Scintillate

12 | The Truth Untold

"Alright. You know the drill. Line up!"

The woman in charge of us that day was a screamer, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time she opened her mouth.

I gripped the hem of my shirt with both of my hands, staring at the ground in front of me. Glancing at the feet of the person standing to the right of me, I noticed how their feet were pointing straight forward. I tilted my head in confusion. I had noticed that pattern amongst everyone in my group.

Why were my feet so different from the rest? Mine never seemed to point forward, no matter how hard I tried. It just made them feel uncomfortable and after a while of persistence, they ended up hurting if I didn't let them naturally turn out to the sides.

"Today you will be learning how to absorb caligos. Keep in mind that not everyone gets it right the first time." She grinned sinisterly at our group and I felt my stomach churn. I looked around at everyone who was equally confused on what a caligo was and why we were being trained to absorb it. As I gained enough courage and opened my mouth to ask the person next to me, something caught everyone's attention, especially the boy next to me. His eyes blew wide as saucers as he stared straight ahead, making me afraid to look over at what everyone else was seeing.

Mouth slightly agape, I turned my head back to the front in defeat. I immediately stiffened at the sight in front of me. People were filing in and moving to stand in front of us, the amount equal to the number of kids in our group. My goosebumps now turned into shivers of fear, wracking my body visibly. I never had a good feeling about group activities because of where we were, but something about this scared me more than anything we had ever done.

"You will now be shown by the eldest in your group how this is done, so pay close attention or you will be taken care of accordingly."

The eldest in our group was a girl at the age of seventeen. I instinctively moved my feet forward, ready to volunteer in her place, when the boy next to me shot out his arm and pushed me back in place, shaking his head only enough for me to see. The look on his face told me everything. He had been here longer than I had by a few months and from the look on his face, sadness twisted with worry, I knew that nothing good was to come out of what we were about to do.

The girl named Joy stepped forward confidently. The woman in charge watched as the trainer led Joy to the person standing in front of her, instructing Joy to put her hands on his chest. His chest had a small black dot that looked ominous, the darkness of it sending shivers all over my body once more. She concentrated her hands above the foggy black mist, the trainer calmly telling her to visualize her absorbing it into her veins.

Joy had always excelled at everything that was asked of her, but today was different. Her veins began to turn a charcoal black and her knees buckled, letting out a silent scream as she fell to the ground. I jolted in surprise at the sight. There wasn't anything any of us could even do to help her, either. We would be reprimanded in the worst way and as I had been advised from the start, everyone avoided it at all costs. No one else moved a muscle, not a single twitch of a finger as we saw her writhe in pain on the floor, the trainer exhaling an exasperated sigh and scooping her up to take her to the infirmary.

I swallowed down the thickness in my throat and searched the faces of the rest of my group, all of them having paled at the task that now awaited them.

If I had known then what I knew now, I wouldn't have bothered to stay. If I had known what would become of me, maybe I would have made different decisions that led to me never existing further.

-------------------

I awoke to the sound of a beating heart.

Except this heart was beating at such a high speed that I sprung my eyes open in worry. It sounded exactly like mine felt when I woke up from a nightmare. My fingertips brushed against the cotton of someone's shirt, their chest firm and heaving.