because you're hapi -oneshot-

H a p i .

"My friends are degenerates
But I'd never change them
Liars, cheats, and hypocrites
Not the type for savin'"

You awaken in a cold sweat, sitting up and pressing the palms of your hands against your forehead.

You whimper, staring around the room as though at any moment the lights will come on to reveal you are still in a test chamber. But they don’t, and you aren’t. You are in the abyss, the tunnels underneath the Officer’s Academy. The place where broken toys and unruly animals are thrown away, discarded and ultimately, forgotten.

It is still better than the place you lived before.

You dig through the pile of treasure that surrounds your nest of rags and blankets and fish out the coin, biting down on it with your teeth. A metallic tang fills your mouth. Familiar and comforting. The coin is real, so your surroundings are too.

You breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes you aren’t sure if you are awake.

You are, and now it is time to get dressed.

The shorts you pull on were jeans once. You had to cut them after the knees wore out, and then you had to cut them again when you needed some fabric to burn. The shirt is a man’s shirt and a size too big, but it is comfortable. Beggars can’t be choosers, and you not even a beggar. You have more in common with the rats you sometimes catch for dinner. You put a bracelet on your right ankle. You treasure it. It was something you found in a gutter, but it is silver and it has three tiny beads on it.

It is yours. As is the headband. The headband is decorated with feathers and bits of shiny tinfoil. You added two rat skulls a few days ago as well. That almost empty bottle of glue you scavenged was a great find. Now if only you could find some more shampoo, your hair wouldn’t be so matted and wild. You sigh. You are dressed now. You haven’t any shoes. But that’s alright, you prefer to go barefoot anyway. You waltz out of your bedroom, slowly, taking measured steps and feeling the ground with your toes.

You hum quietly to yourself, trailing a hand along the concrete wall as you move up the passageway. It is a jingle you heard on a screen at some point. It makes you happy. Without thinking, you start to dance. It is simple, you let the tune in your head move you. A step forward with your arms outstretched.

Your head nods to your chest and then rolls back to look at the tunnel ceiling, the poorly maintained emergency lights lighting the way. You take another step, your arms folding in to cross your chest. You repeat this pattern for a while, moving closer and closer to the exit, occasionally throwing in a little spin.

You live for moments like this, when you can just be yourself in all your lonely glory. You reach the exit door. You touch the handle and then stick out your tongue, before turning on your heel and running all the way back to your room. It’s better to wait for one of the others to go with you than to leave by yourself.

You have forgotten more about society than you remember. You were eleven when they started experimenting on you. Now you are eighteen. Sometimes you say too much. At other times you don’t respond enough.

You are aware that you are not normal, but there is little you can do about it.

You are Hapi. And that is good enough for you.

Soon, your stomach rumbles. It had been awhile since the last time you ate. There is a stick of gum in your back pocket that you’ve been saving. You pull it out and unwrap it, chewing it slowly. It tastes like mint. “I wish I had an apple pie,” you remark to the emptiness. “Apple bapple oh crapple." You’ve just made yourself hungrier. “Fuck,” you whisper, before giggling. There’s no one here to reprimand you for cussing. No one to punish—

Oh no.

You whimper, flattening your back against the wall and slowly sinking to the ground, one arm around your knees and the other over your mouth. You’ve reminded yourself of what happened to subjects when they said things the lab coats didn’t like, and the pain that came with it. You rock back and forth for a minute.

the knives and the spears and the hammers and the cutting and the stabbing and the needles and the being pulled apart and the being put back together on a scale of one to ten how does this rate on your pain threshold prep the next subject for science its all for the betterment of twenty-three's skull has been fractured too many times let them go but hunt them down its for science you suffer 

You are not number twenty-eight. You are Hapi. That is the name they gave you when they found you.

You are Hapi, and you are not in the bad place anymore. No one here will hurt you.

Or at least they haven’t yet.

“I am Hapi,” you say to the emptiness. “And I’m okay now.”

You are not sure if that is a lie.

You think it might be.