Tom's vital signs spiked as he lurched out of sleep.
He was in a reclining hospital bed, covered by a thin, white sheet that had soaked up so much sweat, it now clung to his skin. To his left was an IV drip that tapped into a large vein in his forearm; to his right was a monitor that was attached to a thimble on his middle finger. Its beeping lines stabilized as his mind grew clear.
There was an insatiable itch in his hands, but he couldn't scratch past the many layers of gauze that protected them. And, even without the aid of a mirror, he could tell that his face had been turned into one, big, sweltering bruise.
He tried to recall how he came to be in this situation, but was met with a pounding headache, so he gave up on that idea for the moment, and tried to meet his most immediate need.
He was thirsty.
His lips were shriveled, his throat parched, and the sweat that had evaporated on his forehead had caked into a dry crackle.
He fingered a button on the metallic frame of his bed. The usual hum echoed out, establishing a connection between his room and the nursing station.
"H-hi..." he croaked, "can I get some help? I need a cup of water."
A few minutes passed with nothing but static in the air.
"Hey! This isn't funny. I'm fucking dying of thirst over here!"
He used his teeth to strip away the folds of gauze that restricted his hands. When they came undone, he stretched to the side to grab the phone that lay on a nightstand. He accidentally knocked a vase that housed a bouquet of flowers as he clinched the screen between a pair of shaky fingers.
The vase shattered on the floor, leaking tepid water onto its scratched surface.
Tom ignored the mess and unlocked his phone with a T-shaped swipe. He then dialed the hospital's front desk, whose number he knew by heart. To his surprise, the call cut prematurely. A popup informed him that the caller network wasn't responding.
He switched to voice calls that used data, and tried a few more numbers, including his father's emergency office line and his mother's personal assistant. It was exactly 3:04 AM, but he fully expected to reach at least one of them.
When even the data network failed him – despite the five bars that represented a steady wifi stream – his agitation peaked.
He muttered under his breath, "The fuck is going on!?"
The headache that had plagued him earlier returned in full force, and with it, a slew of painful memories.
Tom shuddered as the events of the previous day tore into his mind. He caught glimpses of himself during a high school field trip. He was on an animal farm, at the foot of a massive barn, surrounded by a dozen, uniformed classmates. Their wide, mischievous smiles chilled him to the bone. Then he was crawling on his knees through a batch of mud, while they looked on and laughed.
A strange foreboding led him back to his phone. He opened up a video sharing app called Utube and scrolled through the most popular videos. The ninth item on the top ten list was a video entitled: "This little piggy went to the farm." The thumbnail depicted a frail teenager squirming in a pool of mud.
He trembled for a moment, and scrunched his face in irritation. The continual migraine made it difficult to parse his thoughts, so he grit his teeth and pressed play.
The screen was lit by scenes of a school trip. Hundreds of students stood in a broad, grassy field, frolicking under the hot afternoon sun. Their faces were censored, but the mark on their uniform made it perfectly clear which school they belonged to.
Some students stuck to the school guide, who prattled on about the technical developments of modern farming as he led them through a set of animal pens. The camera panned to a different scene, that showed a bunch of students riding a tractor. They mowed down fields of wheat, corn and millet, while howling in delight.
Trailing the rumbling machine was a skinny boy. His shoelaces were tied to the trunk, and his face bumped along as he was dragged forward. The tractor came to a stop in front of a sprawling barn.
Tom had managed to tear himself free of his shoes. The skin of his knees and elbows were scraped off, and his clothing was torn and lined with dirt. More classmates came into the picture, and helped him to his feet, as the group moved into the confines of the barn. There, they found a mud-filled pig sty. The boys and girls that had ridden the tractor earlier took the lead once again. They slid open the fencing and shoved Tom into the pen where he tripped and fell into the muck.
It was difficult to move about, so he ended up squirming in a layer of filth while a few pigs squealed in delight and came over to play with him. The sight of them eagerly rolling back and forth, hoping to catch Tom's attention, garnered a bout of laughter from everyone present.
Eventually, Tom righted himself and climbed out of the pig enclosure. Before he could find a means of escape, his classmates dragged him deeper into the barn, past rows of spotted cows that were being milked by overhanging pumps. At the far end, they came across a bull pen, occupied by a single dairy bull. It was humongous: nearly two meters tall when standing prone, and weighing over a ton.
Despite its enormity, the bull appeared rather docile. The high schoolers took turns tentatively patting its shoulders and stroking its muzzle.
At one point, someone yelled, "Hey Tom! Why don't you try milking it!?"
The group quickly took up the call and began to loudly chant, "Milk it! Milk it! Milk it!"
Tom was clearly terrified, and tried to dissuade them. "C'mon guys, you can't be serious? It's a bull, you know. It doesn't even have udders..."
His voice faltered as the cheering reached a fever pitch. "Milk it! Milk it! Milk it!"
