Distorted | Shimada Genji | g.s. / s.g.

act I: xv.

June 2061,

For Neala, it is one of those usual occasions where she breaks out of the mental institution. She manages to find her way around the building for a good week or two at her new institution then during alone time, she finds key aspects like when the windows lock, when the lights everywhere go out, where the key arrangements are, when nurses and cops are asleep, and how she can be where she wants to be whenever she desires.

The Reis girl found her way cautiously down the institution basement with a key at about 12:30 AM on a Tuesday. She crawls and squeezes through the squeaky window, making sure to gracefully close it behind her to avoid ruckus. Tripping over her own feet, she lifts herself up and mindlessly walks through the grass. No sense of direction is with her as she stuffs her hands in her cash-filled bottom pockets that she stole from the sleeping nurse she had drugged. She wore a white shirt and bottoms with worn out tennis shoes. Neala, scattering through the trees in the back of the institution, hopes that she makes the correct decision of her 50/50 to take a right turn. Taking a deep breath, she climbs over the fence, her hands slimy from the mildew on the wood. The girl lands on the free side, thankful the creaky, worn down fence did not collapse since it was made sometime during the 1960's, exactly one hundred years ago.

She smiles inattentively ahead of her, and not long after, her jungle adventure comes to an end as her shoes meet the concrete. She gallops gleefully, her arms waving in a party motion as if she is a careless drunk foreigner walking close to the road. When the girl believes she is far enough with thirty minutes of prancing around, she sticks her arm out and her thumb is up. She paces to and from her direction, and she eventually is just continuing to stray further from the institution.

A beat up truck creeps up from the left, pulling over and letting the passenger window down. The girl agilely licks her lips, her sparkling brown eyes meeting his soothing green ones. Her crossed arms rest on the window seal as she asks in English, "You willing to give a ride?"

The male grins as he keeps a hand lazily on the top of the steering wheel, his thick Swiss accent coming to ear, "Where to?"

"I want to go to Rhine Falls, you know, that place you often hear in books to make wishes?" The accented girl faintly inquires with lousiness laced in her tone. She tilts her head as she awaits his hesitant response.

He breaks eye contact with her to look ahead then back to her, "That place is about two hours away and–"

The Reis girl sighs dramatically and flimsily grabs a fifty Swiss francs banknote with a smirk, "Is this enough to convince you, sir?"

He gazes straight ahead, unlocking the doors. The girl giggles as she bounces into the backseat and slings over her bag, readjusting it on her shoulder. She hands the fifty to the man and with a sigh, he begins driving in the direction the girl originally started from. The girl's wanderlust eyes are occupied with the passing blurs of buildings, trees, cars, and lights. She did not trust the man enough to sleep though because of his willingness and only source of helping her in that moment, she does plan to be in his truck. His receding hairline with just enough brunette hair and green eyes are in the rearview mirror, reminding her of a time when she knew a man with those common features.

Most days, she doesn't even remember what happened to her. The girl does not even remember anything in general from the past six months or since January. All she knows is she is forced to speak to nurses, cops, her psychiatrist, and the other insane girls who she is acquainted with because, apparently, she is crazy herself. She does not understand the point of giving her medication, drugging her, every day and setting her up for failure with no schooling and only resting. Her mental age is stuck at seventeen years old, the age she was forced to give everything up. She forgot what happened so anything that is told to her about her crimes makes absolutely no sense and sounds like a story.