The Insane Boy

Chapter 8 - Beyond Grey

One week Later.

The sky is colourless. Grey clouds swarm overhead, casting deep shadows over the Compound and threatening to break open the heavens. It hasn’t rained since I arrived, and I’m inexplicably excited at the possibility for something new. I don’t remember rain.

All week I have dragged myself through the motions, caught up in an almost unfeeling, monotonous daze where the whitewashed walls seem to consume my existence. I have no aims and no goals anymore, and I seem to have fallen into the grey of the Compound. I am a cloud in this sky, a body trapped within thousands of others until I become one with them, unidentifiable as an individual.

It is hurting me inside.

It took this place merely days to bleed me dry.

So it’s strange that something so ordinary can pull the haze away from my mind. I can feel the air becoming heavy around me, and the children that run past me to the school are already dancing in the non-existent rain. It like the sudden disturbance in the routine, however slight, seems to have shaken off the mist inside me.

I pause for a moment, standing in the middle of the street. June has run off ahead, and it’s minutes until the siren sounds. Most people are already at school or work, or running hurriedly down the concrete avenue.

I told myself that I wouldn’t. That there was no point. That it was a risk I would be reckless to take.

But I couldn’t stop myself. Not today.

I begin to run, warily sneaking sideward glances at the people around me, but they’re too caught up in their own problems to notice me. On light feet I sprint down the road, running past the school where the last stragglers are stumbling through the doors. I dart close to the walls, overly conscious that this area is almost deserted, and there cannot be more than a minute until the siren sounds and I’m alone. I come to a stop and shrink into the wall, letting the growing darkness and the shadows hold me from view.

The second the siren pierces the silence, I run, using the noise to cover the sound of my pounding footsteps. If anyone was around, they would have seen me, but there is no one. I’m careful to stay low, knowing that if someone glances at the surveillance footage just once, I’m dead. But I keep my head low and slam silently into the wall of the Facility, shrinking into a crouch.

I see no one. It’s strange really, how incredibly lucky I am to have not run into anyone. I’m still constantly alert, the tiniest sound triggering my reflexes.

It’s funny how alive I feel.

But when I reach the corridor, the one with doors that lead to all the cells of the Insane, I realise that I do have a reason. Something that has been biting at my ankles but I have easily forgotten in this Compound.

Curiosity.

I want to know what this place is. Wiping peoples memory; they need some motivation to do that. And, well, June. She had her memories, and then lost them again. What’s powerful enough to tear out all that fear and worry, and leave a girl fresh and undeniably innocent?

I don’t realise what I have done until I’m standing right in front of him. His eyes, blue and brown, are staring at me, and I meet his gaze.

‘You came back,’ he says, his voice almost lost over the screams of the Insane.

But I hear. I don’t respond, just stare.

No, analyse.

Everyday I seem to find out more about myself, and I know I am a watcher. Observant. I keep on catching myself noticing the slightest changes, the shift of an arm or a flinch of an eye.