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My name is Dana.
They tell me I have been asleep for a long time. I don't remember going to sleep. I don't remember being asleep. But I'm awake now, so it must be true.
They tell me to write in this journal. I don't know what to say. I don't like how I write. It doesn't feel comfortable. My caretaker has beautiful handwriting. She says it's cursive, and I don't understand it. My handwriting is blocky and ugly and square, and it hurts my hand when I go too long.
I'm sleepy. I don't want to be sleepy. I've been asleep for a long time. My clothes are all pajamas and socks and fuzzy slippers. When I stand up, I feel dizzy. My caretaker tells me it's normal.
There's a dream. I don't remember my dreams, but I remember this one. A beautiful woman with long dark hair looks at me. I want to run, but I can't. I want to fight, but I can't. She waves her hand and says something.
"Be in my eyes. Be in me."
There's a smile on her face as she reaches for my neck. Something sharp and I fall. Then I wake up.
My caretaker goes walking with me. We're someplace cold, and they gave me sweaters and a coat, but I'm still in my soft fuzzy slippers, which get all wet from the grass. My caretaker called it "dew". I asked her how it got there, and she says she thinks she was told once in class, but can't remember.
I feel like running. Not away, over the fences and to the trees. Not at her, not at the gate, shattering it open so it won't stop me again. Not like that. I just want to run.
Again?
She wears this white sweater and boots with a spiky heel. There's a metal thing, like a buckle, that holds her hair out of her face. My bangs fall over my eyes sometimes, and I push them back, but I turn my head or the wind blows and they're right back.
She says it's important that I get sun. She says it's important that I get exercise.
I did a cartwheel. I don't remember how I knew what they were, or ever doing them before, but I felt like doing one, and I did one. Then I did a flip. I stuck the landing - that's the term, right? I was laughing, because it was play, but my caretaker, stood there with her hands in fists. Like this was a fight.
What did I do wrong? What's wrong with a cartwheel?
I have something now.
The caretaker has a nice pen that she wrote with. She would sit with me, writing in a notebook when I studied math. I would ask questions and she would answer, and write her solution when I couldn't figure it out. I had plastic pens that bent in my hands, after I complained that crayons were for children.
I know pencils exist. They must know. I don't ask for them and they don't offer any. So I do multiplication and division in pen. The ink bleeds through the pages, so I go through paper very fast. I come to the end of the pad and ask for more, and I grab her nice pen when she's distracted and stick it in my sock. When she gets back, I ask her why we have to memorize multiplication tables since we know how to multiply. She tries to give an answer, but she stumbles over it, like she just thought about it. Eventually she asks about her pen, and I say I haven't seen it, and she looks all over the place for it.
I look at it under the covers that night. Unlike the plastic pens they give me and the plastic knives and forks they give with the food, it is solid in my hands, and unlike the plastic pens with felt tips, this comes to a hard point.
It wasn't intended to be a weapon, but it'll do.
I think I noticed something.
The caretaker took me out for a walk and a long talk again today. She's been doing that a lot lately. She asks me questions. A lot of questions about how I'm feeling, a few questions about the math or the stories she has me read. I tell her I'm happy. I don't look at the gate.
The pen is in my sock, hidden by the flannel leg of my pajamas. I don't believe the caretaker would hurt me, but it feels right to be ready.
We come back in, and my feet are wet from the dew. I put the pen in my sleeve and take off my socks, throwing them in the hamper because the caretaker requests I keep my room neat. The socks in the sock drawer. I think they're all moved around.
I wake up and I'm still tired. My arms feel so heavy. It's hard to stand. It's hard to move my fingers to get dressed. Hard to eat breakfast. Hard to read the books. I don't feel like myself for hours. Later, when I'm alone, I check my hiding spot and the pen is gone.
I draw. I don't know what I'm drawing, but it comes from me. Blue and yellow and brown and black like shadow. That night, I skip dinner.
There's another dream. I'm in a tall building. The caretaker is next to me. "That's my knife," I say.
"You're about to get it back."
We fight. We fight hard. I say "I'm going to miss this", then it comes in. The caretaker stabs me, I'm in pain and I cry out when I wake up.
I smile and talk when talked to. I don't know what the caretaker wants me for, but I cannot let her. The dreams come when I close my eyes now, not just when I sleep. The building is on fire, I'm in control, there's an explosion and I die. The subway car is empty except for him and me, the lights go off as we switch circuits, I miss a move in the darkness and I die. I'm led into a cave by a child, I'm powerless to move, I'm bitten and fall into a pool and I drown. I am bound in chains and gagged, given as a gift to a monster, and I die.
I am in a mansion and the same monster is sick, dying. I see my face in the mirror before I bring his face to my neck, and waves of pleasure make my legs kick as I'm dying. I am the caretaker, and I and giving my life to save the monster.
I was the most beloved of the Kalderash, my life's blood given and taken as a gift, and she sides with him and cages me. I must kill her and find the monster.
Cap și inimă.
"She is … resting."
"You don't think 'doped to the gills and strapped to the bed' is a better description?"
"I am a master of understatement. Adrenal suppressors and beta blockers as well as the … 'dope', I suppose. That should make her … safer? Safe?"
"And I'm stocked up on the memory-clearing magic. Because that always works out for the best."
"Will–"
"I'll do it. It's my job, and I'll do it. I'm the do-that girl."
"Only here. Only to her."
"And that just makes everything feel all the better."
"Just to sound things out, a lot of the problems come with the actual, on top of the Potential. If we could strip away the add-ons and get down to the core unsolvable issues…?"
"I don't think so. Everything's so tied to everything else. Everything that happened to her, and … and everything we did. If I untie it from her, I don't know what else will come loose. Both within her and …"
"No. We'll start again. We'll get her through. We'll find a solution. I won't give up on her. Not this time."
"So, it is agreed. We will run through this again. We'll try to keep her happy and healthy as long as we can, and when … if it falls apart again, we'll reset and start over. It isn't the end of the world."
"No. I've done the end of the world. We've done it a few times. It's easier than this."
"Simpler, surely. The details diminish in the scale of apocalypse, but here, they are the difference between success and failure. Between life and … what she has now. Simpler, yes, but certainly not easier."
My name is Dana.
They tell me I have been asleep for a long time.
Right now look at me now
Look at me now
Just shadows
I'm just shadows of what I was-- Black Flag, "Damaged I"