Spoiler! :
I spent the first seventeen years of my life drugged. I woke up hung over. I drank coffee. Mornings dragged. Midday was sweet. Afternoons brought promise. Nights were a wispy splay of dreamy thoughts, actions, patterns. Sleep gave visions of something vibrant, colorful, passionate; something I wanted desperately. I woke up hung over. Just another I.
That was life. Don’t forget that.
Everyone in Perry, in all of Lindon, lived this way. It was just how things went. We were all obedient, complacent; given what we wanted within a thick, thick line of reason. Days were often monotonous, but each had a purpose, an underlying grounds for being; all we had to do was figure the purpose out. Once we did, everything would make sense. If we didn’t, well… We always did. As did everyone.
Anybody that ever visited was wild; irrationally behaving. Something was always wrong. Someone was always unwanted. Everything was imperfection. They didn’t realize how fortunate we were. That we had to be grateful. They said we were too passive - but they never realized that it was not necessary to be aggressive. We did what the Officials said; they gave us what we needed, sometimes what we wanted. This unspoken agreement worked for all. We were content. They had to give us that, had to give it to anybody.
And they did. Anyone could see how better off we were; they always looked so needing, wanting, hungry. Like there was something missing. Something they were looking for, but they couldn’t find. Maybe they didn’t even know what that thing was. The only thing anyone in Lindon searched for was their daily purpose. Other than that, we had everything attainable already. There was nothing to work towards; no or, no and.
Visitors joked about how there was something different about the air, how there must be something in the water. They all were, for the most part, kidding. After all, they were only visitors.
Maybe they should have thought harder. Maybe.
My name is Magdalena Cloris. I was seventeen years old when I woke up, really woke up, for the first time. My father’s name was Clarence, and my mother’s name was Lisa. They both worked for MediTab, a company which made and distributed medications, mostly prescription. We lived on a hill, a large one with five manors sitting on its crown. I went to school at a private academy where I had many friends, both boys and girls, but never a boyfriend because it wasn’t allowed. I got straight A’s, as all students at my school did, and was never in trouble. Teachers respected me, as I did them. Nothing ever upset my perfect, filtered world. Not until they wanted to dye my beautiful hair. Oh, my.
Most people had brown hair, bland, like the cereal we ate for breakfast. Some were lucky - some were blonde from the sun, or had hair closer to dark chocolate than milk. Every so often there was a rarity, someone with bleached tresses or ink-colored locks. But I wasn’t like most.
Mine was the color of fire, of blood that tears up when you pricked your finger. Brighter than the deep scarlet ball gowns that were sometimes allowed; bolder than the boldest sunsets, the ones that dared shine beyond the mountainous horizon. For most of my life, my hair was duller; I was sixteen when it exploded with uniqueness, something all mine.
A long, complete year, I hid it, wore it stuck with a dozen pins, covered in an array of hats that were just uniform enough to be allowed. Only at night would I let it down, brush through it, relish in it. I did this because if they, the Officials or anyone who worked for them, found out about this, they’d want to change it. Normalize it. Make it just like everyone else’s. As inconsequential as another A.
That was the biggest rule: don’t stand out. Don’t have something someone else might want - might covet. And if you do, don’t let anyone find out about it. Keep it a secret, or let it be taken away. The options ended with that.
This worked well for a while. No one found out about my hair, though my hat fetish was suspiciously noted, and each day I remained unfound out was a sigh of relief. I had feelings toward my hair color I didn‘t know I could have. I wanted it, too much. Wanted the aspect of specialty. Of singularity. Of being set apart, whether anyone around me knew it or not. I’d never felt loss, not at any funeral I’d ever attended, but whenever I thought of ever losing my red hair, I got a tightness in my chest, and felt that maybe I’d been given a glimpse of loss. Of pain. I didn’t like this.
I kept my hair hidden. It was only for I.
Two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, early May, I walked a large dog through the park - it might have been a Lab or a Shepherd - as my job. It was around two.
Exceptions exempt, each teenager was assigned a part time job in high school. It didn’t matter if you were in a dozen extracurricular activities, sports or band or choir, or if you had to take care of younger siblings, or had a low grade point average and needed the time to study. No exceptions.
They made me a dog walker. The dog’s name was They.
I walked through the park entrance, across the front lawn, toward the fountain. Benches were scattered across the large, grassy area, and lamp posts aligned with them. A ways off I could hear children playing, their mild laughter, see their slow-moving bodies. They looked happier than any local I’d met. They must have been foreign. One of them screamed. They were not content. Not like I.
