The Monsters in The Shadows

TWO

I PRESSED MY BACK AGAINST the metal door, my left hand hovering over the handle.

I stared without breathing at the black-haired woman in a white lab coat, the ones that doctors wear. She was sitting at a short wooden desk that sat in the middle of the room. Next to her desk was a small cot with a weird halo-shaped machine dangling over it.

The desk and the machine faced the door, but she didn't see me come in.

Or she more than likely ignored me.

Her eyes were glued to the screen of the big gray computer on her desk.

She was probably in her late forties--her hair had bits of gray in it. She wore no makeup other than bright red lipstick, which stood out greatly on her pale face.

The doctor finally looked up. Her eyes held a touch of boredom as they met mine, just for a second. She looked back at the computer, typing something. "Name?" She asked. 

She spoke in what I thought was a British accent. And you could hear the annoyance and forced kindness in her tone.

"Leandra Miller." I whispered, finally taking a breath.

"Can you spell that for me?" The woman doctor asked. She glanced at me again.

"L-e-a-n-d-r-a M-i-l-l-e-r."

The doctor stood up from her desk. The metal chair made a high pitched squeak against the marble floor. She placed her pale hands on the top of the desk with a sigh.

"There is nothing to be afraid of, child."

She must have noticed my hand on the doorknob. Either way, I wasn't convinced.

The woman held her hand out to me. "Come here, sweetie."

I looked at her hand and slowly, very slowly, began creeping my fingers of the knob to creep off the knob.

Annoyance seeped back into the doctors eyes as she watched my progress.

I let go of the door and took a baby step over to her.

And another.

And another.

"That's it, dear." Another baby step.

"Okay, now could you sit right here, please? Right in this chair, okay?" The doctor motioned to the small cot. I eyed it wearily.

The halo-shaped machine looked very frightening, like it might fall down and crush me once I sat under it.

"Don't worry, dear. The machine won't hurt you." The doctor said, as though she read my thoughts.

"What does it do?" I asked as I sat down on the cot.

The machine hung over my head.

"It just checks your brain, to see if it's okay." The doctor walked over to the machine, pressing a button on the side of it that I couldn't see. The machine blinked to life.

My brain?

"Are we in a hospital?" I asked. The room did look like a room in a hospital. But instead of a hospital bed, the room had this cot. There was a rack of white uniforms that hung next to the door. They looked just like the ones the kids wore outside of this building.

"In a way, yes." The doctor walked back to her desk. She started typing as the machine began to lower closer to my head. 

Terror crept down my spine.

"But...I'm not sick..." The machine stopped an inch from my forehead. "In fact, I feel fine." I babbled nervously. I turned my head to watch the doctor.

She was looking at me, her eyes tight. "It's not the disease. You survived that, because you and numerous others are...different. We're going to figure out what's going on your head now, okay?"

We? Who's 'we'? I wanted to ask, but I kept my mouth shut.

I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Everhart's Disease was what the adults called it. They said it caused most of the children in America to die...of unknown reasons. Within the past few months, more than half of my school was dead of these 'unknown reasons'.

And I was scared that I would be next. 

A month after I turned eleven, there were only twenty kids left in school, including me.

Out of five hundred students.

A red light scanned across my forehead and the doctor's computer beeped once.

Twice.

A third time.

Fourth time.

Fifth time.

And then it stopped beeping.

 The room was spinning.

Hard breaths escaped my lips. 

Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. 

Panic Attack. The words swam through my head. I am having a panic attack. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember what  my mom would say when these happened.

I hear the doctor smack the computer with her palm in frustration. "Damn piece of crap! You were working just fine a second ago!" She hissed. Still silence from the computer.

I try to drown it all out and remember,

Take a breath, count to ten, do it all over again.

And so I do. About five times, exactly.

"Come on!" She hit it again.

The computer beeped.

"Finally!"

The doctor got up from the desk, holding a green spray paint can. She walked over to the white uniforms and drew a large green X on the back of the uniform shirt.

"You're a Green." She said as she handed me the uniform. She looked as though she wasn't going to explain to me what she meant by Green.

I stood up swiftly from the cot as the halo-shaped machine retracted from my face.

It was only until after I had taken the uniform from the doctor and left the room that I realized I was crying.

Hot tears ran down my face before I had a chance to wipe them away.

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

Me and a few others were escorted out of the building after we changed our clothes. The uniform was a little big on me. The white shoes were too.

The rain lightened enough for it not to be pouring when we left the building.

I was pushed into the nearest cabin by a PSF whose face I didn't see.  I stumbled into the cabin, smacking into something in the darkness of the cabin. There weren't any lights on inside.

"Ow!"

"Sorr-" I tripped on something else and fell on my face.

Dust filled my nose and eyes. A racking dry cough shook my whole body, and dust got into my mouth as well.

"Are you okay?" A voice asked. It sounded like a girl. She held her hand out to me.

"Um...yeah. I-I guess." I wheezed as she helped me up.

The girl chuckled. "I'm Ashley. What's your name?"

"Leandra." I said, wiping my pants.

"Well Leandra, welcome to Cabin 27."