There are 365 days a year. And I have been locked up in this place for 6204 days. If you were doing the math let me help you; that’s 17 years minus one day. One day in which my mother held me tight and whispered in my ear that it was going to be okay and that she was going to find a way to get me out of here. Or at least I hope so, after all I was one day old. My room is the grayest saddest place you can think of (and believe me when I say that even your imagination can’t reach that level of lifelessness that is my room). There’s a tiny door with a little window at the top and a hole at the bottom for the food. The door is gray just like the rest of the room and there are no windows except for a tiny hole at the bottom of the wall (the one in front of the door) right behind my bed.
You should know that normally there are no windows in the rooms but when I was nine I woke up sweating and panicking due to a nightmare and I couldn’t breathe so I took my toothbrush and started scraping and scratching the wall with the back of it thinking it will magically open and air will be able to march into my lungs and I’ll be able to breathe again (a nine year olds imagination, go figure) and from that day on every night when I couldn’t sleep I scratched and scraped until I formed my own little window (hopefully one day It’ll be big enough for my brilliant escape plane that probably won’t work because if I’m being honest it’s not that brilliant and no one has ever escaped the aforim- that’s the name of this retched place- before).
My room also has- as you probably guessed- a bed (a very uncomfortable one if I may say so myself) a sink and a hole in the floor with a cover on top that they call a toilet (when I was younger I had a roommate named Aramm and he told me that there is a tube under the flour in each room and all your…doings, privates, digested foods, or whatever else you want to call it go underground- I know, very disturbing. We used to talk about escaping together through the tubes; we said that will run away together and get married and live far far away where no one can find us and we wrote tons of letters to the storks about the kids we wanted- don’t judge us, we were very young and did not know where babies come from.
Aramm wasn’t very obedient and one time when I was sick he managed to get out of the room somehow, he snuck into the kitchen and stole some of the guards dinner- carrot soup that tasted better than anything I have ever tried and It was better than the tasteless things they give us, it's an orange cream thingy that tasted like...like, freedom. Sigh…where was I? oh right so anyway he came back to our room and started feeding me the soup- now, I don’t remember much because I was young and sick but some guards came in and they started yelling and I started crying and they yelled at me to stop and I couldn’t and anyway we both paid the price; they lashed me twenty times and Aramm- who stole the soup to begin with got forty. They brought him back to our room and I tried my best to stop the bleeding but after two days he died. No one came for his body and eventually they had to move me to a different rood due to all the animals feeding on his dead body and my living one. Aramm was and forever will be my hero and my first love and I believe that he’s watching over me and I will be okay as long as he’ll be up there making sure I’m good). There’s also a little wooden desk with some drawers to put your personal things in (you get two sets of clothes at the very beginning and once a month for good behaver you get to ask for something like a book or a piece of paper or a pencil or I don’t know what, whatever your heart desires) I have a few books on my desk, a notebook, some colors and a pencil. In one of my drawers I keep all the letters and drawings and whatnot that Aramm and I made together (or got together or wrote together or something).
Are we friends now? I feel like we’re friends and so I think you should know where I’m being kept. It’s called aforim- gray in some ancient language that hasn’t been used for thousands of years now.
This place, from what I’ve heard is a big tall gray brick building on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere. Everyone who’s here are nothings- no significant people, no one misses us, humans, diseased- now I know what you might think… what do you mean diseased? What do you mean by humans? Well you see the world has changed, magical, unnatural and mythical creatures have taken over the world and killed all the humans that lived there before, claiming they were bad. The few of the humans left were locked up in the aforim. Some say that the original nothings are still alive. I don’t know whether to believe them or not… after all I’ve only seen two rooms in this place.
People that are called diseased are usually the off springs of the unnatural that were born here- on the place that used to be called earth where we are, and so their kids sometimes come out diseased for no apparent reason or the off springs of the very few humans who managed to escape and hide and somehow pass for an unnatural and…mixed with a MMUC - magical or mythical or unnatural creature and eventually had human kids that were send to the aforim to be “cured”.
