Zero Zero

2: dreams of glass

I went.

my lifespan was coming to a close and I was feeling reckless enough to actually be reckless.

I went and I took my lessons notebook and a pencil I had stolen from the study room. I went with a heart beating so fast that I was overly grateful that they had given up on their heart-monitoring devices which residents easily figured out how to trick. tricks I had never learned because I was an overly-emotional outcast. overly-emotional being any type of emotional, of course.

the light-off buzzer rang through the vacant halls as the lights shut down for the night. I hid the pencil and a ripped-out piece of paper in the waistband on my nightclothes, and left my room. I walked down the hall cautiously, careful not to raise suspicion but careful not to shift in a way which would let the paper and pencil slip from the pocketless pants.

which were made pocketless after countless instances of people hiding their pills in pockets.

I, being one of those people. but I was smarter at this point. I chewed the pill and pretended to wash it down with milk, when I really just spit it back into the milk. and I never take another sip of the milk, but they didn't seem to care.

a resident stationed in the hall made note of me passing by.

I pushed open the heavy steel door to the bathroom, where there were a few people brushing their teeth. another resident sat in the corner, dozing off from time to time. it was probably getting late, but we rarely got to see the sun down in the institution. 

I sat in a vacant stall, next to the only occupied stall, hoping that it was occupied by whoever promised to meet me here.

I knocked quietly when I heard the sound to the faucet. I waited anxiously for a knock to return, scared that this person would not be the person I met and would now know that I was trying to meet up with someone. And what if they found out? I'd be put on 24/7 surveillance in a solitary room. I didn't want to miss my chance to die before I killed. 

I could feel the pure anxiety flood my veins and almost reach my fingertips just before I heard a returning knock, just before the faucet stopped.

"hi." I wrote, hoping he'd have something more to say than me. I passed the paper and pencil in the crack between the bathroom wall and the stall wall.

"hi." he wrote, "you're hot. who are you?"

"what do you mean?" I wrote, "i'm 000."

"it means you're attractive, dummy. i'm frank."

I stared at the paper. frank? frank wasn't a number. what did that mean? and 'frank' thought I was attractive? sure, relationships weren't an all-too-rare sight in the facility, but they were always short-lived and always between opposite genders. only those who were above nineteen were let to have relationships which didn't end in near-immediate separation. and I was never a person anyone dared to have a relationship with.

"what do you mean, you're frank? you're from here, right?"

I could feel my pulse getting quicker by the second. this guy was weird. and not weird like I was, he was so outright about it. and somehow he seemed to be barely on the side of not-weird enough to disappear at their hands.

the crumpled paper was passed back toward me through the little passage.

"yes. but a numbers not a name. not really. don't you remember anything?"

my heart sank. there was something about it, it felt like deja vu, but only an entire lifetime. it was a feeling I had pushed off my mind's ledge a long time ago, but here this guy was, dragging it right back up. there was something there beyond the white walls of the facility, a time before ten years old that was long forgotten that I liked to think had just faded but no. I knew it wasn't the case and it tore me apart but this person, this 'frank', remembered?

"what do you remember?" I asked.

"i remember everything, or a lot."

"how? i cant remember before ten. eleven and twelve are starting to fade and those are my memories with my brother. kind of sad, isn't it?"

"what happened to your brother?"

"we talked too much. they didn't like it, so they separated us. and you still didn't answer my question."

"i don't know how. i just do. maybe they fucked up or something. sorry about your brother, if i see him i'll say hello. i get transferred a lot."

"thanks. he's 001. and tell him that i wasn't a killer. please."

"oh. okay, i will. how old are you?" 

"eighteen. what about you?"

"seventeen. how many days do you have left?"

"six after today. and good luck to you and whatever you plan to do past nineteen." i replied. i had become so nonchalant about my impending death that i genuinely didn't care. i would take any sure-fire way to get out of getting blood on my hands.

"thanks. and six? that's not long. how do you plan on getting out? can i come with? i've been trying to figure out a plan to get outta here for the past seven years."

"you don't want to come with, i promise."

"believe me i want to get the fuck out of here. i remember the world outside and i miss it so much. i miss my family and music and comic books and television and food and dogs and everything."

"you miss food? and what family? and what comic books and music? and im not getting out of here. i'm just not going to kill."

I heard a quiet sigh from the stall next to mine after I passed him the crumpled paper.

"walk with me down the hall."

I hesitated for a minute. but I knew that there was no reason to not. it was the end of my world, after all. why not go crazy.

"okay." I wrote, and left with him. lightheaded from the degree of adrenaline in my veins.