A week…just one week, and I was already going crazy. I was crouched against the scarred concrete wall, one of the six deeply scarred, bloodstained surfaces in this forsaken place. One room. No windows, no door, no outside contact…yet the keepers of this place could still see me nonetheless. The question of how made no impression on them, and they were as close enough to caring about explaining this as a chicken would be in transforming into a dog.

I scratched at the whispering walls, and heard my name radiating off of them. The names of many others…from all the previous inhabitants, they drifted in the air, hissing in my ears and driving my insanity an extra mile ahead of my self-control, which by now had been left so far behind, that it would take more than a century to catch up with my scattered self. For no reason at all, I ran over to the stony wall in front of me and beat it with my hands until my head spun so much that it forced me to my knees. I was surprised that I didn’t go whipping around opposite to its rotation as I had a few minutes before. My body didn’t seem to be functioning properly. I had a vague idea of why this was so, but every memory within my brain was grayed out and had bled into itself like runny ink on a piece of paper.

Mentality was just a word here. Hallucination. Also not uncommon as an expression. I looked at the concrete around me. I couldn’t understand how this place seemed lit by a steady glow, yet I could see no indication of illumination at all around me. Suddenly a small flame sprang up at the opposing wall. It flickered and trembled, casting eerie pallid light around me. The shadows aroused by the glow twisted round and round each other, laughing, trying to draw me towards them. But I knew once I would go there, and lie among them, I would never rise again. I didn’t want to die…not yet.

I reached for the light, and without warning the fire leaped into the air in the form of a spark, and disappeared in a miniature spurt of smoke. Shock took my body, and again I ran against the harmless wall and kicked and bit it until yet another one of my teeth came loose and joined the rest of them that lay in smeared in bloody gloss on scattered sections of the floor beneath my shaky legs. I slid to the floor in confusion. Why was I beating myself up again? The natural instinct of my body was to survive, not whip out of sync.

Disorientation.

What word was that to me now? A blessing or curse? It was good that I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself and thinking of loving people, for this is more torturous than hot instruments able to inflict severe damage throughout me. Yes, for it to be cursed, it brought me into a state where I could think of things halfway and never finish them enough to do something silly.

I had been taken in, since men wanted to test my resistance. I held my ground against them when they asked me personal questions about an extremely close friend of mine who had reportedly killed a helpless lady in a grocery store in front of a selection of security cameras.

I could never dream of Chase as a killer. A good juvenile escape artist, sure, but not an obvious murderer. On the day of the incident, I noticed after viewing the security video a number of times that the killer walked with a limp. This imperfection was barely noticeable, but every other feature seemed to fit Chase, much to my surprise. But just as I was considering the possibility of twins, the men came and asked me questions. When I tried to get some evidence going, they refused to listen to me…for they were that confident in their theories about the murderer.

I later learned that the killer victim was not so harmless at all, but an undercover assassin meant to eliminate a suspected terrorist leader that had been posing as a store staff member for more than 6 years. Despite my arguments, they pressed charges, and suddenly Chase vanished, failing to make a court appearance as had been scheduled. I sought him in vain, but he never showed up again. I blamed the mysterious men for the trouble, but they disappeared as well. I tried to go back to my normal homeless life in the alleys of the city, and then without warning, a few weeks later, the men came back and took me with them to a metal area beneath the surface of the city I had walked in ever since I had been born.

Why was I here? Why weren’t they coming to see me? How was I going to get out of here? Was I even getting out?

The questions were too overwhelming. I focused on the present. I was in a room. I still had my clothes on from the night I was seized. Jeans, a white T-shirt with a black unicorn on it, and some severely scuffed black sneakers with neon green highlights splashed all over it. I am alive. I am 18 years old; for I know I had my birthday this week. I have a dead snake draped on my neck, from the pet store trash. It looked too pretty for me to leave, even if it was lifeless, so now I wear it like a special charm.

I drew the reptile out and looked at it. Why hadn’t it decayed? Was this real or was I holding a rotting corpse in my hands? My mind could be showing me what I want to see, but was it going to be just like the flame, disappearing in the next instant? Nothing’s certain.