By Zsofia DeCheke ’26
Source: Walk My World
The scent of something rotting assaults my nostrils, permeating the air with its all-consuming stench. Its strength alone is enough to make me want to pass out again, but I force myself to sit up.
Bad idea. There’s a lurching sensation in my stomach and I lean over, retching. My vomit hits the floor with a sickening splat.
I’m so focused on trying to stay conscious that it’s a while before I realize that the rotting smell is coming from my own vomit. I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. The nausea is not helping; the floor moves below me like a wildly swinging pendulum and I feel like I’m losing my grip.
I must stay awake, I think over and over again like a mantra. Who knows what state I’ll find myself in if I give in, if I’m even still alive at the end of my stay here.
In an effort to calm myself, I focus on reaching my hands out to touch the floor, which is smooth and cool under my palms. I’m careful to avoid touching the spot where I think my vomit went, my eyes still shut. Despite the fact that I am entirely cloaked in soft fabric, I feel open, exposed, as though I am being watched. I wonder fleetingly about who is out there and where I might be, but a spasm shakes me. I try to cry out for help as I double over, fading in and out of the waking world, but my voice is dead in my throat. The formlessness hits me and I am gone, swallowed in a wave of darkness.
~
The girl is trapped in a glass cage, waiting. Her beady eyes track what should be completely invisible movement on the other side of the one-way glass. Yet there is something knowing in her glance that suggests she isn’t quite as blind to the outside world as they might hope…
“I know you’re out there,” the girl says, her voice barely a croak. She hacks out a cough, running a dry tongue over her lips. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot as she lets out a harsh laugh.
“You want to torture this body, my body, to… what? Draw me out? It won’t work, you mindless sons of -” She bends over, holding a trembling hand to her stomach.
“Sedative for Patient 402F, please,” says a woman’s voice in a cool, calculating tone. A syringe on a long robotic arm extends from the wall over to the girl. The needle has only just pierced the trembling girl when she falls to the floor, unconscious but still breathing.
From somewhere outside the cage, the same woman’s voice says, “At this rate we’ll never get there. This half is far too troublesome. Hit the lights before we leave; I need to get to Sector Five to report this.”
The door falls into place with a click, and then all is silent.
~
I’m not sure how much time has passed since I last opened my eyes, but I do know that my nausea has at least somewhat subsided. I force myself to open my eyes.
I’m in a completely pristine room with mirrors covering every surface, almost floating in its aura. It’s too beautiful to be real, too plain to be a hallucination. I can see myself from every angle: the simple robes I’m wearing, my matted hair. I try to straighten it out, but there’s no use. It’s about as bad as a jungle. I stare dejectedly at the ceiling.
Soon, I find myself wondering why I’m here at all. I search my mind for any memory, but come up short. It’s like my mind is a whiteboard and someone has erased all the answers. I have no memory of anything beyond that first smell, the one of rotting vomit, though there seems to be no trace of it here. I can’t have been out for that long, could I? I would have died of starvation by now. There don’t look to be any doors in or out of this place.
My mind returns to the idea of my memory being wiped. Was I just born with some condition that predisposes me to it? Should I be happy that I’m getting a clean slate, or upset that a core part of me is missing? And how the hell is any of this possible? I groan and press my hands to my temples. None of this adds up, and I am no closer to discovering the cause for this predicament than I was a minute ago.
I let myself mull over a few theories, ranging from hallucinations to mental illness to disassociation, before the need for sleep kicks in. I welcome it, relief washing over me as I ease into a comfortable position and close my eyes.
Unfortunately, I find myself in the waking world again far too soon. I suppose my brain is still running on pure, instinctual fear of the unknown, making it impossible to sleep for long enough to get real rest.
Now that I think of it, there’s one question that’s been consuming me for a while: how am I still not hungry? Even without a watch, I can tell it’s been days, yet my stomach feels full. Am I just delusional?
Perhaps there is someone watching me, after all. I call out desperately for an answer, but there is no response. What was I expecting? Of course no one would listen to my nonsensical pleas. I busy myself with counting the threads on my sleeve, not wanting to make myself feel worse about the situation. I’m at number one thousand, two hundred seven when I feel the weight of sleepiness dragging on me again. I am thankful for this respite from my own thoughts, and slip away into the darkness, easy as breathing.
~
By now, the girl has quieted down enough to be talked to. The woman interviews her at every chance, asking her whether she knows anything about soul-splitting, or tesseracts, or Alternates, but all she gets in return is a derisive laugh or a defiant response that only makes the sharp edge in the woman’s voice harden.
“You’re mad at me,” the girl teases the woman, sticking out her tongue.
She’s right, but the woman will never admit it. Even so, the girl can hear her frustration in the way she slams the door, shaking the air. It only makes her laugh harder.
~
The times I spend awake are blurring together more and more. I find it difficult to distinguish between my imagination and my actual memories. At least it was interesting in the beginning – perhaps not pleasant, but I had something more to do than sit with my thoughts as they run in circles.
I still try calling out every now and then to whoever might be listening, but there is never a response. I’m not sure what I can possibly do to stave off the boredom. It hangs over me like a dark cloud, consuming my thoughts. I’ve taken to pacing the room and counting anything I can lay my eyes on – not just the stitches in my robes anymore, but the number of mirror panels in the walls, the number of steps it takes to go around the room ten times. The number of spots I can see on the mirrors (which is none, by the way).
I am getting desperate, even if I don’t want to admit it to myself. There’s nothing here beyond these empty, unyielding walls. I am in an infinite space suspended in infinite time, but can reach none of it. Is this is what a black hole is like for a light particle? I try to recall anything and everything I know about photons, but once again I can only recall the surface-level understanding of such a topic, never mind where I learned it.
It’s a wonder I’m so civil, I think wryly.
All of these ideas are just distractions from the real issue at hand; I know I’ll go insane at some point…
The only question is when.
~
Today, the girl sits in a chair, facing her captors for the first time. She does not resist, does not protest, as they tie her hands and feet to the chair. At first glance, it’s as if she is dead. But her breath has not yet been stolen from her mouth, and her mind’s wings not yet clipped by the captors’ knives. There is hope for her yet, hiding in the spark in her eyes, in the set expression of her face. No chain can hold her slippery thoughts.
When the woman finally reaches her chair facing the girl, the distance between them shrinks. It’s like looking at two reflections of a soul across lifetimes. The shadow of the old, the vibrance of the new. If things had gone differently, perhaps the girl would be the one sitting in that chair, arms free of their shackles, interviewing a child just like her.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like she’ll be free anytime soon. There is something wrong with her. Something distinctly other, as though some strange, alternate soul inside of the girl was fighting to reemerge and take control.
It’s only a matter of time before the wall between those souls breaks down, and the woman knows it. Every question she asks, every pointed glance, pulls the girl sitting across from her closer and closer to oblivion. In the end, like matter and antimatter when combined, there will be nothing left, only the infinitesimal ripples in the fabric of spacetime.
The woman would never admit it, but a small part of her enjoys watching as each little ripple fades away, unnoticed by the rose-tinted eyes of the world.
Yet an even smaller part of her knows something far more treacherous: she is a failed ripple herself. The product of what never should have been. That first small part of her may revel in the tortured expressions of the ones she tears apart, but the second, smaller part rues the day she’ll face the consequences of her actions.
The day she’ll have to look in that mirror.
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