Leafy Green

Water Hemlock (pt. 2)

Lunch time finished after a long, and uneventful half hour. No one at the table talked besides the two blues, who muttered lowly to themselves. 

I had tried to take a look at the name on the back on the chair that was thrown back during the earlier calamity, but my efforts were to no avail. My escorts had tugged me away by the chains connected to my wrists and neck, causing me to catch my breath after a short moment. 

I smile at the other patients as we walk past them, most of them able to walk freely being in the yellow, blue and green categories. 

We pass a thin, lanky looking boy who quivered when our eyes connected, his botanical trail around his neck like a choker. 

The urge inside of my to rip out his beautiful carnations grows irresistibly, and I tug violently at my chains to get closer to the boy. The guards are immediately alert of the situation and try their hardest to pull me back and restraint me. 

A hand comes around my front from over my shoulder and I chomp down hard, making the guard yelp and retract his hand, an irritated bite mark left in place from my teeth. 

I tug forward again, favouring the need to watch the boy slowly drain on the ground rather than my need for air as the chains suffocate me. 

I manage to snag the boys green vest and pull him towards me, snarling at his face and stretching out again to take a bite of his trail. The smell is intoxicating and I take a second to breathe in the freshness of it before raising my hand up and yanking the closest flower bud. 

The boy cries out in pain, his arms flying up to push me into the arms of the guard behind me. 

He falls against his green and yellow door behind him from exertion. I bare my teeth at him and growl lowly at him as another guard comes down the hallway and places a muzzle over my mouth. 

I'm lifted from the ground and carried through the parted walkway where patients of all categories silently watch me struggle. 

I give up and instead laugh to myself, recalling the fright that I gave the boy. 

Behind me, I hear as people murmur and begin to whisper to each other, while others go to the fallen boy to ask if he's alright. 

I smirk, knowing that even with restraints, I can't really be held back. 

I'm quiet for most of the way back to my room, noting the different colours on the doors as we pass them. 

Red and yellow, blue and green, green and red, red and blue, yellow and blue, green and yellow. All the doors are closed, or are in the process of being closed. The half red doors all have one guard sitting on a chair in the hallway, looking at surveillance screens of what I assume to be inside the room. 

We pass a few more closed doors, hearing nothing but a few quiet conversations before we get to a slightly open door. Red and yellow. 

There's shouting from inside and I peer in slightly. Theres a guard single-handedly trying to detach the boy from earlier from his yellow-vested-roomate who wails at the pain the other is causing as they violently grip their wrists and yell into their face. 

The guard is obviously having a hard time restraining the boy and my guards pull me into the room, locking the chains around my wrists and neck to the end of the red-vested boys bed, which is unkempt. 

They assist the boy and fix up the muzzle on his face, finally unlatching his hands from the yellow boy and chaining him beside me, to his own bed. 

We meet eyes and I'm amazed at his botanical trail, that runs over his left eye and stops just above his eyebrow. They slowly bloom and I feel tingles all throughout my body. He surges forward and embraces me, more in a restraining way than an affectionate one, enabling the guards to take me back just yet as our chains get tangled together. 

The guards stand slightly in shock as they see our matching botanical trails, the last of the buds opening across his eye and mine across my chest, just visible from under my vibrant red vest. 

One of the guards speaks into a walk talky while reassuring that the yellow patient will surely be moved to a safer room. 

After a few moments, a flurry of footsteps is heard from down the hall, coming to a stop in front of the door and jerking it open to revealing Ms. Gyle. She looks back and forth between the guards and I, still held tightly in the embrace of my apparent soulmate. 

She avoids our area where we stand at the end of the bed, instead walking over to the guards and talking back and forth in hushed voices. 

I look up at my soulmates face, smiling slightly. He returns the smile, his eyes crinkling at the sides a bit too much, although it's still charming. 

"I like your botanical trail," I say, awkwardly shaking my chain-bound hand so that I can readjust my muzzle. 

The boy laughs, a low, bubbly laugh. "I saw you earlier in the hallway, you scared that lanky boy shitless. It was probably the most entertaining thing to happen all week." 

I wrap my arms around his waist, evidently closing the gap between us further, "oh that was nothing," I joke, "his trail looked like it was just aching to be ripped out from his neck." 

"So why are you in here?" He questions, looking my petite yet sturdy frame over once or twice before meeting my eyes again.

"It's an alternative, instead of jail. I committed botanical fraud; ripping out someones trail and stitching it onto someone else." He raises his eyebrows slightly, waiting for more. "They think that sending me here will do me better than jail time, but there's no way I'm easily giving up my fun."

He cracks a smile at that. "So what. The trails are rooted into our muscles and nerves, how'd you manage to just rip them out?" 

"Make an incision where the flesh meets the underside of the bud and you can just yank it out with the right amount of force. More than once the trail wrapped around an artery which lead to an unpleasant bloodbath." I shift, pulling at the fabric of his vest. "So why are you in here?"

"Mainly dmdd, which causes me to be violent and be easily irritated, but I enjoy evoking fear in others which is apparently sadistic according to my mother." He rolls his eyes playfully, effectively making me snicker. 

I'm about to comment when Ms. Gyle interrupts our conversation. 

"Cordelia, in order to give Mr Simmers here a safer living environment, you and him will be exchanging rooms, although that means that staying here with Mr Tubig will require heavier security and limited privacy."

I open my mouth to interject but she raises her hand, silencing me. "I was informing you, not negotiating. If you don't cooperate you'll have 3 warning before we call your parents and then the police to take care of you in jail, do you understand?"

I huff out a breath, not enjoying the idea of having limited privacy, but it's better than non at all. "I understand," I say gruffly, turning my head to the side to look out the window. 

"Good, you'll stay here while your belongings are brought here."