The Sound of My Own Death

The scream belonged to me, but the girl screaming had been dead for eleven minutes.

I knew this because someone was counting.

One.

Two.

Three.

A man’s voice, calm and almost bored, drifted through the white room as though he were counting raindrops against a window rather than the seconds since a girl had stopped breathing.

Four.

Five.

I tried to open my eyes.

I couldn’t.

I tried to move my fingers.

Nothing.

Six.

Seven.

There was something terribly wrong with the silence inside my body. I could hear the man counting. I could hear the faint hum of machinery. Somewhere beyond the walls, water dripped at regular intervals.

But I couldn’t hear myself breathe.

Eight.

Nine.

Then the man stopped counting.

“She’s doing it again.”

A second voice answered him. A woman’s voice, soft and trembling.

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

I wanted to scream at them. To tell them I could hear every word. To demand that they explain why I couldn’t feel my own heartbeat.

Instead, I remained perfectly still.

Ten.

Eleven.

“She’s not supposed to remember,” the woman whispered.

A pause.

Then the man laughed.

It was the kind of laugh that made something inside me recoil before I understood why.

“She never does.”

A sharp clicking sound followed.

And suddenly, I was breathing.

Air rushed into my lungs so violently that I choked on it. My back arched against a hard surface, and my eyes flew open.

White.

Everything was white.

The ceiling. The walls. The light burning overhead. Even the sheets beneath my hands were so pale they seemed to glow.

I tried to sit up, but something tightened around my wrists.

Straps.

I was strapped to a table.

Panic rose in my throat.

I pulled against the restraints until my skin burned.

“Let me go!”

My voice sounded raw, unfamiliar.

A man stood beside the table, studying a small screen. He wore black gloves and a white coat that looked almost silver beneath the lights. His face was hidden behind a surgical mask, but I could see his eyes.

Dark.

Unblinking.

Familiar.

I didn’t know him.

I knew I didn’t know him.

Yet the moment our eyes met, a terrible certainty settled in my stomach. 

He had seen me die.

He had watched it happen.

And he wasn’t surprised that I had returned.

“Good morning,” he said.

I stared at him.

“What did you do to me?”

He glanced at the screen.

“An interesting question.”

“Where am I?”

“Another interesting question.”

I pulled at the restraints again. “Stop talking like that!”

For the first time, he looked directly at me.

“You’re frightened.”

“No, really? I’m strapped to a table in a room I don’t recognize, and there’s a strange man standing over me. What gave it away?”

Something almost like amusement flickered in his eyes.

“There she is.”

My blood turned cold.

“What?”

He leaned closer.

“That mouth. I was beginning to think we’d lost it.”

I stopped struggling.

We.

Who was we?

And what exactly had they been doing to me?

I looked past him, searching the room. A glass wall separated us from another chamber. Beyond it, several figures stood in the shadows, their faces obscured by the glare of the overhead lights.

One of them was watching me.

A tall figure dressed in black.

A hood concealed his face.

My heart lurched.

Him.

The man from my memory.

The man reaching towards me with blood on his hands.

I strained against the restraints.

“Who is that?”

The man in the white coat followed my gaze.

For a moment, something changed in his expression.

Not fear.

Recognition.

Then he pressed a button on the console beside him.

The glass wall went dark.

The hooded figure disappeared.

“No one you need to concern yourself with,” he said.

“Bring him back.”

He turned to me slowly.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, bring him back!”

The words had barely left my mouth when I felt it.

A sharp pain behind my eyes.

The room tilted.

The white lights stretched into long, trembling lines, and the man’s face blurred as though I were looking at him through water.

I gasped.

Pictures flashed through my mind.

A garden at night.

A staircase covered in blood.

A hand reaching for mine.

A voice whispering against my ear.

When the time comes, you mustn’t let me find you.

I didn’t know whose voice it was.

I didn’t know what time they were talking about.

But I knew the fear that came with those words.

I had felt it before.

Perhaps a thousand times.

The pain intensified.

I screamed.

And somewhere beyond the walls, someone screamed with me.

Not an echo.

Another person.

Their cry rose a fraction of a second after mine, identical in pitch, identical in terror, as though another mouth had opened somewhere in the building and released the very same sound.

The man in the white coat went completely still.

He looked at the dark glass.

Then at the screen.

“No,” he whispered.

For the first time, he sounded afraid.

He hurried to the console and began pressing buttons.

A red light flashed above the door.

The woman’s voice came through a speaker.

“What’s happening?”

“She remembers.”

Silence.

Then, “That isn’t possible.”

“I know what isn’t possible!”

He struck the console with his palm.

