[dream]

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

[warning for light torture elements]
[She's Cinderella, running down polished glass hallways. (She is also, at the same time, a rat.) A labyrinth, with walls stretching above her head, too thick to shatter. There's a goal, a reward, a way out somewhere, if she can just find it.

[The center: sunflower seeds (huge to a human, normal-sized to a rat), colored green and silver. She reaches for the reward.]

ZAP

[The shock is painful and from nowhere (or a hand on the dial in Milgram's experiment). She backs away, turns to try the maze again.]

ZAP

[She freezes, waiting for the pain to fade.]

ZAP

[It continues no matter what, and there's nothing to do. And now the maze is clear (her perspective is overhead, even as she's stuck below) and there is no exit, no reward, only endless glass walls, teasing offers of treats, and now the shocks.]

ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP

[She sags, sliding down the wall and pulling her knees to her chest, and tries to restrain the twitching of her muscles against the torture.]

Comments

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

I doubt it'd be significant.

It's... a maze. You have to run it.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

But the pain is stopping you.

[Which doesn't make any sense. Why put her in a maze if she wasn't allowed to find the way out?]

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Not... not just the pain.

I don't see the point anymore.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

The point?

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

There's no reward, no exit... you just run and hurt and die. I mean, maybe I could find something good, but... so far all I get is hurt.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

Then you have to make your own rewards. It's difficult, and painful, but you can't give up hope.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

With what? I'm not even being handed lemons here...

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

Yourself, how you see things, your will. [She shifts around, so she's kneeling in front of Jessica, keeping her tone gentle behind the words she says.] No one will hand you anything. You have to fight for it.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Never been a fighter.

ZAP

Not sure how to fight this kind of thing. It's like a lab rat trying to fight, you know?

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

You're smarter than a rat.

[Even though the idea of something like this being done to an animal upset her just as much as seeing it being done to Jessica.]

We have to find where it's coming from.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

So are researchers.

[She quirks a lip.] It's coming from inside me.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

What's causing it.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Living? Someone pressing a button? [She shrugs] What does it matter?

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

You find what's causing it, and you stop it. Take control for yourself.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

...I don't know if you've noticed, but open heart surgery isn't exactly a DIY endeavor.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

Your heart is not the cause. Your heart is the same as everyone else's.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have the necessary credentials to make that diagnosis.

And I'm not the same as everyone else. That's part of the problem.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

[She's quiet, for a moment, and draws back.]

You're determined to give up.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

[Her dress seems loose all of a sudden.]

I just... don't see any way to fight.

[...or else it's that she's getting smaller. Younger.]

It just hurts worse if you try to fight.

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

[She watches, not alarmed, had accepted the dreamscape a while ago.]

Fighting always does. It hurts because it tries to stop us, because of how important it is that we do it.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

But it's important. They gotta find out what's wrong with me, so they can fix it...

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with you, Jessica. There never has been.

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

Then why'm I different? How come nobody else has problems like I do?

[mellifluently.livejournal.com]

How do you know they don't?

[notvitiligo.livejournal.com]

[She gets a look of utter bafflement.] They've never seen anybody else with my condition. Nobody else sees things and hears things and- and runs into things and...

[sniffle] I just want to be okay.