Shameless Chapter Fourteen

I never quite understood what I was. I wasn't human. I wasn't an android. I wasn't an animal. I was nothing. They never told me what I was, and I never asked. It was a don't ask, don't tell policy, and even if I was young, I knew not to break that rule.
                                    * * *

I remember the day I realized I wasn't me anymore. I was at least five then, my mother was long gone, and the doctor had just taken me out of my cell. He tied my hands behind my back and gagged my mouth, and on wobbly knees I followed him into the lab.

He threw me on the table, my head bouncing off of it with a loud clang. He cursed, and inspected the forming bump, and called another doctor. They inspected my head and the one who threw me told me to hold out my arm.

I obeyed, biting my lip and preparing for the pain. The needle smoothly went inside me, and my vision became blurry, and I collapsed on the steel table, my arm falling limp at my side.

        * * *

My head felt lighter. The world spun in colorful blurs, as if I was blinking away water. I tried to sit up but fell back down, and a quivering pain ran up my spin, and made the left side of my skull go weak. I patted my head and a scream escaped my lips. I slowly ran my finger down the unusual curve of my head, feeling around the skin where once was bone.

They took out the side of my skull.

        * * *

After that, I remember collapsing. Then the sound of monitors. Rushing feet. Screaming. They shoved a tube down my throat. I coughed up blood. It was all a haze.

I barely felt it. They had hopped me up on drugs.

But I do remember the night my slow, healing brain finally processed the quiet of the lab.

I sat slowly, my fingers squeaking on the cold steel. It was very dark, and the only light in the room came from the beam of moonlight from the windows. The left side of my head throbbed, and clumsily, I sifted through the table to the left, full of lab equipment.

And thats when my fingers clasped around it.

It was wet and sticky, and dark liquid clung to it. My clumsy fingers studied it, my drugged brain slowly realizing what it was.

It had many parts to it, and I recognized a microchip. Beep. Beep. Beep. I giggled in hysteria at the blinking red light, surrounding the metal plate. I turned the plate over and my fingers touched something smooth and cold. It was a glass screen.

I pressed the button underneath it and pretty images exploded the screen.

I watched for awhile, staring in wonder.

SNAP. My brain triggered, and I dropped the plate, shivering, I curled myself into fetal position and sobbed.

My left side throbbed which only made me cry more.

That plate was the new skull they were building for me.



And after that day, I was no longer human.

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