Chapter 9 #2
“You don’t have to understand it,” she said peaceably. “Just try to answer it. If life was in your hand, would you unclench your fist?”
“No,” I gasped, “I would hold on to it. That’s what you mean, right?”
But she didn’t clarify if this was what she meant. She picked up her clipboard, scribbled something on the clean piece of paper, and moved on. “During your last assessment you expressed excitement for a new job,” she prodded.
Something sank inside me, a shift in gravity. “Did I?”
Slight raise of her brows. Her eyes were like frosted glass, cold and affectless. “You don’t remember our last meeting? The procedure you requested?”
Now was the time. Now I could tell her. No, I don’t remember.
Something happened. Something terrible. Please, I need help.
The words boomed inside my head, loud in all their unspeakable horror.
Unspeakable because the horror was coming from within me.
Because there was nothing sinister about the white room, her pink lab coat, her measured, attentive gaze.
It was all me. I could feel it now. I was the sinister one.
“No, yes. Obviously, I remember,” I lied, raising a tremulous hand to my temple. “I just got confused for a moment.” Dark fainting feeling. The walls were closing in on me. I could have sworn the overhead lights were spinning.
Undeterred, she continued, “Does this job still bring you joy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you still find peace in your daily routines?”
No. “Yes.”
“Do you feel like there is something missing from your life?”
Yes. “No.”
“Do you like your life?”
No. “Yes.”
“Do you like yourself?”
This took me aback a little, my breath stuttering. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Another intercom announcement: Welcome to the Inside. Here we are all connected.
“Ms. Anya,” said Mrs. Lauren, her voice changing somehow, crackling like radio static. “Are you feeling connected?”
Terror-struck, I jumped to my feet, the movement so violent that my soul escaped me for a moment and watched me from afar.
I was shaky, out of control, my body producing sounds and movements without my consent.
And in the mud-splattered depths of my consciousness there was only one clear thought, a plea, an incantation: I want to leave. I want to get out of here.
Through the crowd roar in my ears, I heard Mrs. Lauren shouting my name, “Ms. Anya? Ms. Anya!”
But I could not respond. I could only run, my body convulsing, my vision blurring by random undulating flashes of light.
My shoes, slapping the granite, resounded like thunder in my ears, and in my blood the panic rose like a tide.
I could feel it. I could feel the burn of eyes on me, fingers pointing, voices yelling, spaces merging in one scintillating haze.
The corridor melted before my eyes, the walls caving in, the doors rising up, the floors elongating like uncoiling wires.
So I ran faster, stumbling, grunting from the effort, trying with everything I had to escape this place before it morphed into something inescapable.
I ran and ran until my legs shook and my chest burned and my breath was coming out in loud, painful gasps.
Then I saw them: the revolving doors, the cylinders of light shifting from pure white to pale blue.
The whole world turned blue.
And in my head there was a voice. A little girl’s voice, wailing, Please, get me out of here. Please. I want to go home.
I threw myself outside like throwing my body off a bridge—the image of that thought. If life was in your hand, would you unclench your fist?
Sobbing, feeling myself sob, I staggered into the lamplit wilderness of the night.
Nothing around me made sense anymore. I was cut loose from everything and everyone.
The whole city had transformed into an unreadable alphabet of streets and buildings, illegible neon signs and streetlamp coronas bobbing uselessly above the blur of vehicles and passersby, their faces mere black circles floating in the air. Voids. Voids of people everywhere.
I sped past them all, not recognizing anything, not knowing where to go, only able to sense the inside of my body, the damaged universe of my lost self.
Then, with a crackle and a sigh, the night split open, and a crushing downpour fell upon me so hard and cold that the air got trapped in my lungs.
Through chattering teeth, I tried to remind myself, Arcade Street.
I need to find Arcade Street. But the thought didn’t seem able to pass through to the comprehending part of my brain.
Above, the crescent moon looked like the object of a different planet. Cloud-dazed and occult, it watched me. I could sense something watching me. Could someone from the Center have followed me out here? Was it some kind of offense to walk out of an appointment like that?
Half-delirious, I scoured the street, but it was pointless. My eyes were covered by an all-encompassing out-of-focus lens.
I can’t breathe, I thought helplessly, stopping for a moment to grab my knees. Fuck, I can’t breathe.
It was a miracle. It was something forever surreal and unexplainable how I managed to stay conscious and after a while find my building, the epoxy-painted concrete of the stairs carrying me up to the apartment.
For an indefinite period, I stood before my door, soaked to the bone, my hands shaking, unable to insert my key into the lock. Come on, come on, I cried to myself as though I was running out of time.
When I finally got in, the scalding shroud of my panic morphed into a tomb of paranoia.
Every object, every piece of furniture seemed fake somehow, cardboard, staged, like if I touched anything it would all crumble to piles of shredded paper.
And it was so open too, so exposed, the windows enormous, letting all this outside light and noise in.
There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to disappear to.
And that was all I wanted now. To disappear.
To go somewhere where no one would know me.
To be driven far, far away from here and closer to the sky.
And suddenly, in one revealing moment of clarity, I knew what I had to do.
Half an hour later, with a suitcase in hand, I was back at Green Street, ringing Kai’s doorbell.
He buzzed me into the building, and I ran up the stairs to find him at the door already, his face a thaumatrope of emotions, rapidly rotating from surprise to concern until the two formed something new, a feeling that was all his own.
Breathless, he asked, “What happened? Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound wanted to come out. I could only shake my head.
He glanced down at my suitcase, brows knitting. Then, understanding everything somehow, he shut his eyes and sighed in relief, “Okay.”
That was it. No more questions. No more demands. Just, okay, and the warmth of his hand as it cupped the back of my head and pulled me to him.
We folded together, arms around arms, hips against hips, his strong body enveloping mine. Unresistingly, I buried my face in the crook of his neck, finally able to breathe, to feel something other than my own sick terror.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“It’s okay,” he repeated, firmly this time. A promise not just to me but to us both.
It’s okay. I got you. Let’s go.