CSI (carter's short interval): I really love how this chapter turned out but I'm 99% sure it's all gonna go downhill from here, so take in this masterpiece while you can bc the rest is surely gonna be dogshit.
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Thursday, 2nd April 2015
SHOOTING STARS ARE NOT ACTUALLY STARS, they're meteors; small bits of rock that speed past the Earth at such speeds, they heat up and glow as the atmosphere sets them alight. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere before they reach the ground. Casey Banks is not too dissimilar from a shooting star, despite being a human being, she's nothing more than a lab rat to everyone around her. She is Subject Twelve, not Casey, not Casey Banks. There's times when Casey even wonders why go through the hassle of naming her, it isn't like she'll ever need to use it. No one's going to need it, she'll never know anyone outside of the lab's cold walls.
She is Subject Twelve and that is that.
There's no need for identity when it's just her. There are other children in the lab, she can hear their cries and screams, at least since she was three. She's never met any of these children and she doubts she ever will, so she blocks out their nightly sobs and focuses on her roof window. There's one in her room; it's off-centre, but she doesn't mind as it allows it to be above her bed. At nights, before she drifts into restless sleep, she looks at the inky, night sky and counts any stars she sees. On the rare occasion she sees a proper constellation, she'll stay awake, counting the stars over and over until the sun starts to rise and the dark sky fades into a bright pink of dawn, of a new day in the cycle of suffering she's grown accustomed to in her short, dismal life.
She knows the other children have it bad, it's not like she can hear them laughing hysterically every night, but she can't help the small voice in the back of her head that tells her they have it easy. She knows they don't get injected with multiple serums each day, or drowned, or shot; she knows they don't because they can't. There are countless of them. So, so many. She sometimes remembers when she was three, hearing their screams for the first time and her heart just aching. In those moments, she didn't care for her own pain or trauma, just theirs. She just wanted to find them and let them all go. Maybe it was just all one selfish urge so she didn't have to hear their constant crying anymore, or maybe it was because she genuinely cared about them.
But Casey isn't sure she's ever cared about anyone ever.
She doesn't know what it's supposed to look or feel like, but she guesses she'll just know. If she ever cares for someone, she doesn't think it'll be obvious. It'll just be in the small things. She doesn't know what the small things are, but that doesn't matter, she thinks. If she ever cares for someone, she doesn't need to know what they are because she'll just do them. Her brain wouldn't even recognise that she's done anything until she takes a step back
