She was taken back to a time when she was only seven, lying in her own fecal matter, eating the drywall of our mother’s bedroom closet to stay alive. And her fits that enraged those walls I tricked her back into were monstrous. Once I realized that her panic was real, I opened the door, but it was too late. Those one, two, three seconds she had to relive her trauma were enough to trigger a week’s worth of nightmares, sobbing in corners and destroying our belongings in a storm of fury.
What is to come of me if I’m forced to relive my own trauma?
“Help her in,” Belinda instructs behind me. But before I can turn to her to argue, two orderlies lift me off my feet by my elbows and hover me over the tank.
“No, I can’t!” My voice rises in volume, terror sounding off alarms in my mind. I flip my attention down to the open vessel below me, and my stomach twists like I’ve just taken another sip of the poison tea again.
Three girls stand on the tips of their toes to look out of the small window to keep watch.Oh God. No. No. Please. I can’t be left in the dark.
“Put me down!” A breathy order is all that escapes my lips. Air rushes in and out of my mouth. The panic courses through my body, jabbing into my ribs and flaring through my chest like a tunnel to circulate all negative energy.
Despite my rigid body as I hover over the tank, the stares from the small crowd in the room are wildly amused. Anticipating the demonstration of my destruction.I can’t go in there.“Please, don’t!” I scream again as they lower me into the metal coffin. My motor functions are flipped on, and my arms and legs thrash about, kicking at nothing in particular. Blood rushes to my face and scalp, and pulses of heat radiate through me like an oven, roaring with untamed flames.
My bottom hits the metal floor first, then my back as I’m pushed downward to lie down. I brace myself for an episode to send me into an epileptic shock or even an aneurysm to put me out for good.
“In you go!” grunts an orderly.
“I saidno!” I scream now, like a banshee burning at the stake. Frightful tears are released from a dam behind my eyes. Someone has to hear me—anyone outside of these doors. Suseas? Judas?
“Once you close the doors on the patient—”
“No!” I choke out with fresh tears running down my cheeks. I throw my hands up to stop the metal top from coming down on me, but the orderlies hurl their body weight onto it, driving it shut.
I blink over and over again, waiting to see a light that will not come. “Let me out, please!” But I’m suddenly convinced that my lungs are out of oxygen. Convinced I’m in one of my nightmares.
I hear Meridei instructing the group on how to turn on the contraption. A muffled voice. A few metal clinks and a humming sound rumbles on the left side of the tank. I remember what she said about the oxygen tube. The drugs that Demechnef provided. In my next breath, I can taste it. Oddly enough, it’s familiar. I can’t remember where I’ve smelled it before. Like bleach and saline. My silence encourages a wave of laughter.
“Please don’t do this to me!” I bang on the walls of the tank once more. Not able to see my own arms moving to make contact with the metal, unlocking a new sense of dread, a detachment to reality, ultimately sending me into a monstrous panic attack.
37. Welcome to Hell
I try to take shallowbreaths because if I don’t breathe as much of the drug in, I can make it out unscathed. But even that logic isn’t solid enough to grasp. Ihaveto breathe.
I start to scream louder, banging my hands against the metal ceiling and gasping on my sobs. “HELP ME!” More saline and bleach–scented air pulses through my throat, snaking into my lungs and staining my insides.
A hand catches my left arm before it strikes the metal again. Above me, a fluorescent light shines on a body hovering above my own, holding my wrist, glaring at me with a thin milky film that glazes over her eyes. Her hair is straight and long, and her face… well, her face ismyface.
“Scarlett?”
“Hi, Skylenna.” Blotchy bruises cover the soft pockets under her eyes, and her skin is a corpse shade of gray, nearly translucent like a puff of smoke. “I don’t like it down here.” She frowns, still suspended over me, as if she’s attached to thin strings.
“I—what’s going on? You’re not—aliveanymore. How—how are you here?”
“I’m not doing so well,” she says, still squeezing my wrist like a handcuff that was bound too tightly.
“Scarlett… I thought I’d never see you again.” The urge to howl in pain and break into another sobbing attack is pinging at the bottom of my gut.
She shakes her head. I now see the dislocation from her skull to her neck, and her head swivels side to side. “It’s dark down here.”
“Where are we?” I’m stunned. I can’t remember how I got here. The darkness, cold and empty, like sinking to the bottom of the ocean, all while remaining dry.
I focus on her face as it becomes a little clearer. The skin around her lips is a light shade of blue, and some hair is missing on the top of her head, leaving cotton-like clumps. Her thin, white dress is covered in patches of dirt, flowing like gentle ripples in water.
“It’s nice of you to visit me, but you shouldn’t stay long. There are lots of things you’d sooner not experience if you had to choose.”
“Whereare we, Scarlett?” I ask again.
“The Bible did say I’d go here. I can’t blame it for that. But sister, I left my favorite books at the cottage, and I don’t get any blueberry pie here. I keep bleeding between my legs, and those men”—her milky eyes grow wide—“they keep coming back.” Her voice quivers, and her bottom lip curls. And like a row of dominoes, her eyes well up with tears glistening around the rim of her red lids. “You see, there’s no one to hold me here when I get scared. I can’t find any water to drink. There’s also no one to talk to. But the nasty things tell me Iaskedfor this! They come around a lot to set me on fire and laugh at me!” Her soft voice that was shaky with fear, is now shouting. “It burns! I beg God to save me, but he won’t come! He doesn’t love me!No oneloves me!”
