Jade had submitted her request for information immediately, but her delivery came over a day later. At that point she was almost ready to jump out of her skin in anticipation and ran to check the slot every time she heard a noise. But she hadn’t had much time in the living room alone because Olivia was camped out there on the first day and Zoe and Ethan kept hovering around the doorways the rest of the time.
She hadn’t really been interested in socializing, so she turned her attention to her a big project, the one she had conceived before discovering the strange little package hidden above the ceiling tile. It had taken a little work to gather enough supplies for a mural, but she figured the watchers would provide if she ran out. Unless they didn’t like the idea of her painting all over her bedroom walls. But what should it matter to them. From what little she knew about her reasons, she’d paid quite a lot of money to be there according to the contract. So they could repaint the wall later if they didn’t like it.
Allowing her mind to wander as she let her paintbrush flow over the walls, she began to paint, mixing colors and forming shapes with no regard to the greater plan. She made her art by pure instinct, doing everything she could to prevent her conscious mind from getting in the way of her subconscious genius. The experience of letting go like that was like a natural high and she found hours passing without her noticing until her stomach growled or her bladder reminded her that she hadn’t stopped for a bathroom break in a long time. A few of her nest-mates, as she’d taken to calling them, had dropped by while she worked, regarding the growing mural with skeptical expressions, but she didn’t even acknowledge their presence. Many people had trouble understanding art.
She became aware of herself in the middle of the night when she ran out of red paint. Sighing in frustration, she pushed hair out of her face with no regard to the paint on her fingers and took a step back from her masterpiece. The mural was abstract and ominous, dark shadows and shapes teeming in the edges like monsters hiding in a cave-like shape with only a few glimmers of eyes shining in the darkness to mark their presence. But above this, a colorful wash like a sunset sky, vibrant reds and oranges eventually giving way to purples and blues, but this darkness was nothing like the shadowy mountains below. The warm glow of circles like stars floated in the heavens and made the darkness warm.
Nodding in satisfaction at what she had created, she set her brush aside and stretched with a yawn, realizing quickly now that she had broken the flow of creation that her back was killing her and her hand was twisted up like a claw from holding the paint brush for so long.
She wandered out into the living room, her stomach rumbling to life and trying to get her attention now that she was aware of her body again. The clock said it was 2am and she noticed that all the other bedroom doors were shut tight, only a lamp on the table in the living room casting any light in the room. Yawning again, she crossed the room to the kitchen and yelped when she heard a chime echo in the quiet space. Her brain was still lagging behind her stomach, so she didn’t immediately recognize the sound. Then she saw a light flicker to life out of the corner of her eye and turned to look. The correspondence slot was lit.
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Stunned, she looked around even though she knew everyone else was asleep and approached the door with creaky knees stiff from so many hours standing in awkward positions. She had expected to find an envelope inside so she was surprised when she found a file folder instead. Pulling it out, she recognized her name printed on the tab in big block letters with a chill.
She sat down on the nearest chair and took a deep breath before flipping the folder open. The first thing she recognized was her image looking up from her from a mugshot photo. It was attached to a form that listed her personal characteristics and identification. And criminal record. Eyes widening as she scanned down the page, her jaw dropped open when she realized the record continued onto a second page. Pickpocketing, petty theft, grand larceny and even a bank robbery. She was wanted in several states.
Dragging her attention away from the file, she looked up without focusing on anything in particular, schooling her breathing into a more normal pace. And then the thought solidified in her mind: she was a criminal.
She was a criminal.
Jade had never been one to react normally to anything, and while the initial shock paralyzed her, now her quirky sense of humor was asserting itself as a defensive mechanism and she found herself laughing out loud. Remembering that it was the middle of the night, she stifled the laughter as best she could, but the giggles were almost painful to hold in.
What the actual fuck?
Of all of the possible explanations, finding out she was a wanted criminal who had wiped her memory and locked herself in a prison of her own free will simply to escape an actual prison had certainly not been on the list. She didn’t know what to do with this information. While she had the sense that she was rebellious by nature, she couldn’t imagine herself robbing anyone. She wanted to rewrite the laws to make a better society, not break them for her own personal gratification.
But how could she know what might have influenced her life? What circumstances had shaped her into the type of person who wanted more than she had so badly that she would rob a bank to get it? Or was it the thrill of the crimes that had drawn her in more than the result? She could see herself being a bit of a thrill-seeker and daredevil. Maybe she had fallen in with a bad crowd and gotten sucked into the mayhem after they normalized their criminal behavior for her.
She studied the file for an hour, pouring over every scant detail of her criminal history with a morbid interest. The file was shockingly brief despite the length of her rap sheet, but she suspected that she had been given only enough information to make her decision—or the institute only had an abbreviated version of her file. After reading every word several times over, she had expected some piece of it to resonate, but it felt as foreign to her after her final reading as it had at her first glimpse. She simply couldn’t internalize the information as being truly connected to her.
Finally closing the folder, she walked back to her room and closed the door, shoving the file between the mattress and boxsprings. Sitting down on the white bed, she looked up at the wall she had painted and couldn’t help seeing the dark mountains and the creatures within as the demons within herself that she had forgotten.
