It was cold. My skinny limbs looked frail and overwhelmed as the hospital gown-like garment I wore pooled around me. It provided little warm, and, catching the flashing glimpses of myself in the mirror-plated walls I was ushered past, I looked small and filthy. I was one of many. All of us in Compound B were herded in one large line, down the narrow corridors of the Institute. Where we were headed this time, we didn't know, but didn't care.
Hair in snarls and greasy tangles down our backs, left unseen to, we looked bedraggled. Skin dull, and coloured with whichever chemicals had most recently assaulted our immune systems, we barely seemed human. We were grey, and blended perfectly with the despondent building.
I'd often, huddled in the corner of my grey cell, imagined a life outside of the Institute. A life where I hadn't been 'donated' to science. Where my parents, whoever they were, had cared enough to keep me. Where I didn't dread waking up every day, because there'd be another syringe full of the latest experiment to pierce my skin. Where I wasn't what I was now: an empty shell of a human.
Sometimes, I imagined, too. It was dangerous, imagining. If anyone found out about my imagining, I'd be out. Out. Because we were all replaceable. Disposable.
I was disposable.
~H
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