Mortal - Chapter 4

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 fourth chapter of the novel, Mortal. Click here for the beginning of the story. Or, click here for Chapter 3.

Dr. Long tells me I am like all the others. I will remain intact. I will not lose body movement or brain processes. He injects a liter or so of my blood into my arm, to ease the healing process. He tells me I should go to dinner and enjoy myself.

Dinner is quiet like always. Either you are exhausted from the day, or too nervous to speak for the next day of testing. Halfway through dinner, Therese sits next to me. I press my fork into my food, causing the mashed potatoes to ooze through.

“You look well enough,” Therese decides.

I continue to dissect my food, for my appetite is long gone after today’s events.

“What did they do to you?” she asks, her elbow brushing against my ribs.

“Took my blood,” I shrug, like it is no big deal. Which it isn’t. I have no right to complain in front of her. 

“Since when did the scientists become vampires?” she asks casually, leaning towards me.

My body tenses. I don’t like being so close to her. The skin on my arms squirms, and I try to pretend that I don’t know her scaly, plated flesh is so close to mine. “Since we became the undead,” I mutter.

“Ha, true,” she agrees, “You going to eat that?” she stares at my food like a starved dog. I push my tray towards her and she lunges for my bread roll.

I turn to Abel who watches me. I don’t like how he feels like I need his sympathy, that he’s afraid I am going to snap and lose my mind like my parents. My stomach knots as I think of them. How I mean nothing to them. I had tried to keep us together. I stole food when my parents could no longer work. I got a job mowing lawns. I emailed their bosses and told them they were on vacation. But once the hysterical screams shattered through the walls of our apartment, there was no stopping the inevitable.

And they forgot me.

I press my head against the table and scrunch my eyes shut. Arthur Paracot ruined everything for me.  The one hope that someone in the world cared for me was yanked away. This is much worse than losing blood.

“Hey, Garrett? That’s your name, right?” someone asks.

I glance up and rest my chin against the cool surface, “Yes?”

Four men take a seat in front of us. One of them is John, and the yellow-skinned man is named Francis. I don’t know the others.

John leans forward in his seat while the other three men look anxiously around the room. “We heard you talked to Edward Gild,” he says. 
            Therese inhales sharply as her eyes widen, “You did? What did he want?”

“He obviously wanted to know about the President’s elephant in the room. Us,” John says softly.

Therese’s eyes narrow, “Why didn’t you tell me before, Garrett?”

I puff out some breath, “There’s nothing to say.”

“Of course there is,” John growls, “What did you tell him?”

“Do…do you think Gild will be able to end Eden with his magazine?” Therese asks, the hope evident in her face. It is such an odd thing to see, I can’t help but stare.

“No,” I eventually shake my head, the bone of my chin rocking against the table.

“Why?” Therese protests. She looks as if someone has just punched her in the stomach. “I’m sure people will be horrified by what they’re doing to us….right?”

“I don’t know,” I say quietly. No one knows what people are capable of. When I first got here, I used to wonder what the founding fathers of America thought of their legacy. Probably writhing in their graves. “I didn’t tell him the truth.”

John scowls, and his hands stretch and clench into fists repeatedly. I decide to get my face off the table.

“Garrett…” Therese’s whine is filled with pain. She tugs on my sleeve, and I am forced to look at her. I have to see what I have done, for I could have stopped this madness, I could have told the truth to Edward Gild. It would’ve been out in the world the next day. The outrage would boil over and then in a couple of days, we would all be free. But…I decided to be a coward. Instead of admitting this, I try to protect myself, ripping my shirt out of her grip.

“Don’t look at me like that!” I snarl, my heart thudding heavily in my chest. Heat climbs up to my face as I stare at all of them. “You would have done the exact same thing I did! Paracot was there…he would have…you know what he would have done if I had ruined his program. I had no choice!”

“What could he have done worse than this?” Therese asks quietly, lowering her gaze.

My face flushes with red, startled. I am already being tortured and I already can’t die. Why had I not told the truth?! Paracot might have made me get tested every single day rather than every other, but what did that matter? Fear rules our lives. It is this ridiculous fear that makes no sense at all when actually thought about. He uses this to his advantage; all he is doing is rattling our cages.

“I can’t believe you,” she says with soft abhorrence. She shakes her head and gets up and leaves.

The others soon follow, so it’s just Abel and me.

I groan. Nothing ever went right. I gnaw on my lip bitterly as the shame and isolation creep over me.

“Don’t listen to them,” Abel begins gently, “They would have done the same thing.”

I frown at the evident disappointment in his voice. They would have done the same thing, but he wouldn’t have, apparently. I am no better than them, whatever that means. I rise from my seat, ready to part with this day. I pretend to not notice the hidden depth of his words, “Doesn’t matter,” I tell him, “They’re right.”

The resignation in his face is sickening. I’m so bothered by it that I leave without saying goodbye. I clench my jaw with troubling tension while I walk down the quiet hallway to the elevator. Maybe it isn’t bad that they do this, torture us. We are already dead. Nothing matters to us anymore. We have accepted everything, nothing more to question or fight for…

I want to scream. I clasp my hands together to make sure I don’t slam my fists into the concrete walls. I know it will only get me plopped in a chair in front of a psychiatrist as if my behavior is odd for my circumstances.

