Chapter 3: Heavy

 Harper 

     I feel heavy. Like I have been hit by a bus. It has to be close to what it feels like being hit by a bus going thirty in a fifteen zone. My bones ache—my fingers and toes tingle. My eyeballs are sore. I haven’t even opened my eyes yet, and I already do not want to start the day or the evening. I have no clue of the time. I must have partied too hard last night and was slipped something in my drink. I don’t remember anything. A.N.Y.T.H.I.NG, except how to spell adequately, and that’s something. What is that horrendous smell? Is it me? Harper breathes in the air. Taking it in the room and the strongest aroma is her. The smell is mostly urine. This girl has peed her herself. The second strongest smell is bodily odor. When did I last shower? Nails are chipped black, and they are dirty. I can tell they are not working hands. They are too soft. Fingers are slender. Does her family miss her? Whoever is keeping her, I mean me, is disgusting. Lower than dirt. Scum of the earth. They belong behind bars. In one of those dark, gloomy cell blocks that you stay in for twenty-four hours, and you have to smell your shit and piss. The ones where you begin to lose your minds. Where you talk to yourself for company, draw pictures of friends on the walls for support, and you end up dying alone, regretting everything you've ever done wrong in your life and wishing you could take them all back.

How long have I been here, fuck! Maybe I am going crazy. I cannot believe peed my pants; she groans aloud as she touches the wet part of her shorts. She checks the bed, and things are not adding up. The bed is a mess. Like I was fighting in my sleep. The sheets are distressed. The lower half is off of the mattress. Did something happen while I slept? I cannot sleep that deeply. Am I being sedated? I begin to look around for markings on her body and finds a few red tissue areas on her body. She can't figure out what they could be from. There are no needle markings that she can see. She does find a small linear scar on her left forearm about one inch long. Jesus, did they insert a tracking device in me? 

      She curls herself in the fetal position and begins to tear up. She feels embarrassed and uncomfortable. Not so much at the fact that she just woke up to pissing herself, but she feels like a great big puddle of piss. What has become of her life that she is at this point? She has no idea who she is or where she is. But she has no recollection of what she has done to have been picked up by an agency that would want to microchip her and keep her in a surveillance room with two-way mirrors, camera's and whatever else. She quickly sits up in protest of the whole situation and feels instant regret.

    Her head begins to spin. I feel like I threw up in my mouth and swallowed it. What the hell happened to me. Where am I? I get up and go over to the weird black door with a light above it and try to open the door. I panic when the door is locked. As I began to scream for someone to please let me out, I realize that whoever has me here has an objective to keep me here. So I need to change my tactics. So I start shouting, “please, if you’re listening, I need to shower and something to eat or drink. I don’t know who you are or what I am doing here. Please, if I don’t eat. I won’t last.” I wait about ten minutes or so before I begin to look around. This room is empty. No phone, no electrical outlets. A random mirror is facing the bed that doesn’t move. A small bathroom with a toilet and a two-way glass, I am confident this is the case. What I also cannot figure out is what they could want with a small girl who has zero ideas about "who" she is. I look about as dangerous as a mouse eating cheese. This body appears sickly. I don't feel like I have been raped or drugged, but I do feel "off." Not right. I know I should be freaking out. But I am weirdly calm. Like Deja Vu. I feel like none of this is new to me, and maybe it isn't. 

   When I start to feel weak and dizzy, like I am about to pass out, I lay back down on the bed. I stare up at the ceiling. It is flat, has no texture to it. There is one vent. It is small and flat with three openings. Guess I won't be climbing out of any ventilation systems. The temperature of the room is disgustingly lukewarm, and I am clammy. Sweat is starting to form on my chest and my nose. For having me locked up like a dog, the least they could do is keep the room temperature a pleasant 70 degrees because a girl runs hot. I am so exhausted, my eyes close in this quiet room; I begin to drift somewhere between being awake and asleep. My eyes start to focus on the center of my forehead at a small white light that catches my eyes behind my closed eyelids. It’s beautiful and calls for me to focus on it. The more I focus on this white circular light, the more it begins to expand. It’s then I hear this loud high-frequency pitch, and the light above the door goes off, and three men in full vests enter with electrical rods. They quickly enter the room in a formation. One man counts down three, two, one, and they all zap me simultaneously, and that's all I remember before darkness.