hiccup✓ #DigitalAMAwithRoshan

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Signs. I repeat inside my head with a scoff. If someone had told me I would be sitting in this train, headed to God-knows-where at this ungodly hour (cue beads of perspiration collecting on my forehead and sliding down my temples at an uncomfortably slow pace, stomach in knots and my heart thumping like a wild animal trying to escape its cage inside my chest. You know the drill. Good ol' stress) just because I was desperate to find a mere sign, I would have laughed in their face.

They say newborns 'supposedly' take a month before they can hear properly. This automatically brings us to the conclusion that it takes them quite a bit of time to recognize their parents' voices. Another three months to make coherent hand movements, five to see properly, seven to mature their distance vision and an entire year to make simple gestures like nodding and shaking their heads.

It had taken me a total of five minutes after I had...materialized out of thin air, apparently, to master all of the skills (and more) that 'normal' babies required a year or more for.

Seven months? God, no. If the way my barely-opened eyes had followed the uncaring nurse's every movement with precision was any sign (there it is again. The Word. I'm starting to dislike it more and more), I was more attentive to her than she was of me, that's for sure.

I still wince when I remember her shrill voice.

Anyways, all of that absurdity brings us to my next complication.

My parents.

No, that came out wrong.

They aren't the complication, per se. The opposite, actually. They aren't: As in I have no idea who my parents are.

Or if I even have parents.

Everyone in that white-walled room of babies where I first saw the world? All of the babies in there seemed to have parents. Or a parent. Singular. Conclusion: I probably have one too. Somewhere.

I'm trying to hope for the best.

Now, about the first and...well, major complication.

Although it took me a moment to realize my brain was far more developed than it was supposed to be, it didn't take long for me to realize I was totally and utterly screwed.

Just remembering it has me thumping my head back on the window with a groan. The lady beside me wakes up with a start, and I ignore her to my best ability until she settles with a last odd look in my direction and goes back to snoring.

During nights, when the 'normal' babies slept, I listened.

Fast forward to a few years later, all the while which I had known I was an experiment gone wrong, me looking for 'signs' of me coming into being and everyone in the so-called hospital collectively agreeing to let me grow, in seclusion, and see what became of me.

Quite rude, if you ask me.

Little did they know they were going to annoy me to a point where I would figure out how to escape.

~