The restraints around my wrists loosened.

I didn’t wait to understand why.

I tore one hand free and reached for the nearest object on the table. My fingers closed around a narrow metal instrument, and I swung it at him.

He stumbled backwards.

I scrambled upright, ripping the remaining restraint from my ankle.

“Don’t move,” he said.

I raised the instrument.

“Come any closer and I’ll—”

“You’ll do what?”

He sounded almost disappointed.

I hated him for it.

I hated the way he looked at me as though my fear were a familiar inconvenience. As though we had stood in this room before, having this exact conversation, and he already knew how it would end.

Then his eyes dropped to my hand.

To the metal instrument.

His face drained of colour.

“Put that down.”

I glanced at what I was holding.

It wasn’t a surgical instrument.

It was a dagger.

Black handle. Silver blade. Strange symbols etched along its length.

The same dagger.

My fingers tightened around it.

“Where did this come from?”

He backed away.

“Listen to me very carefully.”

I almost laughed.

Now he wanted me to listen?

“You’re going to leave this room,” he said. “You’re going to walk through that door, take the first staircase on your left, and keep walking until you reach the outside.”

“Why?”

“Because if you stay here, they will come for you.”

“Who will?”

His gaze flickered towards the glass wall.

“The people who made you.”

Something inside me went terribly quiet.

I stared at him.

“What did you say?”

He closed his eyes briefly, as though he regretted the words the moment they escaped him.

Then the speaker crackled.

A woman’s voice filled the room.

“Doctor, step away from the subject.”

He didn’t move.

“Doctor, that’s an order.”

He looked at me.

And for one strange moment, the expression in his eyes reminded me of the hooded man from my memory.

The same grief.

The same helplessness.

“Run,” he whispered.

The lights went out.

A crash sounded beyond the glass, followed by hurried footsteps and a sharp, strangled cry.

I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I was escaping from. I only knew that the man in the white coat had looked at me with the expression of someone watching a disaster unfold for the second time.

I burst through the door and found myself in a narrow corridor.

The walls were lined with windows.

Behind each window was another white room.

And inside each room was a girl.

Some sat motionless on their beds, staring at nothing.

Some were crying.

One was pounding both fists against the glass.

Every single one of them had my face.

I stopped so abruptly that my shoulder struck the wall.

The girl behind the nearest window lifted her head.

Her eyes widened.

Then she pressed her palm against the glass.

I couldn’t move.

She looked exactly like me, down to the scar beneath her left eyebrow.

But unlike me, she seemed to understand what was happening.

Her lips moved.

I stepped closer.

“What?”

She shook her head frantically, then mouthed the words again.

Don’t let him find you.

Behind me, a door slammed open.

Footsteps thundered into the corridor.

I turned to run, but the girl behind the glass suddenly struck the window with both hands.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

The glass shattered.

Except the fragments fell inward, into her room, leaving the corridor window perfectly intact.

She stood on the other side, staring at me through the impossible opening.

Blood ran down her palms.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered.

I stumbled backwards.

“Who are you?”

She looked at me with an expression so heartbreakingly familiar that my chest ached.

“I’m you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She reached through the broken window and caught my wrist.

Her fingers were ice-cold.

“Listen to me. You have to find him before they reset everything.”

“Find who?”

Her eyes darted towards the approaching footsteps.

Then she leaned closer.

“The man in the hood.”

My breath caught.

“Why?”

Her expression crumpled.

“Because he’s the only one who remembers what they did to us.”

A door opened somewhere behind me.

A man’s voice rang through the corridor.

“Subject located.”

The girl released my wrist.

“Go!”

I ran.

But before I reached the staircase, I heard her scream again.

The exact same scream that had torn through my mind.

The scream that had brought me back to life.

I looked over my shoulder.

For one fraction of a second, I saw through the glass.

The girl was gone.

In her place stood a man wearing black gloves.

He was holding a clipboard.

He glanced at the empty room, made a small mark beside a name, and spoke into his earpiece.

“Another failed iteration.”

Then he looked directly at me.

Through the glass.

Across the corridor.

As though he could see me.

As though he had known I was standing there the entire time.

He smiled.

“Begin again.”

And the world went white.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on a cold stone floor.

A broken wooden chair stood against the wall.

Moonlight spilled through a narrow window.

My hands were stained with blood.

And a dagger lay across my lap.

I sat up, gasping.

I didn’t know where I was.

I didn’t know what to call myself.

I didn’t remember the white room, the girls behind the glass, or the man with the clipboard.

But somewhere deep inside me, a voice was still screaming.

And this time, I knew whose voice it was.

Mine.