Wind was whipping my clothes around. I could hear a hum in my ears, and the scent of dry grass met my nose, though the grass was lush. It was midday - sweet - a perfect time to walk the dog. I had a sense of refreshment, of finishing a hard project, of leaving a hard situation. A sigh, a moment of rest, before the world knocked you over again, before it unleashed a much more bitter wind.
They sauntered ahead as I walked leisurely despite the breeze, and when I got to the fountain I let the water spray me, a ragged blanket of lukewarm drops. The day was typical - the week, the year - and it never occurred to me to worry about what might happen. Because there were a million things that “might happen.” It wasn’t worth worrying about the things that could potentially go wrong with They.
Except, that day, I should have worried. A lot of things except.
They saw something, a squirrel maybe, and broke into a sprint. Even as it yanked on its leash, made me run after it, I still wasn’t worried. These things happened. Animals weren’t like us - they were spontaneous, lacking in any sort of self-discipline; everything they did, they did extremely. Chasing squirrels was no different. It was my job to get control back from They.
And I started to, started doing all the things I was taught in training, but They jerked left, slamming my shin into the fountain, making me topple into it. The dog wrenched the leash from my hand and sped away until I couldn’t see it anymore, and -
For a few moments I just sat there, the fountain pouring buckets of water on my head. The water seeped red as it mingled with the blood from my scraped up leg, which stung, but felt as if a thick layer of slime was covering it, numbing it. Then I saw my hat, periwinkle, resting at the edge of the fountain, water lapping it, drenching it. My pins fell out too. That’s what my body started to move for.
I clumsily stood up against the pressure of the water, walking forward and reaching for the sides of the fountain. When my back was turned from its spray, I wiped my eyes. I saw people all around, staring at me. Staring at my hair. At I.
Only the foreign children weren’t watching. Them only.
At first I was horrified, unable to move, and confused, so confused. All I could think about was that I needed to get away from there, from the staring people, before anyone realized who I was, and that I was different. Someone to hate at.
Too late. A team of Coppers - policemen, security guards - descended on me. They told me to stay calm, they just had to take me in. None of them really expected a fight, I don’t think - after all, who would fight? Everyone knew the rules. Everyone knew it was pointless to disagree, and most people didn’t find anything worth disagreeing with anyway. Except, I was different - too different. Just a little too.
It was like my mind was always dark, like night, and someone had turned on a flashlight for the first time - I could see things, want things, realize how important it was. I needed my hair. They couldn’t take it away from me. They couldn’t take it.
Desperate, I tried to run, but they grabbed my arms. I kicked and screamed like a foreign child, even tried to bite one of the Coppers. I hurled insult after insult, until finally, they had to sedate me. Ironically, it felt like normal, the slowness, the inability to think right, think things through - except, this made me sleep. Black out. The last thing I remember of that day was dozens of eyes looking at me in fright. Scared at how I was desperate.
Because no local girl ever cared enough to put up a fight. Just because.
*
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the pain; it was everywhere, lacing up and down my body, through my body, pounding nails into my skin and eyes, and hammering my bones. The light was so bright each of the bulbs in the ceiling could have been a sun I couldn’t escape, that burned my eyes with each blink. In a couple minutes, the sensations lessened, but were still greater than I’d ever felt. When would they stop? When?
Lying on something - a bed, I thought, but I wasn’t sure - I started to reorient. I also thought my arms and legs were strapped down, but I couldn’t move anyway and my mind had too much to filter to notice. Without warning, a metallic churning rumbled from below me and I started to move - my whole bed did. The upper part tilted forward, until I was in a sitting position and could see who else was in the room in which I was half lying.
I saw woman in a black suit and a man in white scrubs standing in front of my bed. The man was holding a clipboard. I could see everything about them so clearly, like they were drawn with a tiny laser beam that intensified every detail about them. They were colored with pigments so bright, much brighter than my hair, and so unique; each strand of hair had its own shade; each was different from the rest. At first I thought it was them - they were different - but soon my mother walked in, looking like them, and I realized that was wrong; there was nothing different with them. I was the different one. It was I.
All of them started to gesture around and talk, but I couldn’t hear them - everything that came from their mouths was clipped, and exaggerated, too soft to hear and too loud, all at once - but when they finished, I grasped their intent; as soon as the drugs wore off, they were going to dye my hair permanently. I’d no longer be different. Just like them all.
Frantic, I wanted to cry out and thrash around and try to reason with them, make them realize that I wasn’t hurting anyone, no one had to know, but somehow, something in me knew that wouldn’t help, and it told me to stay still. Call it instinct; I’d never felt it before. I tried hard to not look frantic.
