You wake to the sound of a door creaking open. Getting up from you're white mattress, clutching your neck, breathing in the clean air. You look towards the windows, gazing at the night sky as light pours into your room along with a familiar man.
"You alright? Not having a nightmare, I hope." You stay silent.
"Well, get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow ." You don't look forward to it.
"We have some questions for you once you feel like talking." You don't want to talk.
"Good night, mister." You could only hope for one.
Once the man left, you slept with one eye open, it was expected back then, now it felt tedious as you sank into you're surprisingly comfortable blanket. You don't know who these people are, but they treat you nicely, so they must be there to help, you think to yourself. You quickly remember how that line of thinking led last time and tighten you're grip on the mattress. But no matter how much you tried to force your eyes shut, you just couldn't get that feeling out of your head.
It felt nice, staying silent for once. It was so quiet here, no music in the dead of night, no guards smoking and chatting right after beating the entire floor to sleep. You felt….alive? Like you had a choice in something, you wanted to choose after all, you wanted to live a simple, boring life because you knew what anything else would bring. Most importantly, you felt proud. Proud you didn't have to beg for you're life another day in that whiny, disgusting, embarrassing, deplorable voice, imitating the cries of the animals people in the other cells. The ones the guards stay alive for the longest.
You looked to the right, seeing the plastic knife the man brought with an uneaten bowl of fruit.
You don't want to talk anymore.
You wake to the sound of…birds? chirping, the sight of the morning sun shining into your eyes through the window. You look to the clock next to you, "10:21." You feel a deep dread in your stomach; you don't know when you were supposed to wake up. As you nervously look around the room, you feel something tugging on you're hair. It's a bandage, you rip it off and cover the clock, barely managing to get your feet off the mattress before the tube attached to you pulls you towards the ground. The door bangs over as the thud of you're impact resonates.
"Hello, mister, are you alright?" a young blonde nurse blurts out, rushing to help you back on the bed.
You look to you're right, and see the IV bag slowly dangling next to you as harsh fluorescent lighting stabs into your eyes.
Oh, right, you slit you're own throat last night. It felt so easy to forget, you've been feeling so loose and clear of mind ever since. I guess there's no point in trying to answer her then.
"Hello there, sir, I'm Jenny. Since you've mostly recovered, I'd like to ask you some questions, if that's alright."
You motion towards you're throat, confusedly trying to get the point across. The nurse then takes a piece of paper from a nearby cabinet and a pencil from her pocket.
"We're aware of your….. condition at the moment and are working on a solution. You may use these to communicate until then."
You give a slight nod.
"Great, let's start with you're name."
You start scribbling on the page, the pencil feels almost foreign. You pass it back to the nurse once you're done.
"W-what is this?"
You give a confused look, shrugging you're shoulders.
"Is this you're name?"
You nod as if it were obvious.
"Do you know how to write this in English?"
You shake you're head, you knew how to speak "English" but you never learned to read or write it, perhaps you did learn and just forgot.
"I'll be right back. Stay here."
The nurse left the room, coming back in a few minutes with a sheet of paper with various symbols on it.
"This is the English alphabet, could you translate you're name to this?"
The symbols looked familiar at least, and you related some sounds & concepts with them from way back when, they were the ones the voice taught you. Slowly, you pointed towards "D" "M" "I" "T" "R" "I" checking back to you're own writing to make sure you didn't miss anything, there were some parts you couldn't wrap you're head around yet but she seemed satisfied for now, so you didn't bother.
"Dmitri, Yes? That's a great name, and I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to tell us."
You weren't quite sure how comfortable you should be.
"Now then, could you tell us where you're from?"
You didn't know where you were from, but you tried to remember the sensation of home, managing to dig up a memory, writing "Cold" on the paper.
The nurse pulls out a phone and starts typing, holding a finger almost as if to ask you to wait. After a short while, she shows you some pictures of various places, deserts, badlands, and jungles, along with the names of various countries, sounding them out. None of them are familiar except for what she said was "Iraq". You weren't from there, you knew that, but some other people you met in the cells talked of it.
"Are you sure 'cold' is all you remember from home?"
You nod, a little frustrated.
