Lies & Harmony Trilogy

Chapter Three: Burning Hatred (Part 2)

A chiming sound fills the air, and the white birds flying in the air chirp loudly again. Now that I listen to it, I realize that they aren’t really chirping. It’s more like they are squawking and making ugly noises that hurt my ears.

     “Darn seagulls!” I hear Bryler yelling at the birds waving an empty bottle at them. “I’ll get you one day!”

     “There he goes,” Avanna mutters, “yelling at animals again.”

     Yelling at animals must be a reason why he’s so unsociable. Why he’s not in a hospital befuddles me. A person like him surely would have been permitted sooner or later.

     I hear a door open, and Tabitha comes up the stairs, her eyes bloodshot and her face puffy and red which indicates that she must have been crying. Gordon follows not long after her, his dark hair growing shiny in the bright, relentless sun. He’s smiling, but he casts a worried look at Tabitha every few seconds. He catches sight of me and comes over behind my head, beginning to push me away in the stretcher.

     “Where are we now?” I ask him. Even though I know the answer, I’m always expecting a different one. I want him to tell me that they’ve decided to send me back to the hospital. He doesn’t answer right away, and I look up at the sky. Suddenly, the white birds turn into large white insects, buzzing furiously. I can hear them clicking when their beady black eyes fix upon me. They rear back, buzzing and dive towards me without hesitation. I throw up my hands in fear, hoping that they don’t damage me too much.

     “What’s wrong? Is the sun too bright?” It’s Gordon, and I can hear his good-natured voice. He must not have seen the insects, but when I remove my hands, they’re just squawking white birds again instead of a horde of furious insects. I shakily bring my hands to my side, noticing suddenly how my wrist hurts from the sudden movement. “You should stop moving that wrist,” Gordon advises me, and I know that he’s right. People start to come up the stairs and out from corners that I hadn’t even known existed. The floor is still swaying slightly but not much. I turn my head around and give Gordon a look. He’s smiling at me in a genuine way, or at least this is what it seems to be. I smile at him, and he smiles back at me, catching sight of the book in my hands.

     “Thorpe wanted to see it,” Gordon says almost sheepishly, pushing the stretcher along the floor. “So I took it from you while you were sleeping. Sorry about that, little girl,” he tells me. “The good thing is that you have it with you now.”

     I nod and continue to study Gordon. He was with Bryler the night they stole me from the hospital so he must be a bad person. But his smile is so kind that I can hardly believe that myself.

     People are layers of things. They’re just using it for manipulation.

     I look up, startled. There’s a giant green lizard in the sky, crawling across the clouds, and I know that it’s the one who spoke. When I blink, it’s gone, and I realize that it’s just a vision. I have such a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality so it’s no wonder I was in the hospital in the first place.

       I need to go back. I’m not ready for the world outside the hospital. It’s too dangerous for me. It’s much too risky to be around here without my medication. Who knows what other images I might see? Maybe I’ll see the spiders again. At that thought, I shudder, holding the book closer to me.

     “I read it to Thorpe since he’s not really good at reading,” Gordon tells me. “Then he said it was sissy and weird. Well what could I say? It was a storybook!” Gordon’s eyes flicker to the book. “There are some odd words in there,” he says, quietly this time. “Did the nurses and doctors let you read it?”