His eyebrow is missing a ring they must’ve confiscated. His arms are tatted up, half sleeves to his elbows. To torture me, to torment me, to keep me from sleeping through the night ever again. He grins but he’s not smiling and I want to cry, my eyes desperate, terrified, darting toward the door I’d tried to open so many times I’d lost count. “And you’re a girl.” He cocks an eyebrow. I stifle my scream my urgency to run the crippling horror gripping my limbs. My eyes open to 2 eyes 2 lips 2 ears 2 eyebrows. I sit up on the cloth-covered springs I’m forced to sleep on. I roll my little notebook into a ball I shove into the wall. I practice using my voice, shaping my lips around the familiar words unfamiliar to my mouth. Talking to a real human being might make things easier. Abandon the effort it takes to write things down. I grab my nearly useless pen with the very little ink I’ve learned to ration each day and stare at it. We are both alone, both existing as the absence of something else.

I press my palm to the small pane of glass and feel the cold clasp my hand in a familiar embrace. The only existence I know now is the one I was given. But I have very faint memories of that world. Our sun was always the right kind of light. There aren’t as many trees as there were before, is what the scientists say. The gust catches their withered wings only to force them downward, forgotten, left to be trampled by the soldiers stationed just below. A million leaves from a hundred different branches dip in the wind, fluttering with the false promise of flight. The sun drops into the ocean and splashes browns and reds and yellows and oranges into the world outside my window. I know my parents never bothered to say good-bye. I only know that I was transported by someone in a white van who drove 6 hours and 37 minutes to get me here. No one cares that I didn’t know what I was capable of.

The same people who pulled me out of my parents’ home and locked me in an asylum for something outside of my control.

The initiative that was supposed to help our dying society. They are the minions of The Reestablishment. “Another psycho just like you No more isolation,” they said to me. “We hope you rot to death in this place For good behavior,” they said to me.

“You’re getting a cellmate roommate,” they said to me. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.Ħ,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being. I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company.

Shatter me book free