[Discontinued] Not Equal

five// unanswered questions

"Maddie."

My mother's voice sounds from behind me as I enter the home unit. It's not a big thing like you probably imagine, that's only for the Males. The home unit is small and is less than forty square meters in total. There are three beds, two tables, a bathroom, a mirror, a sink and stove that serves as a kitchen, and the classic workroom where I had snuck into.

It's not much, but it's enough.

"Yes, Mother?"

The question wasn't something that breaks the Rules, I was spoken to, so I was allowed to answer. Such things were rare.

"You are not wearing a white dress." My mother implies. Her voice yearns for a question, but she cannot ask it, she follows the Rules too much.

"Yes," I answer, bluntly. I don't give her any details, and her face looks unhappy. She wants to know why.

"Very well." My mother says sighing. She turns around to the stove, where she is cooking the classic pea soup, along with some meat. The loaves of bread are beside her, on the counter.

I turn around as well, wincing slightly. Part of me hopes that Mother can see past all of the stupid Rules, how I am, and love me. But the other part knows that there is no hope and I can't do anything. She is one of them. She was injected like I was.

She can never love me.

I cross the room to the little bed that barely fits me and sit down. The mirror faces me, and I look tired. There are bags underneath my eyes, along with my bleeding cuts. My muscles are sore from strain and pressure, but there's nothing I can do about that, other than massaging it. I take off the clothes that were given to me by the Male doctor and change into the clothes that were given to us as younger Females.

I still look tired and unappealing.

I sigh.

What do you expect? To be pretty? Sorry, won't ever happen. Well, at least to me.

I can see the edges of the door where Mother's work papers are. I want to go in so badly. This little feeling in me is calling me to enter and open the door, looking for the drawings that I did as a Seven. But I know they're gone, they burned them, forever and ever and ever.

I will never see them again.

I will never see that drawing of the rose I did.

The rose.

The rose.

Oh, the rose.

When I was a Seven, I had always been interested in nature and going outside. Females weren't usually allowed to go out and were instead educated on cooking and other labor that we were supposed to do when we got older. But I went outside frequently. I picked the flowers that grew in our tiny lawn. I watered the grass and tickled the clovers.

But I remember, when I was younger, I loved roses.

There was this one rose with a bent neck, but it was perfectly healthy. I loved that rose. It meant everything to me. I would go and look at it all day.

But Mother didn't feel the same way about the rose. She always hated when I went outside, but it technically didn't break any Rules so that she couldn't report me.

I drew that rose — many times. I didn't like my drawings; I just loved the rose. It was beautiful. I remember sneaking into the workplace to steal a pencil and watching as the lines of graphite streaked across the page, fascinated.

I'm not sure why I loved that flower, though. Maybe because it reminded me of...well, me, that flower was just like me in a way. Bent, but not dying.