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Bright lights. Unnaturally bright. White, blinding, headache-inducing lights. The kind that hum insistently while they’re on, like small gnats whispering in your ear, except you can kill gnats. When you kill the lights, people come in and shoot you with tiny darts and when you wake up, the lights are back.
Hard floors, the kind that make your feet hurt. The walls are just as solid, and no matter how much bashing against them you do, they never give. They never so much as chip. White, white like the lights, reflecting back into your eyes, and making your endless headache worse.
Empty. Empty rooms. Empty halls, when you’re allowed to walk through them. People in white jackets, with white masks, white gloves. It’s all white. It’s an endless void, of endless halls. An endless cage.
The creature paced in its cage within the cage, the room it was not allowed to leave anymore. With its white walls, and white lights, and white bed sheets, and red, red blood, staining the floor and its claws and its sides.
There is no escape from the cage, it has learned. You can charge the door and bite their heads off and run and run and run, and before long you will find yourself waking up in your bloodstained room again. There is nothing but pacing the white room and its white walls and waiting, waiting for the white man to come and give you food that while either sustain you or make you blurry until tomorrow.
It’s awful, and that’s all there was anymore. There are no more trees, or deer, or apples, or snails. There was nothing to make anyone happy, and least of all the creature.
The sounds of feet coming down the hall faded into the creature’s range of hearing. The creature continued pacing, because there was nothing to do but pace. The door swung open, and the creature continued pacing, because there was nothing to do but pace. There was nothing to do but pace.
“Hello, again,” the white man said, in his white jacket, in his white mask, in his white gloves. “Healing well?”
The creature did not respond. It had learned that speaking did not help the situation within the first few days, and it had not tried since then. Its voice was too loud for their tastes, too much of a growl when they wanted a purr. They did not try to understand, they merely reprimanded what they couldn’t comprehend.
The man reached to touch the creature’s forehead. The creature snarled, almost on instinct, and in reply, equally as instinctive, the man pressed a button in his pocket.
Agony ripped through the creature, emanating from its collar, the collar they put around its neck to keep it small, and docile, and trapped. The creature snarled, louder, and the man held the button firmly. It’s a nearly daily battle, at this point, one the creature never won.
The creature laid down, front legs clawing at its face, anything to make the humming go away, the lights go away, the pain go away.
“Better,” the white man said, as he pressed his hand to the creature’s head firmly, where yesterday’s scars were still healing. The creature hissed, but didn’t snap, didn’t reach to kill the white man. There was no point.
The creature had only ever managed to attack the white man once, and it had been for nothing. Despite the damage the creature was sure it had done, the white man had returned, placidly ordering other people into the creature’s cage until it had learned not to fight anymore. No matter how many people the creature killed, another person took their place, over and over again, until the creature gave up.
So there was no point in tearing the white man’s arm off for touching the creature’s wounds. The creature settled for glaring up at the man, rage simmering within it until it could barely think.
The man crouched down, bringing his face level to the creature’s. He watched the creature carefully, and the creature watched back, its tail lashing, breathing heavily.
“You’re so full of anger, aren’t you?” the white man said. “So much hatred balled up in such a small creature.”
The creature wanted to scream. It was not small. It could topple this entire building if they would let it out of this stupid collar. Even now, it was large enough to tower over the white man, if it stood properly. It let out the faintest of growls, a warning, but the white man silenced even that with a flick of his button.
The man tilted his head, and then gestured at the mirror. The mirror, the creature had come to understand, had someone else on the other side of it, that could see the creature even though the creature could not see them. The creature hated the mirror.
The door opened again, and in came a person in white with a blue mask, carrying a bowl of food. A bowl. The creature despised the way they treated it. Like it was a dog, content to eat off of the floor. The creature turned its head away from them.
The white man and the blue faced person left. Left the creature alone with its disgusting gruel. It would not eat. It would get in trouble for not eating. They would shoot something at it, and it would wake up groggy and starving in a way that made it forget anything else but food, and it would eat then, and it would become angry.
But right now, it was tired. Too tired to eat.
It wrapped its tail tightly around itself, covering its eyes, trying to block out the humming, and the brightness, and the endless white nothing that surrounded it.
-
The girl padded through the halls, her arm trailing along the right hand wall as she turns, peering into every window she can. Most of them were tinted, or had shutters over them, but she hardly minded. She was used to being quite along in this white, endless nothing. Besides, she found that, more often than not, the rooms beyond the windows held things she didn’t want to see.
Her wings flapped slightly behind her, still far too small to be of any real use, despite their rapid growth. They ached with how fast they expanded, leaving her sore more often than not. Feathers trailed from her wrist back to where her wings started, itchy and poking, particularly where her thin white shirt met her skin.
She looked into the next window, and then gasped softly. It was gorgeous, whatever it was.
