Cord

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟸

The nightmares started when I was six.

The only reason I know this is because it's in my file, which is the only thing I'm allowed free access to. I still have to ask Reynolds to fetch it from God-knows-where they keep it, but he's not allowed to object. I laugh anytime I request it.

"I want my file," is all I would say.

My words were fed into an intercom. My room was, and still is, soundproofed. Not that I understand why. There's a camera set behind a pane of bulletproof glass in each corner of my room, the little red lights never taking a break from their blinking. There's a microphone somewhere in the room. I only know this because one time it broke and I had to be taken to a different room while it was fixed.

Reynolds stopped replying to my requests years ago. Before he would respond with a gruff, and sometimes annoyed, "Ok." or "Fine." But soon his voice would never crackle through the intercom, and the only way I knew if he heard me was if my file was slid through the food hatch ten minutes later. I know he takes as long as he can to fetch it for me.

They don't know I request my file so often because it's the only freedom I have. It's the only unmonitored, unrestricted action that I have complete control over. They say seeing my file allows me to reflect on it, and that "helps her with her problem." So I play the game and read it, feed into the charade that I'm getting better. Besides, if I don't exercise my Etch A Sketch mind, I might forget how to erase the board.

I didn't think the nightmares were important. I'd passed them off as just a heighted version of a bad dream. My mind was too innocent and inexperienced to even detect their abnormal intensity. They were exhilarating. Terrifying. I found myself craving them. I would hope I had a nightmare. Something inside me needed it. I didn't know how "terrible" they were.

So I did nothing about them. For four whole years.

As I grew up, so did my nightmares. My mind matured, and they became less about silly monsters and more about the real world. The bad in the world. Think of the darkest, most twisted, sickest things in the world. Think of the things people are sentenced to death for. Think of the things that mentally scar children and people if they witness it.

That's what they're made of.

But what can you do? It's your mind, isn't it? The nightmares reflect you, don't they? You can't deny them. You know they're true. They're what you want, how else would you have dreamt it? They come from that little dark spot in you that pulls on your brain sometimes and tells you to just do it, you know it's wrong, but do it. What you see in them fills a void in you, one that you've covered up because it's wrong. It's a hole that you shouldn't have to begin with. You shouldn't crave those things. It's wrong. But that dark spot never lets go.

I had them under control. I did. Until I reached the unfortunate age of ten, when the secret of my nightmares was spilled and nobody trusted me with my control anymore. I'd gone and told the school loudmouth about how I had a lot of nightmares, and she told the teacher. The teacher asked me about my nightmares, my young mind didn't know they were bad. I spilled it all. She called my mom. She told my mom about them. Next thing you know, I was sitting on an oversized chair in a therapist's office.

Therapy didn't work. I didn't understand why having the nightmares were bad. They never hurt anyone. They happened in my mind, and my mind wasn't reality. I knew not to give in, is what they called it, and let them happen in real life.

I've been under the radar for four years. Don't you think if I was a threat, something would have happened by now?

You were too young to understand them then.

Don't you think an unknowing child is more of a threat than a knowing child? Don't you think I would have slipped up by now if I was too young to understand their gravity, or I would have given into them by now if I really needed to be locked away?

You need help, Blair. This is not normal. Something terrible could happen, we're just trying to prevent that. We're trying to help you get better.

Better better better better better.

My lack of cooperation was what got me locked away where I am now. An institution run by a nameless company receiving federal funding with the goal to help mentally insane kids get better. I was practically forced into the place after my therapist asked me to explain one of my dreams. From then on, I was marked clinically insane and mentally ill and unfit and unstable. Every label was placed upon me. My mother was forced into giving me up for the sake of my sanity and society.

I hate this place and everything it's done to me.