Towards Monsters

I woke up to the same incessant buzzing sound that my brain had become so skilled at shutting out during sleep. The neon lights never went off in the cellar. They shone bright day and night, with my pale skin bathing in their green halo every second of every day. My biological clock never failed me: the agents would be here very soon.

Sure enough, they came on time. The heavy metal door swung open, giving me a glimpse at the darkness of the concrete corridor on the other side. As a child (not that I felt like an adult in any way), I was terrified of the dark. The shadows of the night were where monsters lay hidden, where the dolls I disliked seemed to come alive and smile at me in eerie mischief.

These fears would stick with me through my dreams and nightmares until sunlight broke through my curtains to chase them out. Dark was evil, and light was good. Not anymore: today, there was nothing I wouldn’t have given to find myself in the dark corridor on the other side. My longing for darkness knew no bounds, like an unquenchable thirst for a nocturnal oasis.

The two agents came in, shutting the door behind them. Just like that, my hopes had vanished. The neon-lit cellar once again encompassed my entire universe.

“Good morning Maria,” said the Man in the Grey Suit, his voice soft as that of a snake entrancing its prey. “I hope you enjoyed a night of productive rest.”

“Is rest meant to be productive?” I answered.

“One is always meant to be productive, regardless of whether one is...”

“…awake or not,” completed the Man in the Beige Suit. “Well said. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

The Men in Suits certainly made a remarkable duo. They complemented each other in ways I never knew two people could. Not only did they to finish each other’s sentences; at times, it was as though they were actually reading each other’s minds, conspiring against me. I did not know who they were or who they worked for. All I knew was that they were my captors, the ones who kept me locked in here to do what they were incapable of doing themselves.

“Time for you to bring out your best game,” said the Man in the Grey Suit.

He positioned his heavy wooden suitcase on the table in front of my bed and lifted the lid. I peeked inside. The case was filled with as much shredded paper as it could contain.

“When you’re ready,” he said.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I replied.

“Saving the dessert for after the meal, young girl.”

“I’m not a young girl.”

“That’s right,” said the Man in the Beige Suit. “You’re all grown up now. Grown up enough to be…”

“Difficult,” completed the Man in the Grey Suit. “Very difficult.”

“It’s right now,” I said. “Or else…”

“Or else what…”

“You’ll just have to find someone else.”

The two Men looked at each other. I could tell they were exchanging more than the silence they kept. The Man in the Beige Suit was the first to turn back towards me.

“Well we wouldn’t want that, would we? Someone so precious. One of a kind.”

The Man in the Grey suit pulled a foldable mirror out of his pocket and handed it over to me. I rushed to open it and scanned the woman I saw in the depths of its reflected world. Her face was young and beautiful but shrouded in pain and despair. It was like looking at a different person. This had been my one request from the beginning. My youth was being taken from me, but every day, for one minute, I had convinced them to let me look at myself in the error, so I could remember who I was. My identity had not been destroyed yet – I wouldn’t let them.

“Time’s up,” said the Man in the Beige Suit, glancing at his watch.

I handed back the mirror and resolved to do my so-called “job,” as I did everyday. He closed the lid of the suitcase, and I placed my hands over its cold, varnished surface. Then, I counted backwards. Ten. Nine. Eight…

As the numbers appeared before me through the mind’s eye, I could feel discharges of energy flowing out of my hands. It was as if I felt the fabric of spacetime bending between my fingers, like the folds of a thick piece of wool. Soon, the process was complete. I lifted my hands, and they opened the lid. The sheets of paper were now intact. I had turned back the hands of time.

“Well done,” said the Man in the Grey Suit.

 I barely got a glimpse at the contents of the papers. Only a few keywords stood out. Confidential, nuclear, power… It was enough for me to have a general idea of who I was involved with, without ever knowing the details of what purpose my confinement served. This was usually the point where they left. They did not.

“I must say I was surprised,” said the Man in the Grey Suit.

“Surprised by what?”

“How accurate your biological clock is,” he said. “You are indeed not a young girl anymore. At least you won’t be tomorrow.”

My heart stopped. It couldn’t be. Was I about to turn eighteen already? Seven years of confinement had made me lose track of time.

“I still remember bringing you here on your eleventh birthday,” he continued. “Children with your abilities were so rare at the time. You did not know what you were getting into. You couldn’t understand why your parents had accepted to take the money in exchange. Yet, here we are, seven years later.”

They both reached into their pockets and pulled out revolvers. A violent convulsion pulsed through my body. It couldn’t end like this. After seven years of confinement, they were about to seal my fate. Never would I go to a dance. Never would I kiss someone. Never would I travel to a far-off place to forget the trauma this stolen childhood had brought me.

“As I’m sure you remember from previous conversations,” said the Man in the Beige Suit, “upon turning eighteen, your chip will activate. The government will be able to detect you, and this will put us in danger of being exposed.”

“Then release me,” I said. “I believed this was the plan all along.”

“You were wrong. You know too much.”

“I never read the papers, I swear.”

“Lies.”

“I beg you, plea—”

Before I could finish, they fired their weapons. Just before the bullets could reach me, the thought came to me. I lifted my hands, and counted backwards. The bullets went back in time, with added momentum. Instead of going back into the guns, they hit the Men in Suit right in the chest, leaving them dead on the ground in a pool of blood. The thick scarlet fluid glistened, bathed in the green halo of the neon lights.

I rushed for the Man in the Grey Suit’s pockets and fetched the door’s key. Mere seconds later, I found myself in the corridor. The dark, cold, soothing corridor. My eyes closed, and for the first time, I could not see the reddish glow on the other side of my eyelids.

Staring at the darkness ahead of me, I thought of the monsters that could lay hidden along this brand new path towards freedom. That didn’t stop me from moving forward. They couldn’t be worse than the monsters I was leaving behind in the light. And so I walked into the darkness, towards the new monsters. Towards a new life at last.