Carefully, she tried the door handle. The light above it flicked green. She poked her head inside, looking at the creature in front of her.
It was about the size of a lion, perhaps, although she had only hazy memories of what a lion’s size might be. It was certainly maned, like a lion would be, although its fur was curly, and blue. Its ear flicked up at the sound of the door opening, but it didn’t move beyond that, just gave a deep sigh.
The girl stepped into the room, hesitating as she held the door open. Most of these doors were locked from the inside. She dug in her pocket with her free hand, pulling out the small pencil she had been permitted to keep, and stuck it in between the door and the wall. When she was sure it would stay, she let go of the door and approached the creature slowly.
“Hello, there,” she said, tilting her head, trying to see the creature’s face. The creature didn’t move.
She sat down five feet from its head. “I’m Abby. Are you new here?”
The creature shifted, turning its head towards her, and then scrunching its nose up. It sat up, slowly, like it wasn’t sure it was allowed to. It stared at Abby, eyes wide, boring into her. She smiled brightly up at it.
It flicked its tail, staring down at her.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you new here?”
The creature didn’t respond.
“Oh, no, can you not speak?” Abby frowned, forehead creasing. “Usually they can speak. Hm… Well, what if I—”
“I can speak.”
“Oh!” Abby straightened up. “Excellent. That makes things easier!” Abby clasped her hands together and smiled. She stood and paced a circle around the animal. “Do you have a name?”
“Hate.”
“Hate?” Abby said. “Like… the emotion?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… kind of intense, don’tcha think?” Abby said. “Wouldn’t you like a nicer name?”
“That’s what the white man calls me,” the creature said, its voice all growls and static. It turned its head to watch Abby pace.
“Oh, gross, don’t let a white guy name you. He calls me the Vulture, no matter how many times I tell him it’s Abigail, thank you very much, and actually I think my feathers are much more like a raven’s.” Abby flapped her wings slightly, showing them off. She was proud of them, despite everything. They gave her something to cling to, some idea of flying away, once she got the chance.
“I don’t mind the name,” the creature said.
“I’m not calling you Hate, you’re too cuties for that.”
The creature scrunched its nose up. “I’m not… cuties.” Its voice fell closer to Abby’s with ever word, sounding almost human as it went on.
“Sure, you are!” Abby said, reaching her hands up and scrunching them at the creature’s face without touching. “You’re a widdle cutie patootie!”
The creature’s tail lashed. “I will bite you if you say that again.”
Abby smiled, despite the creature’s serious tone. “Alright, fine. But you’re really quite cute.”
The creature considered for a moment. “I don’t mind them calling me Hate. It’s just a name.”
“Names have power, haven’t you ever met a fairy?” Abby scolded playfully.
“No.”
“I was jok— Y’know what? Never mind.” Abby considered for a moment. “Hayte?”
“Yes?”
“No, no, as a name.”
“That’s already my name.”
“Yeah, but it’s cuter if I put a Y in it. Here, I’ll show you. Does this door look from the inside?” Abby asked, walking back to the door.
“I don’t know.”
Abby picked the pencil up, pushing the door open. “Hold this open, then.”
The creature obliged.
Abby carefully wrote HAYTE on the wall, and then showed the creature. “How’s that?”
The creature examined the writing. “I don’t understand why that’s different.”
“It just is, okay? I’ll call you Hayte.”
“But not Hate.”
Abby shook her head vehemently. “Never Hate.”
The creature looked at Abby for a long moment. “Alright,” Hayte said.
-
The lights continued to be unnaturally bright, and there continued to be an unnatural hum, and the floors continued to make the its feet hurt, and it continued to think of home with a never-ending longing, and there continued to be no escape from the white cage, but Hayte had come to learn that within the cage there were moment of peace.
They were not good moments, exactly, nor were they always the most enjoyable, but the times between the white man’s visits was often measured in days, and Abby was more than eager to show Hayte around.
She had done something to her own cage, months ago, that made the lock faulty. She showed Hayte that no matter how firmly the door was pressed closed, no matter how brightly red the light shined, the door would open easily for her.
“Really, the only person who cares is Dr. Ghostface. The rest of the staff ignores me as long as I stay in the inner halls.”
“Ghostface,” Hayte repeated.
“Yeah, like the movie. Y’ever seen Scream?” Abby asked, opening and closing her door once more, just to be sure.
“I have seen many people scream in the forest.”
Abby turned. “Nooooo, the movie. You know about movies?”
Abby had come to learn that Hayte knew even less about the outside world than she did, despite living it for longer than she had even been alive.
Hayte squinted for a moment. While it thought, it practiced the shape that Abby had seemed so delighted by the first time she had seen it, a small four-limbed creature, with large ears and a short tail. “I don’t know.”
“Moving pictures,” Abby said, explaining while she drew on the walls again. “They usually tell a story of some kind. Scream is a horror movie, with, like, killing and shit.”
