Flip a coin, if it's heads you die in old age.
If it's tails, you die young.
hat's the best way to describe life, really.
A coin toss represents it well.
Our genetics, our parents, our home, and our opportunities are all decided by chance.
These factors then branch out into the rest of our lives.
Our genetics can be the difference between needing aid for our entire lives, or being a renowned genius who helps millions.
Our parents can be our first healthy relationship in life, or become a roadblock in our future growth as trauma.
Our home can be a symbol of security, a place of refuge.
Or it can be one of fear and foreboding, causing a myriad of trust issues.
You could be born a prodigy, one in a billion.
Your genius could be recognized, praised, supported, and you could become the best in your field, or you could become a topic of envy, and those meant to foster your growth could deliberately stifle it, leaving your potential wasted.
I imagine that before we existed we each flipped a billion coins to decide how our life would go.
I imagine the ratio of tails to heads for my life would look like this: 9-1 I consider it luckier to have died at birth.
The only thing less lucky would be if I was born with a defect that forced me to infinitely writhe in pain.
I was born… Not in a family. Not as a person, but as an experiment.
An experiment of sadists.
I thought my family was normal until the age of four.
It was this sentence that marked the end of my normal life, and the beginning of my current one.
"Wow, that looks yummy, can I have some?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you've done nothing to deserve it and you don't have the power to take it."
Take this sentence out of context, no matter how you see it, it's a message between enemies.
That day… was the first I didn't eat.
The day after that was the second.
They only fed me after I finally gave up.
After I realized that they didn't care for me, and neither did anyone else.
It was the first time I accepted death.
There was nowhere to go after all.
Nowhere to look except at my "family" who feasted while I starved.
I couldn't even steal, every time I tried I'd get a stern beating and a bizarre punishment that was far worse than not eating.
When I was four, I was locked in a spacious room further isolating me from humanity.
I didn't know an outside existed, I was raised in a laboratory after all.
White walls, locked doors, and the lingering scent of antiseptic.
Now, over a decade later I'm still being tortured by these people.
I've never felt sunlight, I've never eaten anything but water and a gray slop-like mesh of food that has all the nutrients I need to grow.
The only reason I know all of this is because they thought it would torment me more to know what I can never have.
They were right.
I'd be a lot happier if I thought this was the life everyone had to live.
If my pain wasn't a solitary one.
But instead, they taught me about the joys and the freedom of the real world.
They told me about the others who were dealt an unjust hand by fate similarly to me, and the cruelty humans show to each other.
I know about love, I understand hate, I've read history, learned math, all actions that have ultimately contributed to my misery.
Even the knowledge that my life is an experiment is meant to increment my pain.
To remind me that I exist only to suffer.
In spite of their faults, my tormentors are running a completely scientific experiment.
A controlled environment, controlled experiences, knowledge, everything.
It torments me knowing that every feeling, every thought I have is the product of someone else's orchestration.
I should be insane by now. I should've decided that hope is futile. But even so, who is fate to deter me from life?
Who says that my one and only life is only worth a few sadistic smiles and "the greater good" of science?
I hate this, I hate it so much! I was never given a chance, while some of those who were given one forsake it!
I live and grow in a room surrounded by one sided glass!
I don't see their faces, I can't remember having seen anyone real!
Anything real!
Who is fate to decide that just because my die landed on one I can't experience anything other than this?
I can't accept it.
I'll live a terrible life just because people want me to?
I'll rot away and curse existence just because I've been programmed to do that?
I hear a beeping sound, one I'm sure is the most wretched sound that exists. "Today we'll be wrapping this experiment up.
We're going to be testing to see if we can induce typically genetic-correlative mental illnesses on a youth whose ancestors do not have those illnesses.
I will ask you a series of questions, answer one correctly and you will not be hurt."
I hear the voice through a speaker.
Sometimes it's an adult male, sometimes a female. Rarely, a young girl.
Right now it's the male.
There's a few moments of silence.
"You look angry, what is the matter."
His voice is monotone.
So disaffected that it doesn't even sound like he's asking a question.
"I am angry, I don't want to live like this."
"As predicted, endure."
As predicted.
Nearly everything I do is foreseeable to them after all.
They're geniuses, someone normal like me could never outwit them.
As limited in resource and experience as I am.
At least that's what they'll think. I know that they don't know everything about me, despite knowing me better than I know myself.
They make me take countless tests, intelligence, physical, and dispositional.
They're constantly measuring my growth like I'm just a line on paper.
I'm sure people like them would have countless of other test subjects in order to increase the validity of their data, but I wasn't told such a thing.
I presume that even if my presumption is true, in their eyes that information is unnecessary for me to know.
Now, here's what anyone would be wondering. How do I survive?
How do I escape this impossible to survive situation without dying?
The answer is I don't. Any plan I make, they'll see coming as soon as I make it.
Any potential risk to my tormentors would cause an instant termination of the experiment; my life.
There is no way to get out of this where I win, There are only two foreseeable ways I can get out of here. One, I play straight into their hands and leave as a carcass, or two, I take a risk. I almost laugh, I've never been a lucky person.
I hear a strange sound that reminds me of running water.
"Question 1. What is our current geographical region."
What? I wasn't taught this so why would he ask me that?
"No answer means incorrect."
"Question 2, what is the cosign of 12."
My mind races to solve the problem, but it's one that would take far longer than a few seconds to complete.
The bottom of my feet feel cold and wet.
"Question 3…"
I stand up and stare downwards.
My ankles are covered in cold water, soaking my socks.
They're asking me questions I can't possibly answer, and as punishment filling my room with water.
They intend to drown me-no that would be too merciful.
They'll drown me over and over again until I get a question right.
"Question 4…" It's pointless to try and answer these questions, there has to be another way.
They probably already predicted this response in me, but I have to try anyway.
I look around the room for clues, for anything that can be used for anything.
There's nothing but white walls, a white ceiling, a white floor, and the faucets that are releasing the water.
I stare at them. They look too sturdy to tear off, and if I were to do that the water would likely just spew out faster.
"Question 7, what number am I thinking of."
"Seven."
"Question 8… "
Hopelessness.
That's what they want to see in me now.
They may be predicting me but I've learned to predict them as well.
The one thing that would set them off right now… Without taking a breath, I Duck my head under the water and leave my mouth open.
I wait 20 seconds without breathing then simulate the muscular spasms drowning people make and let a few bubbles float to the surface.
I let my muscles relax, despite the constant itch to flail and thrash my head above the water in order to breathe.
No, not an itch. An urge- no, a need I bite sides of my tongue as hard as I can without biting my tongue off.
The sounds of rushing water aren't quieting, and the maddening pulsating that comes with suffocation is only getting worse as time goes on.
Breathe.
No, If I breathe, I'll die.
Breathe.
If I Bob my head out from the water, I'll drown anyway later.
Breathe. I jerk my head upwards and my lungs move on their own. Like a heartbeat, they beg for air until I'm unable to suppress them.
I take a deep breath but my urge to breathe isn't satisfied at all. Instead I feel the horrid feeling of liquid rushing into my lungs, destroying my insides like a tidal wave.
True pain. The pain of death. My muscles loosen, and any fight I had left in me dies. The only thing left… emptiness.