This isn't for you, or about you. Nor me. The devil down below needs it more. But here we are.

"I think I'm going to die. I really do."

It spins. The world spins. Even if that entire world was confined only to this small room.

Isn't that really all that there is? What's in front of you, right in the moment?

Sure there are places beyond what one could see. Beyond walls, borders and all physical limits. But what does it matter? In a breath, in a moment, what can a person really do with that knowledge?

Absolutely fucking nothing.

"I am honestly so ready to die." she spins, the chair creaking.

It was a cheap thing, gray and worn. The woven material even further falling apart from how Sophie picks at it.

Bandaged hands picking and pulling with what working fingers she still had. Unweaving the knit of the machine cheap cloth. Undoing the tapestry of something beyond her.

There's a clock if the metronome wasn't enough.

It clicks right in beat.

Back and forth.

The only other sound except for occasionally irregular breaths and the controlled voices. Or the lack of them.

"You don't get it do you? That's fair. Can't expect you to. You don't have to feel the way your blood surges at your pulse, right at your neck. A target. It's not a whisper so much as it is thundering under your skin. It says...

'You're gonna die, you're gonna die.'

Over and over again. With each pulse. An overdue heartbeat. Trust me. Mine's long overdue. Listen. It's still going. Ba bump? Ba bumpedy fuck.

Do you get it doc?

Do you get in your cute little leather chair with the spinny wheels?

I don't think you do, I don't think you even get the urge to take that chair and bust yourself out the damn window with it. Oh the glass, I think I would prefer the glass.

Just rip yourself right up, right where that pulse is thundering.

I want to die doc.

I want this pulse gone. I want me gone.... I want to have never existed at all."

The room was soundproof. Cushioned. A little too much so. Suffocation decorated as comfort.

There was hardly anything that wasn't nailed down or soft to the touch. Little way for anything to be used as a feasible weapon. No sharp edges, no real blunt force. Even the rolling chair would break into smooth weak bits of plastic and stuffing.

It barely creaks, making a clicking noise at every full lazy rotation.

"You feel so strongly for someone who claims not to feel anything at all." says the only other person in the room.

Plastic glasses and a fuzzy cardigan. Her dark hair was pulled up tight, and her collar shirt was buttoned up high. The supposed doctor looked more like a comforting friend from college. Someone who would recommend a good book and offer you a cup of tea.

Sophie scoffs.

"Can't help it doc- can you stop night from turning to day or day from going to night?"

She leans back far, dangling on the chair much like a naughty child. If she was one she would have surely fallen. Snipped white hair, clean and sterile, falls back to reveal an almost whiter pale neck. If not for the blotches of dried blood underneath fresh bandages.

The covers did nothing she couldn't craftily undo. So they clipped her nails painfully short after that, into the flesh and filed smooth. No more scratching for the time.

Right before she tips and cracks her already broken head, in a suspended moment, Sophie pulls back, balancing. All before lazily pushing the mangled chair into another slow spin.

There were still 33 minutes left on the clock.

"I get jetlagged you see? When I'm supposed to feel something I don't, and when I do well it's all the wrong things at the wrong time.

That's why you can't let me out now ain't it?

Can't have me feeling like that, or getting any other cravings, when out and about in polite society."

The world spins in its small comforting ways. If she tries running into the wall, she might just bounce back in how soft and padded it was.

"Why Sophie, you may have anything you like when it doesn't harm anyone." the doctor scribbled down, flipping run down pages of notes, before referencing in her odd scholarly ways.

"If you truly wanted 'pork' you could sit down at a nice restaurant or buy some at the market," she spoke, voice level and smooth, if not a hint amused.

It's the only reason Sophie doesn't feel the urge to rip her tongue out. The doctor enjoys their time together, and in some sick way, Sophie does too. Therapeutic. Like the whole point of this thing.

Are you not entertained?

"Not the same doc- just not the same. See I like to hunt my own, kinda used to it at this point." Sophie cracks her knuckles, slowly pulling each finger in a pop.

"Perhaps try changing up your exercise routines. I'll make a note of that to your physical therapist."

"Oh? But you won't provide the pigs."

"We're not licensed for that sort of thing. Hunting is a dangerous sport and animal abuse is a whole different legal matter."

"Animal abuse? Why it isn't called animal abuse in the slaughterhouse? Or the markets where we hang and decorate their meat? "

"That is true Sophie, the food supply industry is still rife with animal abuse."

She kicks the floor again when the spinning slows too much like a halt. It's much how like their conversations go.

