What Jenson Did For Me

Escape

I looked left and right, calculating my chance at reaching the gap in the electric fence before the guards behind me caught up. My chances weren’t looking so well from my stance, so I decided to jolt out to prevent any more time consumption. I leapt out of the first floor window in the school’s infirmary and my feet hit the ground running.

I had already taken my right knee out of the security brace which the nurse had given me and I was hoping that it wouldn’t do any harm without it. The distance between me and the fence slowly shortened and the closer I got the more I realized what I was leaving behind. A world-class education my parents had given their sanity up for would soon be a simple figment of my imagination. I felt terrible that all of their pain would be for nothing, but I don’t see how learning about past wars and past laws are going to help me change the world today. I’d rather be learning about breaking news in which I could actually help a situation and enhance my reflexes and reactions, but as the government wishes, they have brainwashed all of the older generations.

Their understandings on reality are simply not there; no one knows about how to live your life other than to follow the rules. Just hearing my thoughts would cause any elder to place me in the rebellious category of teenagers, but they don’t realize what they’re being deprived of. Sometimes I feel as if I’m the only one that truly understands what has happened to humanity in the years following the turn of the third century, albeit my best friend Jenson empathizes with me.

He is as average as you could get in physical terms, being brown-haired with hazel eyes that are accompanied by a crooked smile, so it isn’t like he draws attention to our secretive conversations on how to backtrack society to how it was back in the second century. Speaking of him, I don’t see Jenson in the previously designated spot! We promised each other that we would meet right outside of the electrical fence, ye he isn’t there!

My mind began to race; Jenson was my only ally in the great escape. Along with my stuttering thoughts, came along sputtering muscles. The jump from the first floor window was beginning to take its toll on my knee which had just been operated on a few hours back. My right leg began to wobble as I pushed forward and my left legs new strain from carrying double the weight began to push it towards the same condition as the other. This day couldn’t possibly worsen anymore so I began to tear.

The salty crystals dripped down my cheek but were soon swiped away by the wind hitting my face at a ten mile per hour speed. My classes did seem to come in handy with telling me how much energy and time was being wasted and by what means, but they seemed to lack in the understanding of how to get out of it. It seems as if the government was thinking clearly when they designed the curriculum for the committee to verify. I guess I’ve underestimated them a little bit just like everyone else burdened to live in their world.

A chuckle escaped my panting lungs as I realized the ingenious body I was working against. I was clearly no match for them, yet here I was running out of their precious school and into the welcoming embrace of the forest all alone. I wish Jenson was with me, being the bravest of the pair of us, but some things just can’t happen the way you want them to; life is never fair like that.

Pain shot up my leg as I tripped over the stump Jenson and I once used to pass notes through. I screeched in pain. My knee was clearly about to rip apart the bone from the tendon. It was coming; it was just a matter of time so I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was. I leaned forward; grasping my knee with all the might I had left in me and let out one last groan before preparing myself to tumble through the gap in the fence. It was only eleven feet away and there weren’t that many plants and stumps in the way, so I steadied myself and mentally prepared my mind for the excruciating tumble I would soon know to exist.

A deep breath allowed me to stabilize and from there I rolled towards the gaping hole I now could consider my last chance at survival. I neared my destination with the speed of a cat just waking up and reluctantly passed through the fence without any sign of electrocution. I hit a tree and fell out of my armadillo-like position. I had made, but now I had to seal the whole in the electric fence before the guards got to it.

I could hear the alarm ringing already at the campus, and I knew I was sending my classmates into a whirlwind of excitement. They were probably thinking about how the Inca tribe would just have to wait to be presented orally to the school and how the cause of the alarm might provide an exciting episode to watch after they changed it into cartoon form for the hit series, Caught You! which depicted escapes within the walls of the committee’s territory. Everyone was so involved with the series on television that the reality of the events seemed to slip their minds as well as the memories of those fugitives.

I guess I would be that episode in which everyone anticipates because of the gruesome torture promised, but was a let down at being a one-hit wonder. Jenson would understand my point of view, but I guess it’s just me and the toolbox filled with everything I need to patch up the gap. The problem with that though, is the fact that we were never instructed on how to use tools to our advantage. They were just useless pieces of metal in comparison to the labor-free mechanic shops in town that would fix anything in under ten minutes.

My hand grasped the drill as well as the metal plate which would soon be permanent. I had to do this swiftly unless my life was to be sacrificed without purpose. Something in the back of my head made me drop the drill though, and reminded me that I needed and insulator to protect my hands from the currently charged fence. I grabbed the rubber gloves beside me and repeated my first action, now truly ready to drill the plate into place.

The first screw went in easily, but my hope soon faded as I saw the guards racing towards the girl with tools. My mind told me to quicken my pace, but my arms couldn’t keep up and soon I fell behind in speed. I now had three screws in and there were four guards at the stump I originally tripped over. Panic rushed throughout my body with dashes of adrenaline and I froze. This couldn’t possibly be happening to me when I had come so far so I took in a deep breath and screwed in the last bolt.

A loud metallic clunk was a result of them hitting into the plate, but luckily the electrical current flowed through the plate and into their bodies. They fell down in unison with a sudden spark leaping out of their ears and traveling throughout their bodies. A sigh of relief overcame me and then the realization of the lack of time came about.

I stood up, not realizing that my knee was still injured to a ghastly degree and started jogging into the forest. Each time my right leg hit the ground I began to loose feeling of those pins and needles jabbing my knee. Pain was no longer something against me so I kept running until I came by group of blueberry bushes. My body ached and I collapsed into their fruit, eventually falling asleep amongst the vegetation.