Reset

CW: mental health, grief, substance abuse, vague suicidal ideation

A rat in a maze. More like a woman kidnapped, drugged, and mind uploaded into a video game of ever-shifting rules. 

Clary had always hated games. She’d hardly ever won bingo. And staring at the maze walls, their pixelated barriers, that loathing only intensified. But what choice did she have when offered that business card in the dingiest bar this city could offer?

Unopened mail littered her kitchen counter, red stamps glaring.

A second pink-slip had been pinned to her apartment door.

And when she awoke, his wedding band greeted her from the nightstand. 

She’d run out of options. But she didn’t think kidnapping was part of the game.

Cigarette smoke had curled throughout the bar, one of the few who still allowed the vice indoors. It burned Clary’s nose as much as the vodka–like hand sanitizer down her throat. Twisting her diamond ring, she watched it fracture in the poor lighting. She could sell it. Pawn it. Probably get enough to settle part of her debts. Maybe stay in the apartment a month or two longer.

Her eyes burned. Not from the cigarette smoke.

“At least you still have your looks,” came a crisp voice, lilting in a European fashion.

“Piss off,” Clary muttered. This wasn’t the place people came to converse; it was where they came to forget. And she needed to be obliterated.

The neighboring bar stool creaked as the man sat. Clary caught him out of the corner of her eye: a sleek suit, greased hair combed to stiff perfection. Cuff-links. Those could likely go for enough to settle her–

No. She wouldn’t dare stoop so low. But desperate times were decadent to the intrusive thoughts. Addictive like dark chocolate, an excellent red wine–who was she kidding? Right now, she’d settle for a meal that didn’t come in a foam container.

Time for another shot–likely her last before the card declined. 

Hand raised, Clary was about to flag the bartender when the man next to her clucked his tongue. 

“You’ll need your wits about you for my offer, Clary Beauchard.”

She stiffened. But she couldn’t look at him. “How do you know my name?”

“Your file came across my desk. I never thought a server could earn such a high credit limit on half-a-dozen cards. Not to mention the several months of back-pay you owe to your landlord, the utility companies.”

Panic turned every thought and feeling alcohol had numbed into a live-wire. “My husband is coming to meet me–”

“No,” the man said. “He isn’t. My condolences.”

Clary couldn’t refute him. Her heart was a drum. Blood pulsed in her ears. When she turned to the man, he didn’t smile. His faintly lined face only regarded her.

She knew the question was in her eyes. In every taut muscle of her starved body. Ramen could only get you so far. And he knew it, too.

He spoke plainly. “One night–”

“I’m not that desperate–”

“No, not in that manner,” he clarified, a reproachful frown disrupting his otherwise smooth demeanor. “My company is running some new software. We need test subjects.”

“So, ‘a business manager walks into a bar’ was in the marketing plan?” Clary’s derelict humor broke the sweat on her brow, loosened the tension in her shoulders. Only a fraction.

Unruffled, he continued. “It could change the healthcare industry as we know it. Provide people the space to work through their difficulties.” A plaintive tilt of his lips. “And you, Clary, would do far better there than in here.”

Bitter words curdled her tongue. What did this man know after a few bank statements and a glimpse at the obituaries from last year? Despite how he received such disconcerting information about her personal life, Clary wasn’t a lab rat. She had some shred of decency left, despite her current locale. 

Grabbing her purse, she shot the unwanted company a scathing glare before bolting from the stool. 

She was only halfway across the sticky, peanut littered floor when he spoke.

“One-hundred thousand.”

Clary stopped. She didn’t turn.

But she didn’t need to.

“One night in our simulation. Not only will you walk out a new woman, possibly with the mental tools to turn your life around, but also to ease your financial burden. Reset your life.” 

Had she not cried out for such a chance that morning? Gotten on her knees, clutching that ring until it indented her palm, redialing her husband’s number to hear his voice until the mailbox was full?

Closing her eyes against the encroaching burn, Clary took a breath. She hadn’t asked for this lot in life. One thing led to the next, as bad luck often does, snowballing into an avalanche. And she was tired.

So tired.

It was a bone-deep weariness. She’d essentially dragged herself here after pleading to her boss for an extra shift–and he’d said he had nothing for her. A person can only get back up so many times before the ground they’ve been shoved into looks comfortable.

Life can dig your own grave.

The barstool groaned. Liquid sloshed into a glass. It slid off the worn countertop. Footsteps echoed behind her, each step piercing the break of billiards, the pounding back of shot glasses. 

And the void of shots Clary hadn’t taken.

That’s the thing about the human spirit–you can always give a little more. Lift a head out of the dust. Allow the avalanche to melt. 

Clary turned to the man standing behind her, a business card and her refilled glass extended in each of his hands. 

“Who says going back to square one has to begin the same cycle?” he asked. 

The glass and the card. The giving in and the getting up. The red pill and the blue.

Clary had taken both.

And woke up in the digital minefield that was her mind. 

She wanted to rip that tie off his posh neck. When did consent turn from signing a dotted line to taking a card? 

With a snarl, Clary pushed ahead. Again.

She’d lost count of how many times she’d entered the maze. The walls kept changing, rearranging when she got a little farther. 

