Sharp Objects

on the matter of a pen and the written word

This is a response to HVR’s prompt, which can be found here:

Whenever I travel to Egypt, I play video games with my nephew. The last time I was there, we played this Japanese game where we had to choose how we wanted to respond to other characters. Answering in a certain way could have dire consequences. That’s what this photo reminds me of: consequences. So, here’s my piece:

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“What are you in for?”

She glances up at the girl from her seated position on the edge of the bed. The light is flooding in, but if she were to glance outside, she wouldn’t be able to see anything more than the skeletons of trees and sharp swatches of blue sky.

There are purplish shadows under her eyes, almost a bruise but not quite. Her skin is pale, nearly translucent. If she wanted, she could trace the threads from veins. There is nothing remarkable about her, except for the bandages carefully wound around her small and delicate wrists. The truth is that there hasn’t been much remarkable about anything in quite some time.

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, peers out the window again before surveying the rest of the children in the room. They appear as fractions. Perhaps combined, they form some type of whole. As it is, they are somber meat sacks walking around with the weight of a world that won’t stop eviscerating.

“You get used to it,” the girl says. “We call it the zombie effect. I think it’s from the drugs they give us.”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, the pills they make you take,” she answers. “Didn’t you get your dose?”

She swallows down the taste of chalk, how it didn’t really feel like the medication found its way into her stomach. Now that she thinks about it, there is a certain drowsiness, a haze that wasn’t there before. Maybe that’s why she can’t stop staring at the sky or the trees.

“I did,” she shrugs again.

“I’m not going to tell you that you get used to it here,” the girl says. “Because you don’t.”

She doesn’t say anything. The sun chooses that instant to glide into the room. The girl lifts her face, closes her eyes gently, and smiles briefly.

“We’re not allowed to go outside,” she says. “But sometimes the warmth from the sun makes the hollow a little more bearable.”

She nods. Her silence is not the absence of interest, but the thickness of tongue. It feels heavy in her mouth, as though it is becoming calcified.

“Sleep time is the worst,” the girl says. “Especially the first few nights. It gets eerily quiet, I mean, except for us fidgeting or crying. But they’re pretty vigilant about us not talking to each other when the lights go out.”

“Why?”

The girl sighs, looks at her as if she’s a child. She wants to tell her that she is a kid, that they’re all kids, and she’s allowed not to know everything. Without a word, the girl’s eyes soften.

“There’s danger in solidarity,” she says. “We can write to each other if you want. Some of us have paper. Others, pens. But you know what it’s like with us and sharp objects.”

She nods with understanding. The girl steps in closer.

“I have a journal I keep tucked in a secret place,” she mouths. “If you want to know where it is, I can tell you, but not right now.”