by HMC
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You gave them no choice. They had a chance at a good life and you took that away from them.’ She sidled closer to him.
‘Jade, I don’t know where you’re getting your information. Please. I urge you to think about this as rationally as possible.’
That was it. Sam, George, Freddy. When she thought of what this cretin had done to Freddy, she let her rage envelop her.
Jade stuck the hypodermic into his neck emptied its contents, and then stood back in the hope that he’d begin to squirm. Maybe it would kill him. She didn’t care anymore. Something had broken inside of her and she would never be the same again.
But he didn’t squirm. Nothing happened at first. He was actually able to continue to speak. He wheezed, at least, and this pleased her. If the cocktail didn’t kick in soon she’d knock him out with a chair.
It seemed like forever passed before the next part of her plan burst into the room and Jade was ready behind the door with a scalpel.
She pounced and grabbed Anne, holding the scalpel up to her neck from behind. Anne beat at Jade’s arm in a bid for freedom. Instead, she got a scalpel-punctured cheek – in and out in one quick motion. She’d been practising for this one.
The nurse put her hand up to her bleeding face. ‘It’s me, Jade. It’s Anne. I would never hurt you.’
Stick to the plan no matter what. Don’t listen to the bitch. ‘Give me your card.’
‘What card?’
‘Don’t play dumb. I want your access card and I want your stupid cliché white lab coat.’ She looked over at Green. ‘Make a sound, either of you and I’ll slit your throats.’ Anne looked about to beg for her life. Jade remembered how she’d trusted her and held her scalpel up to the woman’s face once again.
‘Now! Or next I’ll take out your eye!’ She could hardly believe how easily it all came. She was willing to use her little weapon again, if need be.
‘This is foolish, Jade. You’re going backwards. Now you’ll end up where no one will let you out.’
It was foolish. The room could fill up with security at any minute to sedate her. But where would she go? Back to where she started, or somewhere worse?
She was willing to take the risk.
‘Take off your coat, Anne.’ The nurse complied and, as she did, Jade took out another hypo from the inside of her gown and jabbed it into Anne’s neck. The large woman choked momentarily and Jade skilfully slid the coat off, as Anne fell to the hospital floor with a thud. Hmmmm, much quicker. She had expected Green to go down like that and Anne to take her sweet time. She kicked the nurse to check that she was totally out.
‘I guess you never really can tell about a person.’
Green was out too now. She pulled a cling-wrapped stash from her underwear – a hair band and some lip gloss she’d swiped. She pulled her hair up carefully into a pony tail and applied the gloss to her lips, rubbing all the dry cracks out with a fingertip. She wiped away any shine from her face and cleaned herself up as much as possible. She grabbed a pen out of Anne’s coat and slid it behind her ear. It would be the meticulous details that got her through this. She took Anne’s shoes and socks.
Before she knew it, she was out in the hall, walking along with a serious sense of purpose, but never with urgency. Jade picked up a folder on her way past the designated spot. She held it to her chest and walked along at a perfect pace. Breathe.
This moment, filled with terror and panic, was one Jade had never imagined happening to her. People from this moment forward would never look the same to her. She herself would never be the same. She now fully understood how one person’s experience was so different from another’s. You could be standing right next to someone and never really have any idea what went on for them. Pure compassion could never exist. She would never again judge another in a hard place, an all-out brawl. She’d forever stand on her own two feet and no one, but no one, would ever be allowed to cross her again.
Sam’s voice entered her head, as it had done many times over the past few weeks, as she strode down the halls, confident in where she was going.
‘First things first. Stop taking anything they give you. Drugs distort your focus. Secondly, pretend you’ve taken everything they’ve given you and that you want even more of it. It makes them think they have all the control. Next, feign symptoms for the same reason. Keep an eye out for instruments that you can use to protect yourself. Keep them well hidden, they routinely check for this type of stuff. Most importantly, know your way around the place, how to get in and how to get out. A well-planned escape route is vital because if you screw that up you could end up right back where you started.
‘Look for an opportunity where you are at your strongest and they think you are at your weakest. That’s the point of attack. You’re a tougher woman than you think, Jade.’
She repeated those last words over and over. Sam’s Jailhouse Wisdom – Jade had suggested she write a book as a joke. Sam had taken it seriously.
Maybe Sam was a figment of her imagination, but right now that figment was saving her life. Freddy had made her put on her ‘red fluffy socks’ and go on the adventure of her lifetime. Now she was ready to bring the next phase of her plan into action: getting out of this crack in the universe.
The man’s bright red nose was peeling. His security guard uniform was grey and white with a red stripe. He reminded her of the scary old neighbour she used to run past on her way to school. A key card hung from his lanyard. He had a black and white monitor in front of him revealing the people on the other side of the door. Careful to never let him see her. She glimpsed at the monitor and saw no one on the other side.