Round and round. The pauses only a peaceful lull, a breath before it spins back again. Circling the room. Circling Sophie's brain.

It's better than being drugged a vegetable, out of her mind insane.

"Say doc, you know how pigs and humans have such similar muscle compositions. Some places use them live as crash dummies. Or just their parts. All for science. We're just so similar?"

"Why yes Sophie," the doctor agrees, " Pork is often used in much research regarding human safety standards. Is that today's topic? Standards and their hypocrisy? Standards you can live by, and thus can't find yourself to let go to live in society?"

The pen scratches. Taking notes.

"Oh you know me doc. That's an essay that will never end. You can't let me out, I can't make it out. No, it's much more simple, I'm just sad I can't hunt any more pigs. "

Specifically pigs.

They both knew Sophie wasn't talking about the kind served in bacon and sausages in the cafeteria.

"Well, I suppose you could always apply and work towards a hunting license after you're released. Plenty of game animals available per season for responsible hunters."

"No license for piggies doc."

"No. No Sophie, there are no licenses for 'pigs'. And I'm afraid there's nothing like the wild boar you encountered. Perhaps deer?"

"Shame. You treat them like they're endangered or something." Sophie pills another thread from the chair.

Then another. The pattern getting smoother and longer the more she works at it.

"We legally slaughter so much when rich people make war or something. Makes no sense. It's not even the richest fattest pigs that get sent. Not the ones who started it. We kill for sport and for fun, all under the guise of need, protection, or even glory." she pulls

"War is...an awful thing." the doctor agrees.

"Legal killing. The more the better! It's the only time they give you the mass license to hunt for the other side's piggies. Or you could just be rich?"

The pen taps.

"Is it anyone who is a 'piggie' Sophie? Who is a pig and who is human?"

A scarred woman hums, though not much in thought, kicking her legs back and forth like a child. She wasn't very tall. Bandaged up like this, frail in all white, she made far from an intimidating figure. Uncomfortable to look at yes, but not very intimidating or scary.

Appearances can be deceiving.

But so can words.

If the notes are to be believed, this tiny woman was guilty of multiple cases of 1st-degree manslaughter.

If.

It's a good thing she's a poor crazy soul. Understandably traumatized. Can't take their word at face value. Not at court. Not in the office.

All things in this room stay safe and confidential.

"Can I have a pen doc? Or a crayon if you don't trust me enough to not stab something, trust me it's not very effective anywhere but the eyeballs. And that's with a lot of force, more than I can grip without any extra momentum."

And she chattered the unassuming doctor pulled out a blank paper and pen, handing Sophie the plain clipboard.

"I trust you." she said as easily as she took notes.

As easily as she dug and pulled into her patient's so-called psyche.

"Oh bad taste doc. You should never trust the barcodes."

The sickly woman tapped at her bandaged arms or rather the electronic wrist band cuffed to her wrists. Size extra small since she kept slipping out. Bloody but out.

"You like pens. You wouldn't dirty a pen like that."

"Well fuck you got me there. See this is why I even bother with you out of this whole damn place. You have the nicest imported pens. Good flow. Very nice grip control. Now look here, I'm making you a lovely drawing!"

Thin black lines on blank white paper. Little and long scratches repeating themselves here and there, all over until they form a chilling image that the human brain can recognize.

"You're very talented." the doctor remarked.

It wasn't Sophie's drawing skills that impressed the physician so much as it was the anatomical detail. It was a bit too messy, dark and ink speared from a hand working too fast, but it was rather spot on.

Something from the notes of a student in the field.

Or maybe a serial killer.

"That's it, that's all we are. Give or take individual size, that's all the average human is. Oxygen, 43kg - Carbon, 16kg - Hydrogen, 7kg - Nitrogen, 1.8kg - Calcium, 1kg - Phosphorus, 0.78kg - Potassium, 0.14kg - Sulfur, 0.14kg - Sodium, 0.10kg - Chlorine, 0.095kg - and Magnesium, 0.019kg. 'Essential' trace elements. "

"That's very specific, I don't believe I'm knowledgeable enough to refute that."

"Neither am I smart enough to say it. Stole it out of pop culture quotes. Thank you very much. "

"Oh, I think you're plenty intelligent Sophie."

"Don't overestimate me doc, don't make me more than I'm not. I'm a wackjob nobody, high on temporarily legal drugs, with access to Wikipedia and binge-watching all the shows approved to my programming channels."

"No need to be so modest - you're a very intelligent person. You made it this far. Before the ...events, you were in good standing in your University- bound to graduate with honors."

