Hope is the thing with feathers [That perches in the soul]
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do. >> Eleanor Roosevelt
The light overhead flickers and she’s not sure if it’s the light or something inside of her shorting out. Her head lolls back, chin tilting up, throat exposed as her eyes roll back in her head. There’s a jolt of electricity through her body and the whole world comes back into painfully sharp focus.
“What do you know about the ones who escaped?”
“Nothing,” she swears, her voice scraping it’s way out of her throat. She is still staring up at the ceiling and the lights overhead make her pupils contract so that her eyes are solid green cat eyes. Her body feels stretched out, worn thin like the hem of the blue surgical tunic she constantly picks at but maybe it is her mind that is worn thin and everything else follows suite.
“I don’t believe you.”
Her body tenses as she prepares herself for pain that doesn’t come. The anticipation of that pain is almost as bad as the pain itself. After a moment, she allows herself to relax but she keeps her head down, eyes adverted. Submissive posture is key here. It could short psyops by hours, days even.
“It was your unit, X5R-365.”
She hesitates, not certain whether she should react or not. The wrong choice will mean more conditioning. It’s not torture and it’s not punishment. She is grateful for it, even as she dreads it. This is how she becomes better. This is how she is made perfect.
“Yes but I didn’t know.”
“Then that was your mistake.”
Her stomach sinks and something inside breaks. It wells up inside her, that bird that Emily Dickinson speaks of. Sometimes at night the words to that poem spills over her lips like water, a balm to her soul, a balm to her mind and maybe, just maybe to her body. Right now the words are silent within her but they are there reminding her that she has lived through this. She will live through everything else that comes. She is an X5 and she has been engineered to survive.
The light overhead flickers and she’s not sure if it’s the light or something inside of her shorting out. Her head lolls back, chin tilting up, throat exposed as her eyes roll back in her head. There’s a jolt of electricity through her body and the whole world comes back into painfully sharp focus.
“What do you know about the ones who escaped?”
“Nothing,” she swears, her voice scraping it’s way out of her throat. She is still staring up at the ceiling and the lights overhead make her pupils contract so that her eyes are solid green cat eyes. Her body feels stretched out, worn thin like the hem of the blue surgical tunic she constantly picks at but maybe it is her mind that is worn thin and everything else follows suite.
“I don’t believe you.”
Her body tenses as she prepares herself for pain that doesn’t come. The anticipation of that pain is almost as bad as the pain itself. After a moment, she allows herself to relax but she keeps her head down, eyes adverted. Submissive posture is key here. It could short psyops by hours, days even.
“It was your unit, X5R-365.”
She hesitates, not certain whether she should react or not. The wrong choice will mean more conditioning. It’s not torture and it’s not punishment. She is grateful for it, even as she dreads it. This is how she becomes better. This is how she is made perfect.
“Yes but I didn’t know.”
“Then that was your mistake.”
Her stomach sinks and something inside breaks. It wells up inside her, that bird that Emily Dickinson speaks of. Sometimes at night the words to that poem spills over her lips like water, a balm to her soul, a balm to her mind and maybe, just maybe to her body. Right now the words are silent within her but they are there reminding her that she has lived through this. She will live through everything else that comes. She is an X5 and she has been engineered to survive.