Although Jade had worked on her strength, attacking the guard and making her escape through the door had never been an option. The cameras watched her. Lucky there hadn’t been any in the surgery room. Jade strolled up to the door with her folder in her hand, swiped her (Anne’s) card and smiled sweetly at the creepy guard. He frowned at her but his expression changed. Too many unfamiliar faces passed through this door in a day. Jade acted like she belonged there.
She stole a glance at his name badge. He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off. ‘Man it must be hard work, sitting here all day long, Gary.’
He grunted. ‘Not so bad.’
She was through and walking down another hallway. People looked at her but didn’t take much notice. She pretended to know where she was going until she finally came to a place in the hospital that she recognised, and made her way up the steps (never use an elevator in an escape plan).
Jade found herself in the emergency ward. She nodded at a nurse at the desk who gave her a quizzical look, and marched straight out through the doors. She was at the emergency entrance and an ambulance was parked nearby, blocking her view.
Anxiety stirred as she walked across the manicured front lawn. What was she going to find? If she found that Green was telling the truth would she readmit herself? She held her breath.
When Jade looked over to the place where Rowan’s Home was supposed to stand, a wicked mixture of rage and relief engulfed her.
There it was.
They’d lied to her so well.
They almost had her completely convinced. It had been months since the fire and parts of the building had already been repaired. There were no cars parked out the front. Her Jeep was gone, too. She wondered how much of her life they’d destroyed. She wondered if there would be someone else renting her house, what they had done to her furniture and kitten, what they had told her father and brother.
She moved off the main road and into the bush. The edge of the bushland curved along the road and eventually wound its way to the hub of Fairholmes where there were shops, cars, people, and police.
But that wasn’t the way she was going.
Jade continued to hike through the scrub, kee
ping out of sight – all the while thinking that soon she would have to go back, to get the others.
Angus Thatcher sat on his torn suede couch, a cold beer in his fist, watching reruns of the Simpsons. It was a lovely sunny day and the crickets were chirping so loud outside his screen door that he thought about going over to shut the sound out; but before he could, his dogs started barking, startling him. His beer ended up in his lap.
While mopping himself with tissues, he listened again.
They’d stopped. False alarm, then.
He’d settled back, slightly damp with about half his beer left, when someone pounded on his back door.
‘Damn it. Who is it?’ There was no response. ‘I said ... ’
‘It’s me.’
A shiver coursed down Angus’ spine.
‘J?’ It couldn’t be. He was hearing things. He was having a nervous breakdown. Angus rushed over to his back door and tore it open. A ghost stood before him and he didn’t know how to react. It was his sister. She looked terrible – as if she had pulled herself up out of her grave.
Had they accidentally buried her alive?
‘Angus.’
‘Jade?’ He couldn’t move.
‘Angus – aren’t you going to let me in? What’s wrong with you?’ She embraced him and still he stood stiffly.
Her skin was warm and real, though.
His sister was alive.
‘Jade! We thought you were dead. They said you were dead! Where have you been? Where the fuck have you been?’ Movement restored, he pulled his sister inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.
An OLD STORY
The room was pitch-black. Ears searched and found nothing but a complete frigid silence. Samantha Philips turned over in her hospital bed and touched the cement wall. She wasn’t sure if it was summer still, or if autumn had come. She never got to see the light of day. She felt hollow, as if her insides had been used with the sole effort of simply breathing. There had been times when she wanted to let go and evaporate into nothingness, but not like this time.
This was wretchedness.
She couldn’t even kill herself.
She had the distinct impression, though no evidence whatsoever, that her room was pretty far underground. Well, she felt like she was in hell – perhaps they decided to move her closer to it. There were no windows to the outside and no access to the lovely green grass. She was somebody’s dirty secret sequestered in this clandestine room far from the world. She missed the green and the blue, the colours she had taken for granted when she had them.
Sam wanted her dad. She wanted her father to hold her and tell her that everything would be all right, just the way he used to. She wouldn’t squirm out of his embrace; she would stay and relish it as it deserved to be. This deep, powerful yearning to be with another human being – a yearning she’d never had before – broke her heart. Samantha Phillips wanted her father. She wanted her cat, Moo Owl. She wanted Travis.
But there was no one.
Check that – not quite no one. There were strangers telling her that she was sicker than ever. They were poisoning her food and force- feeding her medicine that made her unwell.
Sam could feel her scar now; the scar on her scalp, the one where her father had told her she’d fallen into the shallow end of the local swimming pool and cut her head open. Sam had trusted him. He’d told her he’d seen it happen. It had been around the time her symptoms appeared. She knew the truth now, remembered it even. She knew it was what they did here. They cut your head open and made you lose your mind on purpose.
Then they studied you.
George was right – this whole place was a little ice pick, mind-fucked ant farm.
They told her that her father thought it best for her recovery; that he didn’t want to see her until she was better, which would be a very long time. She knew it couldn’t be true.
Surely her father had no idea what was happening to her.
But then why would he have lied about her scar?