"I'm fucking Asian doc- you get good grades or your old school parents kill you without actually killing you. You would know. But bad cultural stereotypes aside- a lot of really smart folks are deeeeeeead. They're just dead. Your smarts don't mean a thing."

She giggles, legs kicking up in the air back and forth. The couch was her jungle gym and she spun till she faced the doctor upsidedown.

"How does one measure intelligence. Does it even matter? Can you eat it? Can you raise the dead with it? Too much thinking hurts, ignorance is bliss- the pain receptors in my brain like to flare spark sparkle! Like fireworks! oh, I hate that song. Is it old enough to be vintage yet? What do kids these days like?"

"I see," notes scribbled on a page, a file ever increasing, "....so you don't wish to confront the pain. Stress and anxiety do flare-up in the human brain in the same way as physical pain. It's very normal."

"So you know then doc, how much I hate being like this. Take me off already wontcha? Take me off the chemicals?"

"You're not opposed to other forms of substance abuse?"

" Well duh, I want it gone. Not flaring up in hyper feeling. Gone, nothing, let me go. I can play nice without feeling a thing."

Sophie slipped down from the slowly spinning chair, head-spinning herself. Further down till there was nowhere left to go but the floor.

She'd melt into it if she could, but that was probably the medication talking.

"I can't do that Sophie." the voice said with finality, yet never breaking the delicate calm.

A surface of water, ever still. Tranquil. Like the monsters lived too deep below for you to see a trace. The very worse kind.

"I don't want to feel anymore doc, don't make me have ta feel anymore." the patient laughed, hysterical though she quite doesn't know why. Doesn't know a lot of things. Not like this.

"It's time for your next dosage Sophie."

"Ah fuck, can I at least have some whiskey to drown myself"

"You're not supposed to....but I have some bourbon behind the desk"

"Oh fancy"

Bourbon wasn't the only thing behind the desk.

Both versions of Sophie could see that.

The past Sophie, already high, not of her own volition, grabbed the alcohol.

The current Sophie, the person who she is now by some miracle, watches. She watches from padded walls and blackout curtain, not too comfortably at how the insane mirror of her stumbles and twitches.

The doctor does not judge, does not rush. She was something more than just professional, it almost felt personal. But then again, it takes a certain type of person to get a degree, let a long such a heavy job, in this field.

That Sophie, so white, still so broken, takes the alcohol.

And her?

Well.

She's right behind. And she takes the drugs.

Sandeep would be so disappointed, but in this case, Sophie would think her personal psychiatrist would understand. She scrambles with her hands, whole and unmarred, to scoop what she could reach before the damn drawer closed.

The wood slams with her head. Bludgeoned.

For a moment it feels as if her long time wish has been granted.

Like an undying witch burned at the stake. It hurts. It burns and hurts. Yet she still won't die. Skin peeling, flesh blistering past the point of cooking. She still bloodily raw and she is charred.

It makes no sense. It makes perfect sense.

There are poets out there that could make better lines. Better descriptions. But not everything has to feel like something. It hurts, and it hurts so directly, so intensely that there is no spare thought to even want to try and describe. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts she wants to die already it hurt hurt hurt hurts.

She's been in a state of chronic pain for so long. Something somewhere was always hurting. If not her old scars then her broken system, whichever one it was that was failing. Liver? Stomach? Heart? Brain?

She's lived with pain for so long, even through the foggy haze of pills and chemically relieving drugs, that she doesn't know what to do with herself to not feel it. Any of it.

The world still spins.

If she keeps her eyes closed, it spins infinitely in the darkness.

There is no pain here. Not really.

The straw bed is a little lumpy and uneven, under the layer hand-woven mats and a mostly clean sleeping bag. It's more than comfortable really. Laying there, back straight, in peace and quiet under soft blankets, feels much like heaven to anyone barely risen out of sleep.

This was either heaven, or a hell too good to be true.

Sophie coughs, throat still sore from the sudden cold. Her body is in pain once more, though mild, so very mild compared to what she's always known before. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad.

Just physical.

But pain she could do. Pain was as familiar as it was sobering.

When she blinks herself up in the dark, everything registers just where she remembers in should. Still too rough cave walls, the woven palm dividers that set off her quarters from the others. By the 'bedside', a wonky failed attempt at something sat a natural bamboo pitcher of water and some cold meds.

Probably left out by one of her siblings.

It was night, dark all around, but Sophie could see well enough with her senses.

If she really wanted too, her half charged phone could light up and tell her the time. Tell her notes. Entertain her with a saved video. Remind.

