The Colors of Madness

JournalWord: Girls in wires.

***

Bony fingers tug on his jacket, displaying the thick cuff with clear black numbers carved into the heavy band of metal triple the size of her wrist. He follows the pale, vein-stricken arm, past the cords and wires that creep from under the swatches of dirty bandages, to meet the unwavering stare of two empty eyes.

His first impulse is to rip away from her grasp and run away from the experiment, however, he's frozen in her stare. That's when he realizes that her "empty eyes" are actually a brilliant combination of blue and green. Strange, he thinks, but rephrases when they blink to combine a shade of violet around the black centers, and he finally finds himself saying, "Beautiful."

He startles himself out of his stupor and pulls his jacket from her hold, pausing a moment before he pivots and stalks off to his desk. Sitting in the safe, familiar, confines of his office, he exhales the breath he'd held. 

He can't remember when he held it in; whether it be when she grabbed his jacket or when he saw her eyes. He tries to shake away the memory and picks up a file on his desk beckoning for his attention, but he can't bring himself to read a sentence.

The dull thud of metal smacking concrete whispers from the corners of his consciousness, and he can see the frail arm, outweighed by the cuff, hitting the cold floor of the lab.

Shivers run the span of his back and up his arms like little fingers taunting him in his unknown fear.Why was he scared of her? he questions himself. She can't do anything to him. 

He rubs away the little fingers before they reach his face, but behind his hands, behind his eyes, she's laying on the floor of her cell, mummified in the encasement of wires and brown bandages. Her hair, his mind mocks, pushing snapshots of her bright pink hair pooling around her short gray dress in brilliant waves, in cruel comparison to what she has become.

And then, like a horrible nightmare, the whole picture emerges, clogging his screams and frantic. Eyes shut, pink hair smothered in alien filth lounged on the floor of her cell, thin limbs crushed from being malnourished, wires dangling, face frozen, and arm, still outside her cell, presenting herself only as experiment 9746. 

And voice he remembers all to well, reminds him that he could have been like her.

***

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