to study the effects. The electric shocks are what broke apart and scattered my memories, but it’s only been since the injections started that my thoughts truly began to blur around the edges.
The man flicks on the overhead light, and I squeeze my eyes closed at the sudden brightness as the sound of the man’s footsteps approaches my cage. The room goes quiet, and I crack my eyes open to find the man standing about two feet in front of my cage, absentmindedly sliding his finger over the surface of the tablet in his hand, for now not paying me any attention.