The first time she went through, she took two left turns and came to an immediate dead-end.

Second time, she went right-left-left-right–hit a wall.

But the dead-ends were a reprieve. The cool expanse of pixelated beige was a balm to her frazzled mind each time.

It was the screens that nearly broke her.

The first one wasn’t so bad.

After nearly a dozen turns, she came to a wall flickering with static, like back when late-night television programs had finally timed out before the morning news returned.  

Pausing for only a moment, Clary had been about to turn around when a picture appeared. It jostled like a home movie, the scene unsteady, bouncing with every step the recorder took. 

With every step she took. 

The memory of her high school days unfurled before her, teenagers leering and snickering at the young Clary as she passed through the halls. 

“Think she knows yet?”

“That he leaked the pics? How could she not?”

“I can’t believe he was ever with a whale like that.”

Current Clary scoffed. She didn’t need this. She wasn’t here to rehash her adolescent stupidity. Whatever therapy program this was, Clary was not one to be nostalgic. 

But turning around, another wall rose to block her in. Sweat broke down her arms, her lungs constricting. Tight spaces were no one’s friend. She whirled back; the memory continued to play out as young Clary confronted her boyfriend. His pimpled face donned the sick grin of a young buck who thought he scored. 

Anger flushed Clary’s cheeks. She wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t that mistake, nor his awful abuse of her fragile trust. What this meant for her current mess, Clary couldn’t fathom. 

But she knew one thing. That piece of her past had no hold on her. It was easy, fueled by anger, to break that screen with her fist. Shattered pixels rained to reveal the path ahead.

Only three turns led Clary to the next memory of graduation night. She’d snuck out with her mother’s car after a few drinks. Thankfully, she’d only injured the mailbox.

But then came the divorce. Clary had stared at that memory until it timed out, the maze going dark. Only to resume with her back at the very beginning. 

At square one.

So, Clary pushed on. Grubby high school boyfriend. Drunken joyride. Finally, past the parental divorce. 

She didn’t expect the montage of her father’s cancer treatment. Watching him waste away, it brought Clary to her knees. It was long until tears streamed down her cheeks, unable to pull him from the headstone that stared at her from the pixels.

Back to square one.

Clary couldn’t get up that time. Couldn’t muster the strength to trudge through the maze, through the memories of past hurt, mistakes, and grief. But then she remembered the offer. The way out. Eyes swollen, her hiccups echoed in the maze as she pushed through those memories again, hardly blinking twice at the earlier offenses.

It took her four tries to get through her father’s headstone.

When Clary finally did, it was a sob of relief that wracked her lungs. Snot and mascara ruined her sleeves. The mental landscape shifted, and she composed herself over the series of turns. Her knees shook. 

It had to be over soon. They couldn’t force her to relieve everything in a single, endless night–

The next dead-end screen proved otherwise.

Grant smiled at her, that endearingly chipped front tooth snatching her breath. He stood in the doorway, keys in hand. The kitchen counter was empty. There was no note on the door. 

He reached out, the wedding band glinting as he cupped her cheek. 

Clary’s own cheek warmed like a slap. Her shoulders curved inward. A sob–a broken, wilted thing–erupted from the hollow void in her chest. She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t do this.

“LET ME OUT!” The words ripped from her vocal cords as she whipped around, pounding on the wall she knew would appear.

“I’M DONE–I CAN’T–I CAN’T DO THIS!”

Each fist only caused the pixels to flicker. Otherwise, the wall didn’t budge.

Clary wailed. She pushed. She screamed. She beat the wall until her hands throbbed. Until she sank to her knees, her late-husband’s voice a curling warmth against her back.

It was no use. She would drown in debt. In her grief. In the shackles that had snaked around her with every pitfall in life. She was down. She was out.

The memory behind her ended. Darkness came.

Back to square one.

But as the lights turned on and the maze rearranged, Clary remained curled over her knees with a white-knuckled grip on her arms. 

Done. She was done. Perhaps not just here, in this mental maze.

The darkness of the intrusive thought choked her. 

This couldn’t be all it was. Life wasn’t meant to be a series of roadblocks, a maze continuously changing with hurdles to break through. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Clary rubbed her face. Lifted her head to study the choice before her.

To give in or to get up.

She broke through those earlier memories. Those mistakes, that pain, weren’t shackles keeping her down. Those chains had been broken.

Because they couldn’t hold her. They couldn’t define her.

Clary chose not to bend to them.

Would she bend to grief? To financial uncertainty?

Her breath shuddered, a knot loosening in her chest. A release of something she didn’t realize she was holding. She licked her chapped lips. Pushed the tangle of hair back with hands that didn’t tremble.

Clary closed her eyes. 

Recalled the laughter of her parents. Found the strength in her father’s embrace. Sought the love in Grant’s kiss.

Life was loss, but it was so much more. And she could let go of what no longer served her.

Opening her eyes, Clary stared ahead at the monitors, the technicians bustling about in lab coats. Her vital signs blipped on the screen beside her, wires connected to her chest, her temples. She breathed deeply, her body relaxing into the bed.

Back to square one–for a new beginning.