I don’t know what was in that needle, but the effects are unlike anything I’ve experienced. I feel both awake and asleep, like I’m spinning in place, like there’s too much grease turning the wheels in my brain and I try to speak and realize my lips no longer move on command. My father carries my limp body into a blindingly silver room, props me up in a chair, straps me down, and panic pours into me, hot and terrifying, flooding my mind. I try to scream. Fail. My brain is slowly disconnecting from my body, like I’m being removed from myself. Only basic, instinctual functions seem to work. Swallowing. Breathing.
Crying.
Tears fall quietly down my face and my father whistles a tune, his movements light and easy even as he sets up an IV drip. He moves with such startling efficiency I don’t even realize he’s removed my manacles until I see the scalpel.
A flash of silver.
The blade is so sharp he meets no resistance as he slices clean lines into my forearms and blood, blood, heavy and warm, spills down my wrists and into my open palms and it doesn’t seem real, not even when he stabs several electrical wires into my exposed flesh.
The pain arrives just seconds later.
Pain.
It begins at my feet, blooms up my legs, unfurls in my stomach and works its way up my throat only to explode behind my eyes,inside my brain, and I cry out, but only in my mind, my useless hands still limp on the armrests, and I’m so certain he’s going to kill me—
but then he smiles.
And then he’s gone.
I lie in agony for what feels like hours.
I watch, through a delirious fog, as blood drips off my fingertips, each drop feeding the crimson pools growing in the folds of my pants. Visions assault me, memories of a girl I might’ve been, scenes with people I might’ve known. I want to believe they’re hallucinations, but I can’t be certain of anything anymore. I don’t know if Max and Evie are planting things in my mind. I don’t know that I can trustanything I might’ve once believed about myself.
I can’t stop thinking about Emmaline.
I’m adrift, suspended in a pool of senselessness, but something about her keeps tugging, sparking my nerves, errant currents pushing me to the surface of something—an emotional revelation—that trembles into existence only to evaporate, seconds later, as if it might be terrified to exist.
This goes on and on and on and on and on
Lightyears.
Eons.
over
and
over
whispers of clarity
g a s p so fo x y g e n
and I’m tossed back out to sea.
Bright, white lights flicker above my head, buzzing in unison with the low, steady hum of engines and cooling units. Everything smells sharp, like antiseptic. Nausea makes my head swim. I squeeze my eyes shut, the only command my body will obey.
Me and Emmaline at the zoo
Me and Emmaline, first trip on a plane
Me and Emmaline, learning to swim
Me and Emmaline, getting our hair cut
Images of Emmaline fill my mind, moments from the first years of our lives, details of her face I never knew I could conjure. I don’t understand it. I don’t know where they’re coming from. I can only imagine that Evie put these images here, but why Evie would want me to seethis, I don’t understand. Scenes play through my head like I might be flipping through a photo album, and they make me miss my sister. They make me remember Evie as my mother. Make me remember I had a family.
Maybe Evie wants me to reminisce.