And then there were also the very rare diseased that were the off springs of the MMUC- two pure unnatural creatures of any kind- and yet somehow they come out human.
All these people mentioned above are taken- or rather brought since I’m here- to the aforim and there- here- they try to cure us. How you might ask? Well they start by testing them. Let’s take the vampires for example. A diseased vampire goes through blood, shapeshifting, flying, taste buds and some medical and physical testing. I’ve heard that they make them drink their roommate’s and possibly their friend’s blood to see if they can break the skin and they probably hope that they’ll magically turn into vampires. I can’t tell you exactly what happens to all different kinds or what kind of “testing” they go through but I can tell you what I’ve been through, if you’ll listen.
From what I know I was found on the sand in front of the aforim by a guard who took me in to get my blood tested. The blood work came out unclear. They had no idea what brought me to the world and had no idea what to do with me. At first they tried dropping me from very high places to see if I could fly and so I have a flat head from landing on it so many times and a fear of heights. After they saw that didn’t work they tried feeding me blood to see if I was a vampire, now that lasted a month and eventually they had to stop and give me actual human food because I was starving to death. They tried holding me under water for a long time to see if I was mermaid or some other kind of watery creature… I nearly died twice before they had to stop. I was placed in the oven to see if I had an affinity for fire and guess what… I don’t! And so on and so on. My skin is scared so badly and I have no idea who I am or maybe…what I am?
Once a child has reached a point of no return- meaning he’s broke so badly there is just no way of fixing him- he gets locked in a big room as deep as it gets underground with all the other broken kids with no food to die. Sometimes I swear I can hear their screams at night.
Where was I? history, right… so all of this started about 5,000 years ago and it was horrible (at least that’s what the book said) and now the world is divided to… species- if you may and as far as I know everybody is happy- except maybe the dead people… I’m pretty sure they’re not happy, not happy at all.
Now I know what you might think- how the hell does she know all these things? Well to answer your unspoken question, I like books- Aramm thought me everything I know, reading, writing and so on. He was a werewolf once and his gift has been taken away by the chief of their tribe for fraternizing with a fairy and rebelling against the union of unnatural, mythical and magical creatures brought to Adams (Adams was initially called earth but the UUMMCA decided to change it because it was too human) he was eventually send to the aforim to be punished. Aramm was stuck in a seven year old’s body but I think he was seven years old for a very long time.
Let me explain something to you, sometimes-though this cases are even rarer than the diseased born to unnatural parents- they bring the cadut to the aforim. What are the cadut? Well they are unnatural, mythical and magical creatures born MMU but for some reason their gift has been taken away by the head master of their kind. These people are truly treated like prisoners and I wouldn’t want to be them under any circumstances. If you behave here- in the aforim- sometimes they let you eat in the dining room and you always get to meet fascinating people. I once sat next to a girl that was a lot older than me and she told me all these stories about the outside world and about families- I’ve never had one and I wonder how that would feel- and she told me about the beach which is- as she described it like a big bowl of water, and that night I dreamt about swimming so far away that I will never have to hear the cries of the other patients in the aforim.
And if you behave really good they let you go to the shower room for fifteen minutes to clean yourself and they even give you soaps and things that we usually never get to use!
Aramm said once that I was the smartest person he’s ever talked to except for his older brother Boram. He adored his brother Boram. “Pssttt!” what?? I never get visitors. Ever. Especially at night. I’m lying in my bed with one of my hands supporting my head (I can feel my hair- short as a boys- on my forearm) and my other hand resting on my empty stomach. They didn’t bring dinner tonight and I didn’t have lunch either because I asked for a new book instead of the food.
“Esyn?” that voice again! And, wait what? No one has called me Esyn since Aramm died.
Thank you for reading everyone! Hope you like it tell me what you think and I'll upload a second chapter 😁
YOU ARE READING
someplace else
Fantasywhat if the world didn't belong to humans anymore, what if the humans were in danger of extinction. I won't tell you. if you want to know read on...😏
