[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]

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.