Hayte considers this for a moment. “People enjoy movies?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes a movie sucks ass, though, and people don’t like it.”
“Does Scream suck ass?” Hayte asked.
Abby laughs. “Uhh, not the first one. I know they made more, but I never saw ‘em. The first one’s funny.”
“A movie about killing people is funny?”
“A little bit.”
Hayte considered this for a moment, and then turned humanoid, wrapping its tail around its own wrist and squeezing softly. “Killing people was not funny to me.”
Abby glanced at Hayte. “Well, yeah, the killing wasn’t the funny part, it was the stuff that happened around it.”
Hayte looked at Abby’s face and tried to mirror the way her nose turned up at the end onto its own face. “The stuff that happened around it?”
Abby admired her latest drawing of the white man dying, next to the last 48 she had done. She wrote DAY 49 OF WISHING YOU WOULD KILL YOURSELF above the noose, and then turned back to Hayte. “It’s like that in real life, though, too, y’know. Bad stuff happens, and you move forward, and find something to laugh about again.”
Hayte matched its hair to Abby’s, straight, short, blue hair that was cut at weird angles. “I don’t think there is anything to laugh about now.”
Abby grinned. “Well, first of all, we can laugh at how ridiculous you look with my haircut on you. Go back to the curls, they were cutie. Second of all,” Abby turned back to her wall of art, “we can laugh at Goth Einstein for a bit, if you want.”
“The white man does not make me want to laugh.”
Abby sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Me either, really, but… I mean, you gotta make your own joy, somehow, don’tcha? How else are we gonna get through it all?”
“We won’t,” Hayte said. “There’s just the cage, and nothing else.”
Abby trailed over to a different wall, away from her drawings of the white man dying in various ways, to where she kept her drawings of things she liked, like bugs, and trees, and characters from movies, and the nurse she used to know, and lately, Hayte. “’Course we will. We gotta.”
“How would we leave this place?” Hayte asked.
“I don’t know, yet. I’m workin’ on it.”
“We won’t,” Hayte repeated. “We can’t.”
“We will. And when we do, we’re gonna watch a movie together, and you’re gonna eat your words.”
“A movie about killing people?” Hayte asked, making a face.
Abby looked back. She hesitated for a second, then shook her head. “Something else, I think.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, okay? Once we get there, we’ll know.”
“We won’t get there.”
“Hayte,” Abby said, standing and sighing. “We will. I decided.”
“You can’t just decide that.”
“Well, I did!” Abby snapped, eyes blazing. “I decided, and you’re gonna come with me, whether you like it or not! We’re getting out of here if I have to burn the place down.”
Hayte tilted its head and looked at her. It believed her.
-
The visits of the white man remained largely the same, although since meeting Abby, they seemed more bearable. Hayte maintained that this was nonsense, that the visits were just as uncomfortable and infuriating as they were the first time, and Abby maintained that it was easier to live when you knew you had no other choice.
Most days, there was nothing to talk about, and so Abby and Hayte sat in silence, or walked through the halls. As it turned out, not a single staff member would risk Hayte’s wrath so long as it stayed in the experiment hallways, and didn’t try to escape or maul anyone. Its world grew from the white cage, now including the white walks that Abby insisted on taking with it, saying they were good for the brain.
Abby taught Hayte how to draw, which was difficult because Hayte broke her first pencil, and Hayte taught Abby how to hunt, which was difficult because there was not a single critter roaming the building besides the two of them. There was an easy sort of rhythm that they fell into, spending the days together.
The lights were still too bright, although Abby showed Hayte how to break just a couple, so that the staff would wait longer to replace them. The floors were still too hard, although Abby pointed out the nicest staff member who would bring blankets for Abby in the winter, who brought Hayte a large dog bed to lay on. The cage around Hayte slowly became softer, despite the never-ending longing for home.
And on one of their daily walks, Abby peered into all of the windows again, just in case there was someone new. There hardly ever was, and Hayte avoided looking itself, just in case it was something terrible inside again.
“Hayte,” Abby whispered. Hayte stopped at the turn they usually took, looking back at her, stopped ten feet back.
“Abby,” it said.
“There’s someone in there.”
Hayte padded back to the window, peering in.
“A person, I think. They don’t even look… like us, y’know?” she said, her breath fogging up the window.
The person laid on the ground, staring at the ceiling. Hayte tilted its head, and then slowly it sat down, watching.
“What do you thinks wrong with ‘em?” Abby asked. The person flinched, and then sat up, turned towards the window.
Hayte blinked, thinking of a person wandering into its forest, yelling at the top of their lungs for a creature, a creature that could kill them.
“I can hear you, jackass,” he snapped. Abby took a step back, sucking in a deep breath.
Hayte leaned into the glass, so close its forehead brushed against the cool surface. A name came to mind, one said so quickly it had barely registered it before.
“Sol.”