you belong with me - Eddie Munson

two

I'm walking through the corridors of my home, to my room. The door says 019, as it always has.
Same to the tattoo on my forearm.
My siblings here also have numbers on their forearms and doors. It tells us who we are.
I have eighteen siblings. We all have short hair and one of the numbers aligned, from 001 to 019, well yeah, I am the last one, which doesn't mean I am the weakest!
With my powers I can achieve everything I want, that's at least what papa says. But what I want is just to make the nightmares stop, and the pain papa often puts me through.
I asked him a few times if I can get out of the building, but the world is a dangerous place, that's what he always tells me. "Don't ever leave this place, or horrible things will happen to you!"
I've been here my whole life.
I grew up and my mind matured. All I want is to live without the pain.
The older we get, the more pain we have to endure, that's what papa told us everyday since the day I can think.

Today it's my turn to help papa again.
The guys in white get me my special swimsuit, and put me in a tank full of water.
What papa wants us to do, is to go into the void, a state of pure consciousness, and look for things.
None of us knows what things we are looking for, but papa said when we find it, we know it.

I am floating in the water, slowing down my breath, closing my eyes.
It usually takes me a few minutes to reach the void, but once I'm in, I get frightened.
There is not one single thing I can see, but pure darkness.
I never liked the darkness, but since I helped papa looking for things in the void, I became terrified of it.
My breath, I just calmed, increases to a maximum and I am shivering as if I would freeze.
As always, I try my best to control myself, which doesn't work most of the time, just like now.
I want to get out of this place, so I start doing what I'm not allowed to.
Moving.
I flail, trying to wake up from this nightmare. But without papa's okay, we can't leave the void. Once we're in, the machines are the ones to decide whether or not we come back.
I can already see papa's face in front of me. How disappointed he is.
Every now and then there are problems when one of us gets in the tank, but with me they have the most work. Most of my siblings aren't scared at all.
Yet I can't help it. It's my human instinct that makes me terrified and flail, it's hard to control that. So I scream for help, hoping they would let me out.
And they did.
I open my eyes and see light again, as I swim up to the brim of the water tank.
One look to papa is enough for me to know how much of an disappointment I am to him.
I don't dare looking at him again, so with my head turned down to the floor, I try to leave to the changing rooms. But before I am able to enter, papa already comes up to me.
He pushes me inside with a force I have never seen on him before.
"I thought when you become older, you will be more likely to control yourself, but looks like you don't want to help me, Nineteen!"
I can clearly hear the serious and dashed tone in his voice. I failed. I failed again and now I am getting what I deserve.
"I had such high hopes in you, Nineteen. I really had", I can't look him in the eyes, "I thought you are something special, but when you are not willing to work with me and our goal, there's no other way"
I know what he's talking about.
He wants to bring me to the scary room again.
He brought me there several times, but usually only once in a while.
I feel a tear run down my face.
He leaves the room and I get out of the soaked swimsuit, changing to my everyday hospital-gown.

I'm opening the door where already two men in white are waiting to escort me to the scary room.
I sit down on the chair in the middle and close my eyes, preparing myself for the pain.
I'm waiting for the Doctor, the woman who always performs the procedure. But instead, as I open my eyes, papa stands in front of me, wearing gloves.
He's never done that before to any of us, so why now to me?
He puts the head piece of the machinery on my temporal, pushing two buttons on the desk he stands on. A shrill sound starts ringing in my ear. It's the machine starting.
Papa now turns another button to the right, making the sound go even louder.
The last thing I hear is him apologizing to me, before the pain almost makes me deaf.
My eyes roll to the back of my head as the electricity from the machine runs through my body, through my veins.
It never hurt as much as it did now, not even close.
I am not able to see anything, I am not able to hear anything, I am not even able to scream.
My body is in a type of pain it never thought being in would be possible.
My limbs start cramping and it feels like my bones are breaking.
My spine is arched in an unhealthy and painful way, as if it would break through, every second.
The process feels like forever, though as it stops, only about 15 seconds have passed, as I can read on the clock, hanging right over the door.
I can see and hear now clearly again, but I can't move a single thing, not even talking is possible. My body went completely numb.
I can only hear the female doctor talking to papa.
"The last time she was here, isn't that long ago. I hope her brain manages this", she says while looking at me, "Especially because you used a way stronger adjustment than we usually do for these situations"
"It was necessary", I hear papa replying, "She was not doing what she's supposed to do, so we had to make her fear stop in some way. Tomorrow we will se if it worked. If not...", he pauses for an discomforting amount of time, "If not, we have to do this here again"
His last words were enough for my mind to completely go insane.
Papa wants me to go through this pain again? Tomorrow already? How should I be able to survive this? How should I stay sane?

I open my eyes, that I don't even remember closing, and I'm staring at the ceiling.
I'm back in my room, laying on my bed. I probably fainted, so they carried me.
The lights are off, only a little light standing on the ground, meaning it's nighttime.
I stand up, still feeling a little stiff from the pain my body has gone through.
I walk up to my shelf, grabbing one of my cassettes.
Once one of us gets older, papa says when we are exactly 18 years on this earth, he gets us something we wish for.
I wished for music, and he got me cassettes from someone called 'Elvis Presley', and he became my favorite music.
I look at the picture of him on the yellow cassette, thinking about the next day.
I slowly take a look to the door. Right now I am not feeling anyone near my room.
This is my chance.
But...what if this is the wrong decision?
What if the world out there really is dangerous and cold?
What if something will happen to me?
What if someone will do something to me?
But isn't papa already doing hurtful things to me? Isn't he already doing what he warned us all from?

I slowly walk up to the door, laying my hand on the keyhole.
They lock us in our rooms when we are supposed to sleep, so no one gets lost in the building - at least that's what they tell us.
I concentrate on the door unlocking till I feel a small vibration on my hand, signaling me that the door has unlocked.
I'm still unsure if what I'm doing is the right thing, but the fear inside me of more of that pain is bigger, so I open the door, peeking my head out my room to see if someone is there.
As I expected, the hallway is empty, and I can't hear anyone - it must be very late at night.
I walk out of my room. The floor in the hallway is way colder than it is in my room, as my bare feet touch the white tiles.
Waking down the hallways, the only thing I hear is my feet slapping on the flat ground.

I find a staircase and decide to follow it upstairs.
I'm not familiar with the building, nor do I know in any way a way out of here, so I just try to follow my intuition, going through the corridors.
And somehow my intuition was right.
I am now standing in front of a big glass door, looking at a bunch of parked cars, surrounded by a fence.
I walk up to the door, pushing and pulling it, but it seems to be locked. But how? I don't see a lock or a keyhole, so the only way I can get out is by destroying the glass.
I move a few steps away from the door, putting my arm up in front of me, closing my eyes.
I already feel blood running from my nose.
Within seconds, the glass shatters, following with a loud, deafening sound. Maybe it was to alarm them when someone breaks in or out?
That would mean, I have to be quick now.
Without looking back, I start running towards the fence. I don't have the time to look for any easier way out, so before I reach the fence, my hand is up again.
A few meters away from it, I come to a stop, concentrating on the fence.
The metal strings rip apart and slowly bend to the outside, creating a hole, small enough for me to fit in.
I'm not really thinking now, I'm only running.
Running through the dark.
Running through what I always feared.
Stopping all the thinking makes it possible.
I ignore the dark and I ignore the cold. I only see my freedom.
Free from the pain, free from being a disappointment.