Remind remind remind. There's so much to do. So much to expect. More than she knows what to do with even if she wrote it all down. And she does, she has. Tries writing down whatever she can remember somewhere safe, somewhere hidden in a mix of languages she hopes won't be easy to decipher if god forbid, it was ever found.

She'd rather burn, again, than let it fall into the wrong hands. But what does it matter when it was all in her own head. Too much information, too much to separate useful from useless.

"It's all useful. Even if it doesn't seem important in the moment. It all comes back around." cooly repeated the voice in her head, playing back like an old recording.

Funny how the most rational part of her sounded just like her not so favorite, but only, psychiatrist.

Sophie takes the pills, the cold meds, and puts away the ones from the dream. Two syringes and a few little bottles of shit she knows could knock out an elephant. She hesitates, before twisting the cap and taking out a single white pill.

There's a knife from under her pillow, a habit she wasn't getting rid of any time soon. Same with the blunt staff like weapon in reaching distance. More possible hidden around her bed, the space. Every corner quietly promising death, if not great pain. It was purposely the opposite of the safe space she just visited in her dream, the calming 45-minute sessions in a soft comforting office.

Like a chef, she smashes down, splitting the pill, though not quite cleanly.

The powder and fragments were bitter to the taste but Sophie washes it down anyways. She deserves a lot more bitterness than this anyways.

She deserves some proper sleep if she was to get better. Well enough to operate. She knows it's her fault she's ended up in this current state, but there really was no time then.

The skies were still raining right outside and now they could only wait.

Rest. Recover. Wait. Do it all over again next season and the next. Just surviving.

Sophie writes down what she can remember in this moment because that's all that matters. She can sort it out later. Clean it up into something resembling a plan, a schedule, same with the rest of her notes.

Her pen isn't as nice.

Maybe when the time is right, when the strange abilities in these dreams are more manageable, and it didn't feel like she deep throated a cactus with her cold, would she try aiming for those little luxuries. Stealing other people's, and time's, stuff.

When the world blurs, not necessarily spins, she knows she's tired out enough for the pills to start its sweet conscious wearing effects. Closing her notes, hiding it tightly in between crevices and rock, she puts away the fears of the future to answer the call of the moment.

Sleep calls to her and when she crawls back into bed, she curses. Fuck therapy throwback. Fuck free stuff in magic dreams. Sophie was actually sleeping this time.

-------

---

"Okay okay okay, what if, we put a bottle of your chocolate milk-"

"It's protein June."

"Chocolate protein whatever,Mattie the important thing is its chocolate! We place this over the bath, and stalk it. When he finally comes over he hose him down in a trap and get the bath-"

"....did you watch Home Alone again?!"

The sound of teenagers discussing, or arguing, sounded out Sophie shuffles to make herself a cup of something for her god damn still hurting throat.

Pain she could do. The annoyance of congestion and mucus? Not so much.

Sophie was pleased to confirm though, that the stolen drugs worked just as they should. Knocked out like when she was back in the nuthouse. Good old drugs. Just the kind of stuff she was fighting back then.

She does not miss the irony, but it doesn't matter.

"Well, I don't see any of your plans working. Dude, you're the one who's all up and wants him 'clean!'" the younger girl throws her hand in her messy hair, tying it up as if ready for a fight.

"I don't believe it either but that little brat is legit fast. And at playing god damn hide and seek. How was he hiding up there?! Is he spiderman? Can't even drag him to the bathroom." the boy shudders and groans.

"Well duh, swiper no swiping."

".....June. How does your brain operate? I fear it will be a genetic condition passed down my line or affecting me in my old age."

"Your mom."

"We have the same mom you pre-schooler."

Sophie sipped her drink listening in lazily, rocking on the stool. Her leg twitched, kicked off of nothing. Bad habit she wasn't getting rid of soon.

A voice that's entirely her own still sounds out in the hollows of her body. Deep in her chest, ringing up and wretched out.

"I want to die." it laughs. Gravely and low, till the pitch giggles up a bloody high. It sounds very similar to how hers does on a cold today.

These voices are still inside her, still very much a part of her. Even now, especially now. Just like her nightmares of memories, they fuel her as much as they eat her up from the inside.

At any given time, it would honestly be a lot less painful to simply let it end. Be dead. Solves everything doesn't? Spilled milk? Trauma and pressure to endure? All irrelevant, solved even, once you're dead.

She takes another sip of the honey lemon and sighs.

Sure can't taste that when you're dead. Can't do a lot of things. Sandeep's therapy session number thirty fucking three or something.