The elevator rattles and makes jangling noises as it ascends. I pace the narrow square floor, my feet causing the grates to scrape against each other with hollow groans. I look down through the carved holes in the grate to see the long pitch shaft. Black blood is crusted upon the rusted metal. Anger rushes through and stomp my foot hard on the grate. It shifts against the others, the scratching of metal hard against my ears. I crouch down and try to find a seam where I could lift them up. A hole where I can fall through, so I can live the rest of my life in broken shambles at the bottom of the shaft where no one could find me. Nothing seems better at the moment.

The elevator jolts to a stop. I remain hunched over, tracing my palms over the coarse edges of the metal. There has to be something. I hear the doors growl open, but continue searching. I poke my fingers through the holes and try to lift up the grate, shaking it out of place.

“What are you doing?”

I glance up to see an assistant, a woman, staring over me.

I sit up and pull out my fingers, brushing off the dusty blood that speckles my hands. “I dropped something,” I say.

She looks at me with an irritated expression, her lip lifting slightly, “What could you have dropped?”

I scratch my head, knowing there’s nothing I can say that will put me in the clear, “Food. I brought back some food,” I half-heartedly offer.

“Right,” she purses her lips, resting a hand on her hip, “Stand up.”

I do as she says without reluctance. The grates were irremovable anyway.

“Step out of the elevator,” she orders.

I obey, and the door closes behind me. She grabs my wrist to see the number engraved at the joint: 673601. She drops my arm and looks up at me, her brown eyes critical.

“Why were you trying to kill yourself?” she asks, and I laugh because it’s even stupider than my excuse. The staff here are just as oblivious as the outside world. People try to kill us every day to no avail, and she thinks I’m moronic enough to try it myself and think it’d work?

I decide to appease her, realizing crazy is better than rebellious. They can handle crazy. I lower my gaze, trying to look sheepish, “It was just a sudden urge…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t try that again,” she tells me, watching me carefully. “If you were to die, without supervision, we would not know what variables were in place. We would not be able to repeat it. That would be very selfish of you.”

It would be selfish of me! Not because people would be sad I’m gone, but because I would not be able to show them how to do it. “Right, I didn’t think of that.” And that is the honest truth. However, now I wish it had worked.

She cocks her head, then nods. “What’s your name?”

“Garrett.”

“Let me take you to your room, Garrett,” she says and beckons me to start down the hallway.

I stop in front of my door and turn to her slowly, my jaw clenching, “You’re not going to report this, are you?” The thing with being crazy is you can’t be trusted especially here. I did not want an assistant following me everywhere I went.

The assistant’s lip twists, “I’ll have to put it in your charts, but I don’t see why I’ll have to tell the Secretary if this is your first and last offense.”

I nod. That will do. I open the door and close it behind me. I exhale deeply, flicking up the light switch. My room is bland and ordinary. It is floored with green tile and the walls are white. As familiar as this room is, everyday it feels like an introduction. A large crack runs down the center of the wall only to be covered by a dresser pushed against it. There is a bunk bed on the other wall, my roommate not in yet. There is only a leaky sink in the room, but the bathrooms and showers are at the end of the hall.

I change into my pajamas, a white short sleeved shirt and a pair of faded blue pants. I splash my face with metallic-smelling water. I grab my toothbrush from my drawer and brush my teeth fiercely, the thought of my parents digging into my brain. I stare at the wall, wanting to see the water drip from my face, see my sickly pale skin, my dark eyes. But the program is smart—in a business like this, psychology is a big factor. Sometimes seeing the scars can be worse than actually getting them.

I climb the ladder up to my bed, my limbs still a little shaky. The mattress is lumpy and too soft, but after days like these, it doesn’t matter. We’re all exhausted. When I lie down, I can touch the ceiling with my fingertips. I pick at the paint pellets that cling to the wall. My thoughts return to my parents as I dig my fingernails into the chalky grain, ripping them onto my bed. If my parents were not insane, would they still not care if I were taken from them? I can’t remember much of the world besides Eden, but I know it is bad. Fear and pain has strangled dreams and hopes. The Unknown has flooded the Known. People become desperate, so desperate it’s disgusting to see. My parents might have been glad to help the program by giving them me. I feel like I’m misplaced among the recruits. Most of them come from horrible places and experiences. One of the first to become a part of the program, before Eden even had a building, was in line for the death penalty. He was the first publicized recording of the problem. They had tried killing him, injecting him with poison that would cause his heart to stop, but it never did. He’s still here, and it’s shocking to know that he was once a cold-blooded murderer. Behind his back, some of us call him Karma.

My roommate enters the room with a limp. He sees me watching him and gives me a nod. His name is Peter. He was nothing in life before Eden. He sat on the streets begging for money. He fueled his drug addiction with his earnings, and slept in homeless shelters if he was lucky. He told one day a man offered him a home where there was hot food and a bed to sleep in. He did not know he’d end up here.

I hear him slurping at the sink water before he spits it out. He changes his shirt and turns off the light before sliding into bed. We hardly speak. What’s there to talk about?

I pull the thin sheet up to my chin, shivering. I watch my chest rise and fall with every breath, trying to distract myself. The night scares me. It represents everything I hate, everything unknown to me. I want to sleep with the lights on, but Peter would angrily refuse, and I do not want any more problems for myself. Soon, his snores sound through the room, and I am subdued, his night grunts a constant in my life. I focus on the unusual sound the air makes when pressing against his strained throat, and I soon slip into sleep.

Thanks for reading, it means so much to me!!

xo, Liv