Walk Away

Walk Away- A Short Story

A room of stone enclosed in on my body at uneven layers that were rushed by the engineers that built under the pressure of time. Along with the stench of mildew from the copper pipes in the walls, voices of all the others locked away in their own boxes murmured to themselves as they paced their echoing footsteps. I normally would not mind being alone as everything I needed for art, music or literature all surrounded me, but it did not ease any suffering. To calm myself, I put on headphones and circum to the music of Foo Fighters.

My parents had held hatred for the politicians since the beginning of restrictions set for the COVID-19 situation, but they never would have guessed that the government would have ever gone so far. A few months ago of lost time, an act was passed to test all residents for the Coronavirus every week. During this renovation, a confinement was being built by a wealthy man that I call the 'prison Dean'. Once it was finished, there were so many cases found by the tests that each one of them was placed in this confinement to prevent the spread of the virus. So far, many of the cases were young and not yet fatal. Among these cases was me.

The day I tested positive was the beginning of this disaster. My family would have fought for me, but they could not prevent the authorities from prying me out of their arms. They would have been thrown in a prison of their own. Now, they sit back at home while mass security barricades me in these stone walls where the only thing I can fear is losing my mind. I managed to keep my sanity, but the air weighed upon me and strained me like cold, iron chains.

Most days all I wanted to do was stare at the wall. My hands were just too weak for expression. While I gazed, I bounced a rubber ball on the solid walls--hitting the same spot each time. Soon, my focus was broken by a pounding on the metal door that thundered in my ears.

My weary state needed whomever was at the door. I hoped that it was lunchtime to give me the strength I was lacking, but instead a woman with bright, red hair in a long, white coat stood with a mask and gloved hands that wavered away from me in disgust.

She threw me into a strapped chair with all her might even though I did not even have the will to lift a finger against her. Dazed, I took a look at a label on her coat that read the name 'Dr. Parson'. I asked her where she was taking me, but the doctor continued to usher me down the grey corridors where murmurs turned into screams that only grew louder and louder with every inch we traveled. "Failed tests'' the doctor told me as the howling bounced from one side of my face as another would hit the other side. All causing my head to sway from left to right as the doctor halted in front of a yellow painted door before inserting a card into a slot on the left.

The sound of steam was released by the door as it slowly made its way open to reveal a white room full of tubes, blackboards of scientific etchings, papers stacked in shelves, and four bed stations each with blood bags next to a stand holding up a computer and misconstrued folders.

Dr. Parson then brought me to one of the beds on the right before roughly throwing me upon it. I shouted at her to know why she was being so harsh, and she returned a glare filled with the same disgust from earlier before telling me about her work in virology. Upon that information, she flicked at a syringe. I squirmed to get away, but the restraints held me down. She hurriedly explained that she needed to do this to study the virus and make a vaccine. "You should be honored, ..... This is a chance to save the world." she told me with tension in her eyes that focused on the deliverance of each second that ticked on by, then finally she pricked the needle through the skin of my arm. Upon pulling back the plunger, the volume in my arm fell as I watched an ounce of my crimson blood draw into the barrel

I took a look up at a television that turned on in the corner as Dr. Parson went away to examine the sample.

The face of my fate, politician Dawnson, was on the screen at a podium in front of the confinement building and was lit by flashing cameras. He said that there was a lab on the inside that was using animals to research the virus and he spoke of being on the bridge of finding the cure to the Coronavirus to solve the unemployment and separation that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused. Even so, here I was the only animal in a room where a woman had just laid a line of syringes before me that likely were not there to be unused. My eyes lingered on their bright, vivid and dangerous colors. The words "stay home" whispered and repeated in the background.