Ptolemaea | Henry Creel

Henry

I didn't sleep that night. Not even for a moment.

Over the years, I came to find that the one benefit of living in Maine-- aside from the surplus of forest-- was that I had an excuse not to think about the lab or any of the events which transpired there. My days didn't revolve around supernatural training sessions or meetings with governmental figures. It was so much easier to push away thoughts of tasers, hospital gowns, and white walls when there was nothing to remind me of them.

Nevada, however, was different. There was no choice but to think of all those things I'd stored into little boxes in the back of my head. There was no choice to accept the very, very real possibility that I was about to live through such things all over again. And it scared me. So fucking badly.

I think I nearly died last time. Somehow, though, I managed to rise to my feet despite what I endured. I didn't know if I could take a second round of it all-- my legs were still so shaky.

I didn't really remember the first few months after escaping the lab. I fell into something of a 'dark period,' I suppose. There was still breath in my lungs and my heart still beat away in my chest, but I wasn't really there. I went through the motions, I existed, but that was all. Those first six months were indecipherable. Most days bled into the next, an impossible blurring of the lines that I had no way of differentiating. Other times weeks went by without me even realizing it. I became so very stagnant, kept on earth only by the gravity which coaxed my feet to the floor. Everything was stifling. It was tedious work piecing myself back together, navigating the neurons of my shattered mind and picking up shards in hopes of someday piecing everything back together.

It didn't stay that way, of course. Things got better. The paranoia stayed, the panic attacks stayed, but things were still better. It was around then when I told myself I would stop agonizing over the lab and needlessly torturing myself with memories so impossibly out of reach. My life there was over.

It was for the better.

I knew it was for the better.

Because if it wasn't, that would mean I had outgrown the best days of my life, and what was the point of sprouting any further if my roots were so very rotten?

A pounding at the door pulled me from my rather macabre thoughts. I took a moment to comb my fingers through my hair and wipe the tiredness from beneath my eyes. "Come in," I called, standing from my bed. Although the t-shirt and sweatpants I'd been given were hardly flattering, they were different than the ones from the lab. The shirt had some band sprawled across the front, one that I wasn't at all familiar with but at least it wasn't that awful plain grey color from the lab.

The door slid open carefully, as though whoever stood on the other side was afraid of me. I rolled my eyes and turned to my bed where I began tucking my sheets back into place.

"Hello," A familiar voice called, "I've-- uh-- I've been assigned with bringing you to Brenner's office. If you could come with me, that would be great."

I spared a sidelong glance at police-officer-man, "How's the neck?"

"It's great, thanks for asking."

"You're welcome," I hummed, walking past him and into the hallway, "I still think you're a bitch, by the way." There was a sigh of annoyance from behind me, but that was all. My footfalls were rather loud against the metal grate that ran the length of the floor.

"I think we got off on the wrong foot," He called, hurrying to keep up with me.

"Do you?" I asked, "Wow... I didn't realize I was speaking to Sherlock Holmes."