Somber, I nodded my head - and the pain I felt in doing so, it was terrifying - and they all looked relieved - too relieved, but that might have been me. They left, my mother as close to crying as I’d seen her. They all must have been so pleased at how easily I was giving in; how easily I’d succumb to their plan. Except I wouldn’t. Not if I had anything to say about it. But all they’d see was Magdalena, expectedly somber.
That was life. Don’t forget that.
*
Plan, I told myself. Figure out escape. I didn’t know how long it would take for the drugs to wear off. Each passing minute, everything became more and more magnified, concentrated, intensified. And yet… more subtle. More tolerable, actually. Like I could live within the confines of such dramatic senses without drowning in their strength. It was no longer a burden to see, to hear, to move. I even thought I could talk, though I never tried - there was no one to talk to, and I needed to spend my time working on my master plan which was not quite fool-proof enough to satisfy but would have to do. By nightfall, when the light flowing from the window darkened and the florescent lights above were dimmed, I was ready to carry out my plan.
Throughout the day, I pulled and tugged and worked the strap on my left arm, loosening it. Not much happened, but now, when I tried, I was able to slip it down just a little. As my arm narrowed, I no longer had to struggle. Adrenaline raced in my body, all throughout.
Once that was done, it was simple; I unlatched the strap on my other arm and undid the ones around my legs. I crept from my bed over to the window. It was locked, but from the inside, and I flipped the latch. I slid it open, as silently as I could, and a breeze snaked in from outside. I froze - its icy tendrils attacked my body, sending chills up my spine. But I waited - it would be okay. Just like with everything else, it would transform from unbearable to manageable - no, not manageable; desirable. It was rejuvenating, like I’d been given special, inhuman powers. Just this once.
The building I was in was constructed of bricks, big ones, with room between each other where the sealer didn’t reach. I gripped these spots until my knuckles turned white and lowered myself out the window, searching with my feet for holds. I descended like this, with a bitter wind slicing at me, the roughness of the bricks scraping my body which was pressed up against it, dark clouds hanging in the sky, threatening rain. Normally, I’d be blind now without a bright moon; but off the drugs, I could see fine. Better than normally. It makes me wonder if maybe I wasn’t just on the drugs they sedated me with - because life was never like this before - maybe there was something else, something more powerful and unknown and frightening. Something whose name started with a big, capital “The”.
But I didn’t have time to think about that as I scaled the wall, because my nerves were on fire, and not necessarily in a bad way. Everything ached and jabbed, but I took it, harsh as it was; I could take anything. I was super aware of all the hurt in my body, but also super aware of how easy it was to handle it. I could handle anything they threw at me. So let them come and find me and try to take me away again - it wouldn’t work. I was invincible, without a but.
That didn’t stop me from running to the shadows as soon as I touched ground. I fled between trees on the yard until I reached the edge - a row of forest. I entered it to get out of view, but stopped once concealed in all that.
Blood propelling, my heart was pounding. I had no idea where to go, what to do, just that I had to do something before they found me and made me go back and took away the only thing that ever mattered to me. Until they took away this, the feeling of everything, the exhilaration of seeing clearly and thinking clearly and not feeling inclined to do what they say, listen to their words and obey their every command. Screw them. I needed to get away before they took me in cold blood.
For a split second I worried about my family - my emotional mother who almost screamed at me, almost cried over me, and my strict father who got tight faced whenever an unwanted squirrel passed through our backyard, messing with the uniform perfection he’d worked to achieve - and wondered how I could just leave them. And my friends, all the people I cared for.
Then I realized, I didn’t care about them. Never once in my life had it occurred to me that they were something I needed to work at keeping, needed to work at loving. Because I never loved them; I never loved anyone or anything. They were just always there, another result of pairing together equals, people who were never jealous of one another because there was nothing to be jealous about, and never would be then.
About as soon as I realized that, I banished them from my mind. They weren’t worth even thinking about.
Trees rustled noisily around me, sometimes dropping their leaves about me. I didn’t know where I was, if I was near home or across the country. All I could do was get out of the forest and go from there. And really, did it matter if I was near home? I couldn’t go back there, not like this, not with my hair still vibrant and my mind still working, and I didn’t want to go back there anyway. I crouched down as I moved, trying to be unnoticeable - which seemed impossible, like my energy was leaving a lit trail - until I was far enough away that I thought no one would find me. Now what mattered was speed, that I got away before they came looking for me. Breathless, I ran through the trees.
Spoiler! :
Anyway, there is a point in me telling you this.
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