Centipedes

// dehumanization, eugenics, government abuse, real fears, bad end

You look at your hands and see writhing, bifurcating feelers. The room is swimming, voices distant and muddied. Your mother is saying something, you can’t make it out. You force air into your lungs. The officer is talking. 

“I’m afraid the test results are quite conclusive.”

You stare at your hands, your whole body is cold and still, gone to a distant and peaceful place far beyond the fear.

“I thought this was just a routine,” your mother says to the officer.

“Normally it is, but these results…” the woman trails off with an audible frown.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong–” your mother starts to say, but the officer holds up a hand.

“She hasn’t done anything yet, but these results indicate that she has an intrinsically predatory nature which makes her a danger to others, you have other children in your home…”

The words don’t mean anything. They can’t mean anything. What are they even saying? You’re just a girl, you cry when you accidentally crush bugs, this can’t be real can it? You aren’t a monster right? You look at your hands and see crawling centipedes instead of fingers.

“…will be taken somewhere away from populations she’s likely to put at risk,” the officer is telling your crying mother as you swim back into awareness from that distant place. 

“Will we ever see her again?”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t allow that.” The answer is soft, kind, firm.

The act lasts until the front door shuts on your house. You’re then ripped out of the dissociative fog as they grab your hair, handcuff you, and shove you into the caged rear of a nondescript government van. Cold, hate filled eyes sneer down at you before the door slams shut.

You’re bounced around the unsecured rear of the vehicle for several hours. They were definitely intentionally hitting every pothole, doing everything they could to batter you against the wire mesh and leave you bruised and dazed. Your teeth smacks the cage and you black out.

They’re dragging you out of the van as you come to. The bright sun shines overhead. Trees stretch upwards around you. The woman who consoled your mother spits in your face.

“Perverted piece of shit,” she kicks you, “Get up.”

When it takes you too long to respond, you’re dragged to your feet by the hair and shoved forward down a rough dirt path. The air is clean, birds are singing. They hurry you down the trail towards the edge of the treeline. You hear waves.

The edge of the cliff looms up ahead of you. Dozens of feet of jagged rocks and crashing seas. The perfect place to dispose of a body. They don’t give you a chance to panic before the ground is already tilting away from you.

The ground and sky spin end over end, colors blur and time stretches out infinitely as your remaining life trunctates down to seconds. They hated you. Why did they hate you so much? You see fire, and darkness, and a million crawling centipedes. There’s rain, and love, and an impa

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