ferrum viggo ✫ D6 ✫ fin!

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down...
Jack fell down?
Jack fell down, down, down.

He tried to escape. He wanted to go. He was on a search for a land far, far away. He’d made it under the fence once before. There was a short out on the power circuit, one well-disguised as an accident, a 10 minute break in the electricity to the fence that was just enough for him to get under, look around, and get back into District 6. He was a genius, unstoppable, a hero. A knight in shining armour, a fairytale prince. He was your brother and he was full of promises. He had never broken them before. When he promised you cake for dinner, you always got it, and when he promised that he’d take you away, you were sure he would. After all, he couldn’t lie, not the Golden Boy.

But he did, oh, he did. He lied and broke your heart. He said it would be okay, didn’t he? He said that it would all be okay, that the power wouldn’t come back on for another ten minutes when he tried again. He almost made it, he would have made it, but the chain that hung around his throat got caught on the fence. You watched. Your stare didn’t waver until it was all done, until the blinding sparks turned into little flashed, into stardust and the smell of charred flesh, burning hair, a boy who couldn’t be mended.

Anyone could have seen it, could have heard it. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t quiet. Even if it had been a little whimper to the universe’s bang, everyone would have known by the next day. He became a symbol, your poor brother, the one who just wanted to find somewhere else, somewhere better. He was a whisper and a shout, a shot in the dark. The escapist became a terrorist as the Peacekeepers told his tale, the story of the boy who tried and the boy who died. He’s nothing but a memory now, another reason to be afraid.

But you didn’t know any of that. You only knew to scream.

Down the rabbit hole…

They caught you, of course they did. You were sobbing and shaking, a broken child on the dusty ground. They saw you and they saw him, and they knew what had happened. They knew that you had to be punished, but how? How do you further destroy someone so small, so weak, so brittle already? How could they break you down without building you back up? An easy target is no fun, there’s no sport in killing a mouse with a broken foot. They wanted a game, and you would be a short play, just one roll of weighted dice. They knew that they had the odds on their side.

Besides, what did you have to keep you there, what reason would make you want to stay if they hit you, flogged you, left you bleeding out for all to see? The crowds had watched before, had watched kids even younger than you. Not that you remembered your age, not after seeing your brother burn out like a firecracker. (You heard them mumble though, heard the numbers that floated around your head. Hypothesis, all wrong, and then someone who knew you, who called out "That’s the Viggo girl. Seven since June." Then it was nods all around, even though no one else had ever heard your name.) You were too young to use, to turn into a plaything, to sell to the night and the wolves. The orphanage couldn’t feed another mouth, especially when it didn’t want to be fed.

So what did they do?

Your brother had run away to Wonderland, had fallen all the way into the kingdom of cards. He left you with these men, the ones with the pills that went one by one down your throat, lining up and washing down with bitter juice. One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter. They took your body away, led you down the yellow brick road, carried you away in a glass coffin. Seven little dwarves and their sleeping princess, all off on an adventure.

And broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after/

Do you know where you woke up, sweet little girl? Oh, you poor, poor darling, you beautiful, broken thing. What happened to your mind? What did they do? Do you know? Do they know? The greatest fear is the unknown. We want to know everything, every. Last. Thing. So how can you scare the masses without causing a rebellion?

Why, you take them away.

One.
By.
One.

You were the start, or maybe the finish, or maybe the middle and the beginning and the end. Maybe you were the whole story. You don’t know, can’t remember past the flashes of dreams that make you wake with a jolt. A glimpse of a white ceiling, or maybe a doctor’s mask. They weren’t doctors. Doctors are healers. They’re meant to help you. They comb away your silvery-gold hair and kiss the flushed apples of your cheeks, they hush you when the plump bow of your limp starts to quiver. These people didn’t want to help you, they wanted to turn you into something new.

You were a puzzle to them, a question. How do you fix her? How can you make a broken doll whole again? When you break a mirror, no matter what you do, you can still see the cracks. But you weren’t a mirror, my darling. You weren’t anything. Just an empty shell, and when you broke open, all of the light came through. They pumped you full of chemicals, rewired your brain. You’re so lucky that you don’t know, that you can’t remember. So lucky that when they tried to fit the shards together a little tighter and paint over the imperfections they did so from the very beginning.

So this is your mind now, your life. You get to think in stories, in once upon a time. It’s such a lovely life, to be storybook character, to work in fairy tales instead of textbooks. You're immortal now, fairytale girl, this is how you'll always see. In magic and goblins and soaring beasts, in faraway lands and wandering weeks. You got away, and he escaped, right? That was all you wanted to do. You wanted to find something more, something different. Don’t you feel so much better now? Aren’t you so glad that you got what you wanted?

"Careful what you wish for" is a stupid thing to say, don’t you think? Aren’t you so, so glad that you paid the price for freedom?

Ha.

I didn’t think so.

At least when they put you back together, they made sure you would never want for anything ever again.