venom

CHAPTER 31 | Friends With Benefits

Allison is cold.

She shivers constantly, hands seemingly always connected with her upper arms, knuckles a pasty white. Her dark skin is littered with chills, hairs standing on end as her teeth chatter. Her eyes, once the flaming, passionate hue of burnt umber, have become dull, and purposeless.

Allison can't think.

She can't think for herself, speak for herself, or move for herself. She can't voice her thoughts to her daughter, who's nose is always shoved into a book. The young girl, Ella, who couldn't be anymore than an eager, happy child once, is now cold and distant; when her mother wonders about her, it doesn't feel as if she's actually thinking. It's more an instinct, an instinct that tells her that Ella reads these books to distract herself from the never-ending experiments.

Allison wants to call out her name, ask about her day and if any other children had been bothering her at her private school like she would any other normal day. When she went to school, she was a sharp, intelligent kid, but she was avoided, despite being a social butterfly. The other children didn't like her, and were intimidated by her for meaningless reason.

Ella is a child just like her mother, with beguiling dark coils as hair, well-taken care of and curling around her chubby face. She's not very plump, but still carries her baby fat, and is charming in personality. Even at her young age, she's an advocate, and demanded by her peers to be respected as a girl just as anyone else should be. Adults with sense are enchanted by her wit, while the uneducated sneer at her smart mind.

Now, Allison dreads to be aware of the fact that Ella is no longer how she was — she would never come to her lavish home eagerly, giggling and laughing to her mother about the amazing things she'd learned at her prestigious school that day; you see, even if she was shunned by the other children, she still found joy in learning.

Allison wants to grimace, but shivers instead once Ella, sitting cross-legged across from her, turns a page of her thick book. The room, resembling a waiting room with bulky chairs lined consecutively, and a distasteful scent of cleaning supplies, is occupant to only the two of them.

It's quiet, but Allison cannot complain. She enjoys the quiet, normally, but she wants to hate it. She wants to hate it for the space it shoves between she and her distant daughter, and wants to loathe it for the spell she always feels as if she's under. But she can't hate the stillness, the silence. After all, it's better than whizzing machines and typing computers, clattering of scientific tools and buzzing of unfamiliar, sickeningly large devices.

A spell. Yes, Allison feels as if she's under a spell. If there's one thing her dumbed-down mind can comprehend, it's her own suffering. She can sense that she doesn't want this. She can feel in her gut that this feeling of being in a cloudy daze is not something she desires.

It's the drugs that . . organization gives to her. The injections. The pills. The scans. The smells. The cool lights. It makes her stupid, unable to think independently unless they want her to.