Rose
I turned eighteen a few days ago. The only person to wish me a happy birthday was Joe.
He remembers everyone’s birthday, even the janitors’.
All of these special days and mine didn’t count to anyone other than the man that lied about speaking French.
Crétin.
I wasn’t a genius on my birthday.
I was imbecilely hopped up on hope and because I wrestled with keeping the violence from its inevitable and magnificent eruption, I ended up in solitary. Which is where I am now, the bleach and urine welcoming me back with the singeing scent of a poor cleaning job.
There’s still blood on my shirt. If I bring my shirt close enough, I can smell it; its metallic tang kicking my inner nostrils a little differently than the room’s scent. My mind is still reeling from the sweet release of anger, hot and spurting out of me like blood from an artery. I imagine this release is my highest high.
Causing pain makes me feel like I have control. I feel, you feel. I hurt, you hurt. I stab, you bleed.
Joe came in when I was already two hours into solitary, asking me how long I’d been in here and if I’d work on myself.
No.
“I’m not apologetic,” I tell him. “I don’t want to change and I don’t want to be ‘better.’” Because of that, I am still in this box. No one breaks up the time; no one checks in. I stop counting once I hit thirty-six hours.
Joe likes that he thinks he knows me so well, with his titles and names for what he thinks is wrong with me. For knowing that I count.
In an effort to become unrecognizable, I lie down on the floor and sleep.
Now I’m not sure how long I’ve been here.
I don’t know anything except the sounds of the violent turmoil that landed me in here.
I’m not sure I’m so intelligent anymore.
Wait.
I know I don’t want to spend another birthday at Silverwing.
I’ll end my own life before that happens.
“?”
I open my eyes but I don’t sit up and I don’t face Joe. I’m hoping that if I annoy him, he’ll keep the nurses from strapping me down and attempting to force-feed me, he’ll stop wasting sedatives on me and I’ll just die right here on the rough tiles, soaked in terrible scents. Any way to get out of here.
I don’t know how many days it’s been but I know I haven’t eaten during any of them, a bold venture since I know the feeding tube will show up at some point. I haven’t showered. I’ve willed myself to sleep as often as I can on this hard floor.
I want to rebel against my plan and this place. I want to stand and rip Joe’s eyes from their sockets. I want to yank him inside and lock him in this room with me as I tear into his soft flesh with one of the fancy engraved pens he keeps in his left breast pocket. Directly over his heart.
My plan keeps me from doing anything but lying there.
Hope is a wicked thing. Hope macerates the genius in me.
“, are you ready to talk about this?”
No.
“Don’t you want to leave this room?”
And abandon the puddle of urine that’s been keeping me company?
I am an animal. They keep me in this room like a feral dog in a kennel. They are afraid of me so they subdue me with their drugs and they think they can control me. They weaken me and poke and prod at me but I will never fold again.
“You have to eat, .”
Or you’ll use a tube to feed me again? Part of me almost turns to talk. I hate the feeding tube, the way it burns on the way in and stings on the way out.
He remains by the door.
Maybe Joe does know a thing or two about me.
“Are you upset with me, Rosamunde? Are you awake?”
Finally — because I am eighteen, after all—I turn onto my back. I don’t speak but at least he can see I’m awake, that way I can tell him I do not consent to the feeding tube. But my lack of consent never stops them.
We don’t need your consent anymore, their eyes say . Something else left at the front door beside my forgotten respect. My consent now kept it company, both waiting for the day I walk out of here.
They wait in vain, according to Dr. Brown.
“If I get you out of here, will you eat? And continue your medication? It isn’t good for you to stop taking them.”
Oh, this faux concern.
I haven’t taken my medication in years. I store the pills in my cheek, against my gums, so when they check, they don’t see them. Then I spit them out in the bathroom and eat the bland oatmeal they peddle for breakfast.
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
I stare at the high, speckled ceiling, wishing I could somehow launch through it, back to freedom. I think of all the things I’d love right now. A cheeseburger and a bazooka immediately come to mind. Extra pickles on the former.
Given the chance, I’d aim the latter right at this building and smile as it decimates the place that punishes me for being myself.
Growing up, my teachers would always tell me to be myself. To never change to try to fit in. “Be who you are,” they said. “You were born to stand out.”
I took those words to heart, never understanding that as long as you followed the standards set in place by society, you’d be accepted. Being myself used to be conditional in the real world. And then I came here and I was no longer offered even the possibility of being an individual. I wear the same clothes every other patient does: blue scrubs with no shape and no drawstrings, and thick socks that catch all the dirt on the floor. I am another number to them, a percent, a cow in their rotation of livestock. So when I turn to face Joe, I can only think of one message I’d like to convey after sitting in this room that was engineered to break me.
“I would like to no longer be an object you own.”