Samantha had tried to escape and get to him – to find out what was going on and how much he knew about it. Unfortunately, electronic locks had never been her specialty, and this whole place was loaded with them. Electronic alarms and electronic keys. Tiny robots.
There was no getting out.
Sometimes her grip on reality would slip away and she’d find herself drifting though a dream world, on and off, for days at a time, much like she would see Dr. Thatcher doing. It was nicer to slip in and out of consciousness than to be awake. Sam wasn’t sure if Jade knew she was okay – well, as OK as she could be, cooped up like this. Many times she wanted to shout and scream at her through the tiny windows in her door. The window where Sam could see out, but Jade would only see her own reflection looking back.
Green made her listen to Jade’s sessions through a speaker. It was somewhere in the ceiling of her room. She’d tried to get up there, find it and smash it, but then she wouldn’t know what was going on.
It was torturous to listen to her doctor fall from grace. They drugged and brainwashed her so easily. She learned that they were going to do to her, what they’d done to Sam, all those years ago. Take away her freedom. Cut her open and have a play, to later reflect on the consequences and see what they could discover.
They made her listen to Freddy, too, as they called him cruel names. Her friend would cry out for Morty and she could do nothing about it. She listened to them torture Damon and he’d scream in pain. She’d fought, for a while, but now she’d run out of steam.
Sam could’ve sworn that one day Jade had looked into the two-way mirror and stared straight into her eyes. She’d jumped up and beat her fists on the window that day – but Jade hadn’t responded. It had been hopeless. The punishment for trying to make contact was five days of solitude. This was far more difficult than Sam had assumed. The darkness had almost swallowed her whole and by the end of it, she had a new appreciation for the rules. Apparently, she wasn’t as tough as she had previously thought herself to be.
Although Sam was one of the subjects in the horrific, unsanctioned little study going on, she could almost see the value in it. See what happened when you drove the mad woman insane. Watch her claw the walls around her. It was something that she’d be interested in reading about. How much stress could one go through while watching someone suffer? And even more interestingly, someone with alleged Antisocial Personality Disorder – who shouldn’t really care anyway?
Sam wondered what would happen to them all.
She would kill Green one day. She had no doubt about it. Not straight away. She’d wait for a very long time, for a time when he felt safe and secure, and then she’d strike. It was in her nature, something that neither her father, nor Jade, nor a thousand others could ever fix.
All Sam thought about was death, lately.
Jade hopped out of the shower and pulled on an old t-shirt and some tracksuit pants. The clothes were comfortable and soft and smelled like laundry powder. She sprayed herself with her brother’s deodorant and revelled in the small luxury. The en-suite was claustrophobically small, with only enough space for a shower, toilet, sink and a half-metre squared space to stand in. There was no window and Jade felt surprisingly secure in the tiny white-tiled space.
Nothing could hurt her here.
The shower had a strong stream and had been the way she liked it. She hadn’t had a shower to compare to that one in months and she felt renewed, clear-minded, and ready to take on the world.
As Jade towel-dried her hair, she brushed it through with her fingers. Taking a long hard look in the vanity mirror, she noticed that she looked like a completely different person. Jade had become a woman with a real purpose. She was going to tear that hospital of horrors down and no one would get in her way. She wondered if she would’ve become the person she was now, if it weren’t for what she’d
been through recently.
On her arrival, Jade had made – insisted – Angus lock all of the windows and doors. He’d armed himself with a Remington handgun and given a spare one to Jade. She was tempted to ask him why he had more than one gun and then remembered that gun collecting had been a hobby of his.
The last thing she wanted was to put her brother’s life in jeopardy, but she knew he could look after himself better than most, so wasn’t worried. He’d always been that way – confident, self-assured and tough as nails. Besides, she didn’t have many other options apart from her father, and she didn’t think he was in any condition, health-wise, to deal with a resurrected daughter.
She took the weapon, checked that the safety was on and slid it into her pants. Jade decided she wasn’t going anywhere without that gun, and was happy she’d grown up in Fairholmes and knew how to shoot it. Spending time in the country, her father and brother would shoot at random objects and she’d had a turn or two. They were excellent shots, but Jade not so much, she didn’t like the feeling. She had been furious with her brother when guns were banned in Australia, a while back, and he hadn’t bothered to hand his in. Now, she was grateful.
Her breath was calm and stable. Her heartbeat had slowed. It was difficult to remember the last time she’d felt this peaceful. It wasn’t the encompassing kind of peace that she felt before the Rowan’s Home fire, yet still that small form of inner harmony was returning.
She left the steamy room behind to go speak to Angus.
He had wanted to know everything, and Jade would tell him. When she walked through to the kitchen, Angus was sitting there waiting for her with two cups of coffee.
‘Feeling better?’
‘Much.’ She sat and took a cup. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve been a wreck.’ He smiled weakly at her. ‘Losing you like that. They told us you died in the fire and your remains were unrecognisable, so there was no way for us to identify you by sight.’
‘That was clever of them. Who told you all this?’