Mercy Wilde

“Will it hurt?”

The nurse doesn’t even bother answering the question as she swipes an alcohol wipe over the injection site. It’s not the first time Mercy has irritated the hospital staff by peppering them with questions. Ever since she arrived here in this bare room, she had known she would be a nuisance whether she liked it or not. It was the nature of her condition.

“There,” the nurse says, the needle sliding out of Mercy’s skin, “you’re done.”

Mercy smiles through the sting. “Will I be going to the observation room today?”

The nurse doesn’t answer right away, until finally she sighs. “I don’t think you need to ask at this point.”

Of course. It was becoming a daily occurrence at this point.

Mercy rights the sleeve of her hospital gown. “Give the other nurses my love.”

The nurse leaves, shaking her head, as if Mercy is just too much of a hassle to deal with. The girl can’t blame her: she hasn’t proven to be the easiest patient on the floor.

By the time another nurse comes to collect her, Mercy has sketched out a flower from memory. Its petals are wilted, charcoal dripping down and accentuating the shadows she wanted to highlight in the piece. Her fingers are stained dark when the nurse instructs her to sit in the wheelchair; it is only customary when Mercy’s wrists and ankles are bound by restraints so she can’t move. Then they are on their way out the usual path down the white-encompassing hallway that is now forever etched in Mercy’s mind.

When Mercy is brought to the observation room, her arms and legs are freed. Only once the nurse is out of the room, the door locked behind her by a code Mercy hasn’t bothered to sneak a look and learn, does she make a flourishing wave towards the wall that she suspects is an invisible window allowing for her to be watched.

An overhead speaker crackles to life. “Mercy,” the voice—familiar, deep, easily amused—says, “how are you doing today?”

“Oh, just peachy, Dr. Keene,” she says, and the man chuckles.

“Glad to see you’re in good spirits,” he says. “If you could lie down, we’ll begin recording for today.”

“Roger that,” Mercy says, offering a salute to the general vicinity of where she has assumed the main camera is. She lies down on the bare bed, staring up at the ceiling, and counting down the moments till she starts to feel the effects of the earlier injection. Her eyelids begin to drift closed.

Only once she is asleep, gone to the world under the power of the drug pumping through her veins, does the real show begin. In her dreams, she is standing in an empty field, corn stalks whispering against her skin. The sky is so blue that it hurts her eyes to look at it.

“Mercy,” Dr. Keene’s voice cuts into the dream, “let’s see if you can succeed with an extraction today.”

The dream does not want her to obey as it conjures up an image of the man himself, outfitted in his usual gray slacks, black dress shirt, and white physician coat. He is smiling at her in a way that is friendly and nonthreatening, but his eyes are swallowed up by black—no whites, no irises. But she has had enough of the dreamscape to know that it likes to twist and turn and warp everything that rises from her subconscious. Even as the doctor offers her his hand, she turns away and sees a scarecrow in the distance. Crows circle the head, beaks pecking and tearing at the effigy’s straw hat, and Mercy feels an anger begin to burgeon within her, white hot and unavoidable.

One by one, the birds begin to fall from the air, plummeting to the ground.

“Focus,” Dr. Keene commands in a way that still sounds gentle. She knows this is just an experiment to him—the entirety of her is—but a part of her wants to please him. She supposes that’s what a daddy complex is, being a people-pleaser down to the very end.

But the dream begins to rail against her again as the scarecrow twists and shakes until it hops down from its perch in the field. Its limbs are all wrong, gangly and weak, but it manages to walk towards her on its unsteady legs.

A part of her knows she should try the extraction now—that’s what Dr. Keene would want her to do—but instead she raises her hand, pointing at the scarecrow and feeling her fingertips start to burn with energy. Only a moment later does the scarecrow burst into flames. The scent of smoke sears her nostrils and nearly tears her from the dream.

“Mercy,” Dr. Keene says, “you’re not going by the playbook today, are you?”

She smiles, as if that is answer enough, and then her eyes open wide, awake, her hospital gown stuck to her skin in a cold sweat.

But the smell of charred fabric follows her to wakefulness. She sits up on the bed and sees that the floor is covered with the burnt remains of the scarecrow. But instead of feeling triumphant—she managed an extraction for the first time—she feels her stomach twist in knots as if she’s about to be sick.

“Well done,” Dr. Keene’s voice comes over the speaker again. “We’re just lucky you didn’t set off the sprinkler system.”

Usually, Mercy would laugh along, playing the game that has kept her alive this long despite her strange powers, but the anger flashes anew. She feels ready to burn this room, this hospital, this entire world, anything and everything, down.

She looks towards the camera and glares. A fizzling sound begins to whistle through the air, and the smell of burnt metal and plastic begins to fill the room.

“Mercy,” the doctor’s voice says, as if in warning, “that’s enough.”

But now that she’s unleashed, she can’t bring herself to stop. The months of observation and experimentation have taken a toll. She is not the same girl who entered into this program voluntarily—willing to do anything to stop the visions, the strange dreams, the unexplainable things she could do. It was supposed to help. She was supposed to be helped.

“Mercy,” Dr. Keene murmurs, but it’s too late.

The crack of glass breaking meets her ears, and the last thing she hears is a shout before the speaker begins to fill with the sounds of static.

Mercy Wilde. Her name. She was meant to be a girl run wild.

And now she doesn’t want to fight the urge at all.