"Very well, we can revisit that later. This is a bit more of a personal question, Mr. Dmitri, but do you believe in god?"
You look around, scared, looking for any religious imagery or idols, writing "do you?" back to reassure yourself of any doubt, They are going to kill you it's fine Say no they're not out to get you Remember when you told them about the dreams? You can only hope for more merciful captors.
"I do, Mr. Dmitri, I'm an orthodox Christian, but I assure you, Mr. Dmitri, you're answer won't change anything; we won't judge."
With one last gulp, you slowly scrape the pencil across the paper, slightly damp from you're sweat, managing to write "الإسلام". You don't exactly know what it means, but remember the feelings you associated with it, "family," "love," "me".
"Ah, muslim, I see, alright then, I think that's enough for now, as you seem stressed. I'll bring you breakfast in a bit. Do you want anything in particular?"
You crack a slight smile, nod, and write "fruit bowl." The nurse smiles back and takes off to bring breakfast, handing you a phone with the alphabet right before.
By lunch time at noon, you felt you were recovered enough to walk and wanted a nice view while eating, so you asked if you could see outside, and the staff brought you to a public park. Of course, you had supervision, but at least nobody looked like a prisoner. You decided to sit on a bench and just watch the happenings around you, the man from before sitting uncomfortably close.
It was pleasant, the sun was bright yet didn't burn the skin, the noise felt visceral, and yet nobody cried out, the scenery was planned but felt natural. You even cracked a smile at a bystander playing fetch with his dog when he threw its toy to the back of someone's head.
"You like the view, kid?" the man said. He clearly wanted to talk to you. You felt it was unnecessarily desperate, but decided to play along since you recently managed to get a hold of the phone & its text-to-speech function.
"It's a nice view."
"I know, right? Nothing beats a good summer breeze!… Well, perhaps an actual beating might."
You don't respond.
"Nice nails too, pretty cool."
You look at your fingers, noticing you're nails were a grey, metallic colour, tapping them to make sure of the prosthetics.
"Don't they grow back?"
"They do in a couple of months, but we didn't have proper materials for the procedure at the time, so we went with metal."
"Okay." You typed out unsurely.
"Say, kid…why did ya do it? I mean, you could've waited for us to torture you at least once, right?" The man said, quickly realizing the implications of his words up to this point, yet feeling way too embarrassed to correct himself right after.
"Was that a joke?"
"Yeah, sorry, just tryin to lighten the mood. Anyway, I think I should tell you more about who we are, doubt you've gotten a briefing."
"Here?"
"Beh, who cares?"
"Okay."
"Well, basically, we're the Horizon Initiative, a group made up of members of the three Abrahamic faiths. You know what those are, right?"
"Jenny told me."
"Oooh, the nurse, right? Say, do you like her or what?" he spouted, elbowing you're shoulder.
"No".
"Bummer, anyway, we deal with supernatural stuff like holy artifacts & possessed shit."
"Like me."
"Yeah…I guess you don't know much of yourself in that regard, I assume?"
"A little." You think about telling him about the woman & the dreams, yet you take you're hands off the phone and decide against it for now.
"Well, you're a saint sent by god, one of 35 others that have the power to heal the world."
"How?"
"Well, you make that supernatural stuff stop being supernatural."
"I thought I was sent by god, why would I destroy his holy artefacts?"
"You don't, the definition of "anomalous" is various across the world, but using you're saintly siblings as reference, we've pretty much got it down."
"Tell me then."
"Right, well there's alot of sciency bullshit around it but to put it simply, anomalous is anything magical, demonic, and things that don't follow physics and stuff."
"How are demons, anomalous?"
"Well, we aren't sure if the saints' disintragrating demons on sight is a result of their power or the nature of the saints themselves, but it doesn't matter to us either way."
"What about ghosts? Are they real?"
"How do you know what a ghost is? Nevertheless, if it's like a lost soul, it disappears, you can't poof jinns out of existence tho, just remove any magic they could've done."
"Anything else?"
"They all have some visions or general knowledge about the others." So they already knew, you don't know how to feel about that.
You finish the rest of you're lunch in silence, heading back to your room with some reading material the man gave you. If only he had given his name along with it.
