Okay, so I gave in. Sue me. The bottle on the floor – the one the psychologist lady put there – wasn’t super interesting. There was a label on it, sure, but guess what they did? Some smart fucker went over all the important words in a black Sharpie, or something like that, so all I could see was ‘take three orally’. How wonderful and definitely not shady whatsoever.

It didn’t even say if I should take them with water, or food, or whatever. Or if I’m not meant to take them before operating heavy machinery! Not that it would be that important whether I did or didn’t operate any machinery of any sort while on this weird unknown medication, considering I doubt they’ll let me near anything of the sort, but still. The courtesy would have been nice. I have a right to know these things.

At least, I thought I did. Rights and all that don’t seem to mean much here. I’m pretty sure I don’t have much of a right to privacy anymore. I don’t have a right to eat food that isn’t completely bland and tasteless, and pretty formless too. I still don’t have a right to any clothes that aren’t sweat-stained and stinking, or the right to a shower. I have a mirror, but I don’t know if that’s a right. My head’s all woozy.

Oh yeah, I took the pills. I don’t know if I mentioned that properly, so I’ll say it here. Three of them, which was pretty easy to count out because there were only three in the whole damn bottle. They weren’t small, though. They were the sort that I wanted to snap in half to make them go down easier, considering I don’t have any water – probably also a right – in here, and the slop hadn’t been delivered yet. To be fair, they didn’t taste horrible, not like some pills that dissolve before you have a chance to swallow them and then leave you with that horrible taste on your tongue for an hour. They just tasted like… nothing, I guess.

My head’s gone a bit fuzzy since I took them, so I’m already considering it as a bad idea, but it’s done now. I’ve just been lying down since then, listening out for Helen or the psychologist. That’s all my life is now. Waiting. Listening. Hoping that some of the footsteps outside in the corridor actually come up to my door, but they haven’t so far today. I’d prefer anything to this – any sort of work. Some menial job, like I probably had before they threw me in here.

Shelf stacking. Now, that sounds familiar. If I push the words around in my head, it almost feels like they’re shoving bits and pieces around in my brain, trying to make them become loose. Shelf stacking. Was that what I did? I can imagine myself in a supermarket, getting lost in the aisles, wearing some monocolour uniform, shuffling away if someone asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer to while vaguely gesturing in the other direction. Mopping up some kid’s sick in the toy aisle.

Mopping up some kid’s sick in the toy aisle.

A Memory?

Alright, it’s vague, but it’s here. Bright lights, pretty much exactly the same as in this room-cell-thing. Long, strip lights, which are pretty industrial looking, and a floor that’s got a weird dot pattern that’s never quite symmetrical or pattern-like. It’s random, but it catches your eye and makes you think that it’s in some sort of order, until you realise that you’ve been staring at it for ten minutes and it’s been lying to you.

A supermarket. It was a supermarket. A big one, not a tiny little petrol station deal. So many aisles – every one of them a long, never-ending, open corridor to get lost in. Some obnoxious voice was speaking over the radio and annoying me, because I actually liked the song that was playing – for once. I could barely tell what the words were, anyway. They all sounded like different forms of static – different static words, pushed into each other to become static nonsense.

I turned a corner, and I saw the kid before I saw the pool of sick under him. Queasy-faced, you could tell. Too pale by a mile, too small by a metre and too teary-eyed by a litre for my liking. No parent in sight. Some fluffy animal was caught in its grubby little hands, half-doused in the vomit that it had gotten all over the place. Some of it had splattered on the colourful display to its side, containing other poor stuffed animals, now probably wishing they could move their limbs and hold their noses, or hop away in a long line of cuddly nausea.

I didn’t have a mop with me. It was the first thought I had when I saw the scene, along with a strong sensation of utter disgust. The smell hadn’t hit me yet, but it did when I walked closer, trying to smile at the child. Trying to help, in some way. There was no accompanying parent with it, which was both a blessing and a curse – I didn’t think I could deal with a sick child and an enraged adult, who would, in all likelihood, blame me for the incident somehow. Or expect me to show up with a mop at the ready, as if I was psychic. Being psychic would’ve helped a lot in this situation, to be fair.

But there was no mop, no parent and not much I could do without abandoning the kid. Someone else would show up, hopefully. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I was just smiling, and reaching down to try and take the stuffed animal off the kid. It was a bunny, the long ears dipped in… ugh, the thought makes me feel about as sick as the kid probably felt. The tags were still attached to the little blue cardigan it had on, also half-covered in… yeah, that was a disgusting sight.

I reached down to take it, and then… that’s it. Fuck. The rest of the memory is gone.