Mortal - Chapter 2

Premise: In this young-adult dystopian novel, people can no longer die. But they still feel pain, and suffer--and it's maddening. Because of the chaos that ensued, the US Government created a program to figure out how to kill people. When Garrett, a teenager, falls into a coma for weeks as a result of an experiment, the Program sets its malicious sights on him.

This is the second chapter for the novel, Mortal. Click here for the beginning of the story.

My stomach flips at the sound of assistants entering the recreational room, the metal door banging shut behind them.

            “114567,” they call for, and “2234587,” and, “789654”—a continuous line of numbers as the terrified men rise from their seats and leave the room, the assistants following after. And the door shuts once again.

            I squeeze my hands into fists. My jaw clenches. Part of the agony is not knowing. When they would call your number, or your name--if they knew you well enough-- and what horrors they would lead you to. Some of the prisoners are lucky, lucky enough to know what they have to do every other day—we earn one day of rest between the experiments for recovery—only a slight few, face the unknown for scientific reasons that made no sense to me. I am one of those few.

            And today is my day.

            Abel sits with me before I went and when I came back. I do the same for him the next day when it was his turn.  He is the closest thing I have to a father. I have no parents, which is why I ended up here. But they aren’t dead. They live in a mental institution, the insanity of the problem gone to their heads, eating away at their mind and soul. They wish they were dead.

            We all do.

            I look to Abel who is smiling at me, a small sympathetic smile. His thinning hair is plastered with sweat, and his eyes dull. I inhale deeply through my nose, trying to ease the nausea that creeps over me.

            Therese, the one girl in the program, and a couple years older than me, takes a seat in front of us. We are the youngest. The government got desperate and broke the strong morals they once had a couple of years ago, and entered a woman into the program. They entered me a year later, decreasing the required age to sixteen. Darkly, I wonder when it’ll be infants.

            “What did you think of that whole…” Therese wheezes, her whole body shaking, and I am forced to look at her, her airy coughs lacerating my eardrums. The disgusting burns seared into her flesh, her dark short hair charred and missing in places. She motions to the dead television, the scabs on her hands, cracking as she moves them.

            I can only look at her. She nods solemnly in return.

            We sit in tense silence until she speaks again: “I wonder what the people think of Eden,” she mutters as she picks at her lip mindlessly, tearing away strips of dead skin from her mouth.

            “Therese,” I say urgently and reach across the table to grab her hand, and pull it down to the table.

            She stares at me, eyes wide and confused until she realizes the blood spilling from her lip and onto the table. She squeezes her lower lip into her mouth, and wipes the remnants of skin on her pants.

            “Thunks,” she murmurs, her mouth full of blood. She grabs the sleeve of her shirt and presses it against her lip.

            “Don’t mention it,” I struggle to say, shifting uncomfortably. It is difficult to stand the melancholy and tense mood, even here, where eye contact is a forced effort.

            Therese nods and her face stretches into a small grin, blood coating her teeth.

            I grimace and look towards the floor. Every other day, for at least since I got here, Therese is burned alive. We could hear her screams everywhere, no matter how we tried to find a quiet refuge. Eventually, the screams lessened and then stopped. Her nerve-endings were fried. She could no longer feel a thing. Some envy her for that.

            I force a conversation with her for a few minutes. We stay away from discussing the program and focus on what is for dinner today and the movie the assistants will play for us later this week. She then stands slowly, trying not to move her body much, and places a firm, scaly hand under my chin. Therese forces me to look up at her, blank eyes calculating. I shiver at the texture of her flesh above my throat.

            “I hope they don’t ruin your pretty face,” she says softly, before releasing me and walks away to another table.

            I bite my lip as I feel the gaze of Abel upon me.

            “Poor girl,” he says.

            “Yeah,” I respond.

            The door shuts behind a group of assistants. Each one calls a number one by one. I close my eyes, breathing shallow breaths, hoping I have a few more minutes before the pain starts all over again.

            “673601.”

            My body stiffens as I hear my number called with a monotone voice. Sweat trickles down my back as I rise from my seat, gripping to the table to support my weight. The blood drains from my face as I begin the journey to the door. Abel grabs my hand and gives it a firm squeeze. I stand there for a moment, looking at no one, feeling this warm hand fill me with courage.

            Courage. A thing that no longer exists.

            Abel releases my hand and I step forward to the assistant that called my name, a short man with blue eyes. He glances down at the clipboard with a thin smile, and then looks up at me. “Hello, Garrett. I’ll take you to your room now.”

            I nod curtly and follow the others out the door and into dimly lit hall. My feet slide against the shiny concrete, as I trail my assistant with no mind of my own. I think of praying, like I always did, but who to pray to? And what to ask? Pray for someone to die? For myself to die? As always, I do not know, so I settle on praying to this man walking in front of me for a painless experiment. I have been blessed so far because of my age, but when would that change?

            The assistant fumbles with keys, the jingling echoing through the corridor. He sticks a key in the door and opens it. I walk in, slowly, looking around the room. It looks just like an exam room at a doctor’s office, and a reclining examination chair in the center. The room smells like cleaning chemicals and blood. I shiver as I look at the man who sits in a stool, his back hunched. He clutches at a clipboard, but he stares at me through the spectacles perched on his nose.

            “Good luck, Doctor,” the assistant says before closing the door, leaving the scientist and me alone in the quiet room.

            He coughs slightly, “What’s your name, my boy?”

            “Garrett,” I say.

            “Hi, Garrett. I’m Doctor Abraham Long. It’s nice to meet you.”

            I say nothing, unmoving, watching this man who sits nights in no doubt an elegant home, in a study, with a glass of scotch, devising ways to kill, to cause pain. And he gets paid for it all.

            “You may take a seat,” Dr. Long motions to the lounging chair.

            I do so warily, my stomach twisting, perhaps trying to do the scientist a favor and kill me itself.

            Dr. Long pushes his wheeled stool towards me. He gently lowers my head against the chair rest with his hand, and presses a button on a machine, lowering the chair’s back so that I am lying down. He scoots back to the counter and returns with a large cardboard box and a needle.

            “What are you going to do to me?” I ask through gritted teeth, only because I am shaking. I glance down into the box and know the answer before he speaks it. I feel sick and clammy and want to throw up.

            I want to die.

            “I will be removing all the blood from your body,” Dr. Long says with a thin, crisp smile.

            And as if on cue, the blood flees my face.