The group of teenagers encircled him, and grabbed ahold of his bedraggled clothing. Quivering in fear, he closed his eyes and fought back, swinging his arms wildly. Some of the more rowdy members of the crowd were incensed by his actions.
"Damn this stupid pig!"
"What the heck do you think you're doing pig!?"
"Screw this little piggy!"
"I'm gonna teach this fucker a lesson!"
The struggle devolved into a fight, with Tom pummeled on all sides. The video came to an end shortly thereafter.
Tom lay back on his bed, breathing hard. The blue gown he wore underneath the flimsy sheet was now drenched in sweat. His back was clammy and his head swam with memories that were steeped in agony.
He had never felt more afraid in his life. The mere thought of going back to school filled him with unease.
A pinging sound returned him to the present moment. He flicked through a list of notifications on his phone and saw an email from his father as well as a voice recording from his mother.
He read the email first.
--
Hey son. I heard you're not doing too well at school. I know when things get rough, you probably feel like calling it quits. But like I said in my bestselling book: 'Getting to First Place', the only difference between whether you're a winner or a loser is not the actual defeat, but whether you choose to get up and keep fighting. Your situation might look bleak, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just a bump in the long road to success. I'm confident that if you adjust your thinking and persevere, you'll make it out ahead, with the pack trailing behind your inevitable victory.
--
Tom furrowed his brow in suspicion. He opened the browser on his phone and copied the block of text into the search bar. The first search result was a link to one of his father's more recent blog posts. It was the second article he had written over the course of the week and featured a response to a write-in comment, where a fan had disclosed his troubles with bullying at school. The body of the article and the words contained in the email his father sent him were nearly identical.
Tom bit his tongue in anger, and after closing his eyes for a moment to calm his turbulent heart, he turned up the volume of his phone and listened to his mother's voicemail.
Her voice poured forth, soft and sweet, reminding Tom of the honeyed pastries she used to bake him in his early childhood, before his parents' divorce.
"Hi dear! I saw the video on Utube. Oh my God! I can't believe something so terrible could happen to my only son! I'm literally crying as I record this. *Sniff* It was absolutely horrible what those naughty kids did to you! The first thing I'll do when I get back from my trip to Africa is find their parents and give them a piece of my mind! And I'll sue that lousy, rich kid's school into oblivion! And don't even think of revisiting that nightmare of a school... uh... whatever it's called. Your Dad and I talked about home schooling you a few times, and it would probably be for the best... I know you're hella tired of hearing this, since we haven't seen each other in awhile, but Mommy will visit you very soon! I've just been busy helping starving kids in Africa. I'm sure you can understand. They have Ebola here too! It's terrible really, you can't even imagine how bad it is. I think about you everyday dear, and if it wasn't for all this literally, life and death work, I'd be right there by your side. But don't worry, I'll be with you before you know it. Until then, keep it together, okay? By the way, I miss you so much! Don't forget that! Mwah! By then. Ciao..."
Once again, Tom's suspicions were aroused.
He looked for his mother's secret handle: 'BlondBunny86' in a profile search on the Snapgram app. The most recent post was a video his mother had shared about an hour ago. It pictured a sandy beach with gentle waves rolling in the distance. The hashtags were: '#watamubeach #surfingafrica #hot30sbod'. He tapped the image, which then filled the screen with a shaky video of a blond woman surfing on an ocean wave that gradually touched down on a warm, pebbly beach. She was whooping with joy, and high-fived a bunch of other surfers as she strutted around in a bikini.
Tom watched his mother throw up peace signs as she gathered with her friends for a group photo. The video ended there.
Amazingly, the deep seated fear he had nurtured only moments ago, had vanished, having been replaced by anger and self-loathing.
From Tom's point of view, he was the sort of person that wasn't even worth caring for. Nothing about his parent's lackluster attitude towards their own son came as a surprise to him.
He licked his lips, and realized that his thirst was on the verge of becoming unbearable. Absentmindedly, Tom slipped off the bed and walked to the door, leaving behind shards of broken pottery and a trail of bloody footprints.
He fumbled the door knob for a moment. It didn't budge, so he assumed it was locked. He then slammed his shoulder into it and shouted, "Hey! Is there anyone out there!? I'm stuck in the ward. I just need some water! Please... please help me."
Although the exertion was rather mild, it left him winded. He sat down with his back against the door, and gawked at the blood that was oozing out of his feet.
"The drugs they gave me," he thought, "must be pretty powerful. I can't feel a thing..." He loosened a clay shard from the heel of his foot and combed its edge with the tip of his thumb. "If I wanted to end this pathetic life of mine right now... who would stop me?"
As if in response to this morbid question, his phone pinged again.
It was another email, but this time the sender was named, 'Ah Wei'. He wondered why it had escaped his spam box, but still read the subject line curiously:
"Applications now open for a spirit automaton position in the Gray Gemel Clan."