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The door swung open and my kind “neighbour handed me my pills; I had been praying for that sweet release that the capsules provide. I was given them for my… issues and it’s as sweet as liquorice and you could never know such joys without having tried it.
As I got up from the dingy, unremarkable bed to the even sadder room of six beds lined up orderly. Contrasting with the disheveled sheets of each bed itself. I know the way around the schedule by now. It’s the same for every last one of us, even the doctors; get up at 6, dressed 30 minutes later after a wash and breakfast by 7, never changing in its predictability. The breakfasts in this home are questionable, nothing some more opium won’t fix.
By the time it felt like breakfast had only just begun, it was suddenly time for exercise. Not to say that I didn’t see it coming, it just came at me faster than it felt like it should have. The field’s ground is negligible and welched at the best of times. Either way working out time doesn’t last very long, and we get more small dose opium afterwards, the others first of the day and my second. I wouldn’t call it dependence just “higher needs” as the doctors say.
Next, the day has now reached 1PM, high time for some dried-out lettuce and maybe if we are lucky, very indigestible pastry, but food is food. Some work shall be done now. Today, laundry duty (like most things in this place, undesirable.). Today the piles upon piles of identical ill-fitting clothes are even worse in the sheer cluster of new ‘inmates’ as they call us. I oblige with this work not just for the justice of not being punished; but for the joy that certainly follows on afterwards. And that is what I do it for.
After work is done, I’d assume that it’s around 6:30 PM, however summers here aren’t usually dark by that time. At least, I thought it was summer. They don’t really leave clocks and calendars lying around, but the last time I checked in the office of Dr. Stanley, it was April 28th but I’ve assumed that enough time has passed to call this summer. The darkness is a telling sign as it echos through the half-forgotten water tower. That must be wrong and my judgement must have been off.
As a boss walked by the surgery facility he said, “what are you doing out of bed? you lunatic miscreant!” I hadn’t realised how long I had been in laundry; there was just so much of it. I quickly rushed off to my bed and took my last standardised dose of the day. Someone (likely ‘lost-in-her-world’ Lizzie) had spilt liquid onto my thin sheets, it doesn’t matter. Staying within the boxed-up rules are more essential to live than making a complaint which could give you a trip down to the comparatively retched and cruel basement space, even by this place's standards. That area is not friendly to those with a will left to break.
I stop these degrading thoughts as the high finally comes though delayed, I may finally get my rest. Good night,