Flash Fiction Winner Hanna DePoy - 10th Grade

Off My Axis

The world spun again, like my mind was its axis and my eyes were the twin suns giving light to the

sane people who still roamed freely around the globe. The cool glass that separated the world from me was never warm and never just clear. No matter which window I gazed through there were always little diamonds of thin metal laced through the panes of glass. It kind of upsetted me but my therapist never wanted to know about that kind of stuff. She just nodded, crossed her fingers my brain would heal itself, and gave me new drugs. She wasn't the best, but she was the only one who would agree to meet with me, even though everyone says otherwise, I saw a paper that reminded me that I was a threat to other's mental security. Geez I'm pretty messed up then since I'm the worst of the worst, that always make me giggle, and I guess that scared some people.


I missed the real world, the commotion and chaos, but most of all, the never ending noise. It was far too quiet in my world now, I always had noise in my life and I somehow would find a beat and dance or rap if I wanted. I reached up and stroked the smooth scar tissue where my ears used to reside before the incident, but I really don't remember what happened. No matter what anyone tries to make me remember, nothing ever works, but why does anyone want to know? I was just an average Jane Doe and then I was something to be looked at and poked or prodded whenever someone wanted. I wonder how bad someone would feel if they really knew what happened to me. All too soon I was consumed by a spell cast by the wicked witch called my brain and I remembered it all.


Somehow I was back in the dank dungeon called a lab by some weird professor, strapped down to a cold metal table with huge inch thick leather bands that Hulk may have been able to break free from, but not me. My mad scientist had a proud face with salt and pepper hair and bushy eyebrows that make her kind of look like Einstein but she wouldn't look right without them. She was tall for a woman, but had an obvious limp like one of her legs had to be dragged around.


"You ready to be the next best creation of Mankind than Wifi?" she once asked with an accent I couldn't place but shook my head anyway. "Too bad honey bunches! You are gong to be wether you want it or not."


She took my head and rolled it to the side viciously and stabbed a thick needle into my jugular and I was barely conscious as I saw her pick up her scalpel and rip into my ribcage like a bloodthirsty maniac. It was weird seeing your blood spill, and feeling all the pain, but not being able to move to stop it or scream for help. The world went dark as I focused on the woman's crazy grinning face as she carved another line.


I resurfaced later shivering and wincing as I felt my rib cage and then realized I was in freezing cold water. I started to choke as I screamed and inhaled the water I was surrounded in. Instead of suffering and feeling my lungs reject the substance, it welcomed it and I began to breather normally, while surrounded by water. My ribs moved to the flow of the circulating water and when I looked down at the cuts in my sides, they bristled and continued breathing for me. I was a human and I now had gills. Like a fish. My ears popped and I felt so much pain, but I didn't know why. I was pulled out of my tank then and shot up again before the shooting pain of switching to air could allow me to scream for help, the world was dark before I could breathe without pain.


I woke later, back in my tank with my gills doing their thing while I floated, this time the water was so cold that I couldn't feel the chill on my ears. I reached up to rub a little warmth into them and they were no longer there, just my smooth bumps that covered the once open canals.


Gills, I could hide, but how do you explain why you don't have ears? I floated there in my tank until the mad scientist let me out to check if I could still breathe air. I was placed in my holding cell and the shooting pains begun again as I changed from fish to human being. The scientist looked pleased with herself and stalked over like a predator to my cage as I lied on my back and cried as my lungs inflated.


"Well don't you look--."


I was ripped back to the present so quickly that my sides ache like I was just pulled out of the tank in real life. A pair of overly bright car lights swaying past my window. Bright lights always blinded me at night when my lights already were turned off, not by me though I would keep them on all the time to show the world I was still here, just a little off my axis.


My therapist is in my room now, she looks worried and scared, I reached out and took her cold hand in my warm ones and looked her in the eye. And said my first words to her rather than signing like I have for two whole years--another perk of being deaf.


"It's going to be okay, no need to be scared of the newest Frankenstein on the street. you want to know my favorite quote of Mary Shelley's?"


She barely managed to nod.


"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."


My mind couldn't handle a great and sudden change, so it broke. I hoped I didn't just break my therapist's because she just ran out of my room, leaving the door open, which they aren't allowed to do at the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Especially not with me.


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Minor formatting. Story appears as submitted by the author, unedited.