Blair

Everyday I expected to feel a little better. Everyday I am wrong.

Cooper insists that the bag pumping liquid into my arm is keeping me alive and yet it made me feel like it was draining the life from me.

There’s a knock on the door and the same daily routine starts. A nurse comes in and checks the drip bag. She puts a towel down on the end of my bed along with a tiny bar of soap and a toothbrush. I’m expected to follow her to the showers, pulling my bag of medicine along with me.

I had tried twice to strangle her with the tube that connects the drip bag to my arm. Both times I had been punished with withdrawing me from the medicine just long enough to make me suffer. Repeatedly.

Cooper had them do it to me for days at a time until I was begging him just to let me die. He always answered the same. “How do you think those that you killed felt? You deserve to suffer.”

I follow the nurse to the showers. Most of the cells I passed are quiet. They had quickly learned that no one was coming for them. That screaming and shouting was a waste of time. But I always knew when someone new had been brought in.

Their fists would pound against the door. Their voices demanded to be let out until they grew tired. And after all these weeks, I still didn’t know what Cooper is trying to achieve. Why make us suffer? Why take our abilities away to only keep us locked up in here. It made no sense. Killing us would be much quicker and we would be less of a drain on resources.

And if it isn’t bad enough, I’m watched while I shower. Humilliation at its finest.

The old gown is taken away, and a fresh one is given to me before I make my way back to my room, where a measly bowl of porridge would be waiting for me and the nurse would leave. I had thirty minutes to eat it until the next nurse would come and remove the bowl.

Everything here was kept plain. Plain food, plain white sheets, plain white gowns. Almost as if it were a way of telling us we don’t deserve anything more. They even gave me a hysterectomy.

I think that happened after my first week here. Something about not wanting me to spoil the sheets and gowns.

Bastards!

It was a prison and Coop had anointed himself as the man in charge.

I was a million miles away from the life I knew. The life that I had worked hard for.

Ironically, I would give my left arm just to be able to link my mother or even hear fucking Neah. I just need to hear another voice that wasn’t my own or Coopers or someone begging to be freed.

Grabbing the bowl of porridge, I place it on the floor and curl up in the bed. Starving would be a better option than this.

The lock on my door is slid back. I feel a rush of warm air as the door swings open.

“Why are you not eating?” Cooper demands. I don’t bother to look at him. “This is the third day. Do we need to hold you down and force feed you?”

“I am not hungry.”

“It’s not optional.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Impossible. Everything in that drip bag provides you with what you need to survive.”

“This is what you call surviving? Is

that a fucking joke? If I had it my way, I would just rip this fucking shit out, but you always appear before my heart even gets a chance to stop. My eyes flash up to the camera. If we all had cameras and albdid it at the same time, who would he go to first?

“It’s the punishment you deserve. Why should I let you die, Blair Everwood?”

“This is some fucking weird shit you are pulling.” mutter and turn over so I don’t have to look at him. “I’ve met some fuckers with God complexes over the years, but this, keeping people alive for your own enjoyment is fucked up.” S

“It’s a tiny amount of suffering compared to the destruction you have left behind. For example, your poor mother.”

I sit up and glare at him. “You have no right to talk about my mother.”

“She tried to help you and you repaid her by doing something awful.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“It turns out you caused her quite a lot of problems. You made her relive her horrible past because you couldn’t accept what was. You clung to this stupid idea of yours.”

“I deserve what is mine.” I growl and he laughs. A deep belly laugh

“Unfortunately, that is not how life

works. Maybe things would met

been different if your mother

raised such a brat. Maybe you could have even gotten to know Neah.”

“I’m done with this conversation.”