Sophie's not the doctor around here, or ever. She can only trust herself, contradictions and all. Can only work for a better last.

"Leon, if you go take a shower they'll stop chasing you around and you can have the damn chocolate. " Sophie calls out, still breathing in the steam before turning over to her most precious people, young and annoying as they were.

"Just tell him what you want. And don't ever try to pursue or touch his clothes," she mentions to them, a warning in passing.

It would be unfortunate if any of them, well-intentioned or not, tried to touch the boy. Touch and turn him into the desperate beaten beast he really was, hiding under his stealth. Under his clothes. Under a tough act.

There was a truth that wasn't her's to tell. A truth she, anyone really, was too late to stop.

Not child services.

Not the police.

Not anyone except maybe the whore who gave birth to him, all of him. From when he was born to when she first pimped him out.

That was a truth she wasn't supposed to know. Not yet.

This Leon wasn't her Leon, she would do good to remember that. Take care.

Sophie shuffles with care not to spill her drink. Body still heavy from nature and modern medicine. She sighs more from the tiredness that sleep cannot heal, than any of the banter between her siblings. Besides, it livened things up. Made everything a little more....alive, worth it.

So it doesn't register to Sophie the absolute silence she hears. The lack of shadows. Not until she sits down, take her however many sip, and look. Really look.

She clamors to the cupboards.

"Sophie? What's up?" June asks over the sudden mess.

"Where is it!?" Sophie bites back, it sounds like tire and gravel grating in a crash.

Before any girl can get out another word, Mattie is only the floor to pull Sophie out. Calm her down in a way maybe only he knows how.

"What's wrong? What is it?" he questions, holding her physically back as much as he was helping keep her grounded.

"The red box. The bento box? It's not here." she fires out, the lack of details coming all together.

"It's not? Um what the-" June started, clearly lost.

"None of us moved it," Mattie confirmed, not far behind in Sophie's dawning comprehension. Especially with her face paled like that.

"Shit swiper took it?" June put together.

There's no answer, not even a creak. She can't feel him anywhere.

Sophie struggles against gangly but strong arms. Mattie shushing the reason back in to her with each passing wasted second.

"June. Sophie. Look around inside the cave, I left a ladder by the loft he was hiding in before. I'll search outside. I'm sure there's an explanation Sophie. I'm going now, June, help look after her. She's still feverish."

The fever wells up in her in panicked explosions, even as the other split to search aimlessly.

"I want to die."

The dark voice inside laughs, beautiful as it was broken.

"I'll always just...want to die. In a way. I just don't want any more of this shit, not any of it....I'm tired of running. Been doing it as long as anything."

Only 17. Dark as the far sky at twilight, burnt in all the ways that said alive. Alive, alive, dangerously alive. Dark hair. Fire burning always too hot in dark eyes. Too easy to burn out in smoke and ash.

"Running is what you want Sophie."

The voice breathes, curses because he doesn't cry.

"But me? I'd rather just finally die."

It sounded just like Leon. Young. Grown. Mixed and meddled all together. 12. 17. But never past twenty-something. They were 'saved' and she never heard from him again. Never would.

She feels like scratching.

Fingernails no longer snipped uselessly short. She feels like drilling holes into herself and clawing out. As if her hands could grip and pull her pulsing body and brain right apart.

"Don't."

Alone.

He would want to be alone.

Like how a robber stashes their goods. How a fox steals away and eat its prey. Like how cats and crows disappear to die.

"The other cave. He's in the other cave! The way down!"

She shouts out, running around only to grab what was truly needed. A weapon, lights, a stolen syringe whatever they could use as first aid in the worst-case scenario. The quick run to the other cave was still enough to drench her, June yelling from behind. Mattie may be faster but he didn't know, not like her.

Sophie wasn't there when he died.

Wasn't anywhere near earth, not in her own head. When she finally heard about him, it was long past. Dead. Deader than a doornail.

Overdosed and dead. What a sight he must have been then.

"But I'll tell you something since we're probably going to die, go up in a blast, anyways." a teenager laughs, right before that night.

The night Sophie set it all on fire. Something was bubbling out of him in nerves and oil spills. Something too alive in the moment. Truly enjoying the great roast they were about to set off. Ready to count and serve the heads that would roll.

"I want to die. But I need them all to pay me first."

Alcohol tipped back.

Oil tipped over.

Flames licking everything, everyone in sight. It swallows their enemies, her whole, and he screams her name-"

"LEON!"

Sophie screams back into the dark, years too late.

It echoed into the nothingness.