literature

The Final Straw

Deviation Actions

openmeadow's avatar
By
Published:
135 Views

Literature Text

Jason Rathen almost ignored the gentle taping on his office door,  thinking that the sound originated from further down the hall, but the hesitant sound came a second time, only slightly more audible. Rathen stood and opened the door to be greeted by the person that he least expected and most hoped to see.  "Hello, Jessie!"

Jessie nodded, worrying her lower lip in thinly veiled distress. "I... I'm sorry about practice, earlier," she said, rapidly forcing the words out. 

"Why don't you come in," Rathen suggested, gesturing towards the other chair in his prop- and book-stuffed office, "and we can talk about what happened earlier this afternoon, if you'd like."

 The suggestion was more of a mild order, but Jessie either didn't notice, or ignored it as she nodded and gingerly perched on the edge of the offered chair, grasping her books against her chest. 

Professor Rathen took his time in mostly closing the door, and resettling a stack of papers that had been disturbed in his movements.  "Do you want to tell me, or do I need to ask?" Rathen asked, his tone gentle, but clearly reasserting his authority as professor and director. "I know the last couple of days have been harder for you, for whatever reason, but what happened this afternoon.... "

"I didn't mean for it to happen," Jessie cut in, half-defensively, "I... I thought about things after, and I know I shouldn't have left like that, but it was just too much, too fast, and I didn't know what to do."

"So you did what made sense at the time; getting away," Rathen said somewhat dryly

A thread of anger laced Jessie's words, but it was obvious that that anger was directed at herself. "I didn't want to, not initially. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could at least make it to the end of the scene. I probably screwed everything up for everyone else, didn't I? I didn't want to."

"They worked it out," Rathen reassured her before diving back into the previous question, not willing to let her slip around the root of the problem. "What's really going on, Jessie? We both know that it's not like you to lose control of your character when you're on stage. Something outside of practice is affecting your performance."

Jessie ducked her head, fiddling with the bent corner on her textbook, avoiding making eye contact with Rathen. "I had a rough time before practice started today."

"Yes, I know. You've had a rough time before, earlier this week even. What kind of rough time do you mean?" When Jessie showed no sign of responding, Rathen pushed further, searching for any kind of answer from the suddenly silent student in front of him.  "Is it your other coursework?"

"Classes... they're alright." Jessie said finally, seizing the safe ground that he had offered in the question. "It's finals next week."

"So it is."

"I've got a five different projects due this weekend; and finals to study for," Jessie explained after the silence grew to be uncomfortable, but offered no further comment.

"That would be a heavy load of homework," Professor Rathen agreed. "You know that I will always do whatever I can to help you." Rathen leaned forward in his seat slightly, watching her body language closely, hoping to read enough of her clues to figure out the true root of the load that she was clearly being crushed under, while making it clear that he was willing to listen to whatever she had to say.  "Is it just your coursework that's stressing you?"

Jessie half-started to shake her head, but turned it into a nod at the last moment, pressing her lips together in a hard line. 

"That wasn't much of an answer there," Professor Rathen said with a faint teasing grin, meant to coax her into explaining more on her own will. "Is everything alright between you and Adam?"

"No," Jessie muttered, pointedly not making eye contact. 

"Mind telling me what's going on?"

"We fought, this morning."   At her words, Rathen mentally pounced on the admission, half-suspecting that this was a minor part of the problem, in some way or another. Outwardly though, he merely nodded, silently encouraging her to continue. "He's convinced that he's doing something more then what we're being told."

Rathen's blink of confusion was an honest reaction. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused. Who's this 'he' that Adam's worried about?"

"Phillips," Jessie replied, only half aware of the name before it slipped out, along with the explanation that Rathen had hoped she'd provide without more prompting. "Adam doesn't trust him anymore, and I don't know what to do if we can't trust him. I don't know who I can trust, anymore, if that's the case."

"Whoa, Easy there, Jessie," Rathen said, raising a placating hand. "You just about lost me there. What you're saying is that you and Adam argued over whether you could trust this Phillips person?"

"Yeah," Jessie replied as the acting professor watched her emotionally curl back up around herself protectively. "I'm ... I'm scared."

Rathen stiffened slightly at her response, carefully choosing his next words. "Jessie, you know that you can always tell me, or any of the other staff if you're being harassed or threatened by anyone, right?"

"It's not that," Jessie replied immediately.

"Jessie, as your professor, and adviser, I am required not to say anything of this conversation unless you give me express permission to," Rathen said, closing his office's door with a resolute click of the latch. "Anything you have to say, or have said, will be kept in complete confidence unless you allow me to help you." 

Jessie nodded minutely, picking at the corner of her textbook again as Rathen mentally debated on how to phrase his next question. "Are you being threatened or harassed in any form?" he asked, hoping that the blunt question would prompt a more clear answer.

"No."

At that, Rathen repressed a heavy sigh, knowing that the action would only hinder his efforts at getting to the bottom of the true problem.  "Is there something else that you and Adam disagreed over?"

Jessie hesitated, but finally nodded.

"And what was that?"

"He.... he doesn't want me to go in for treatment unless it's really bad." Jessie replied. "He doesn't like how awful things have gotten for me, even when I tell him that it's all experimental, and some things just don't work."

"What kind of treatment are we talking about here?" Rathen asked, curiously, his mind bouncing back to the one other time that she had even mentioned treatment of any kind.

Jessie looked at him, daring to make eye contact for the first time since knocking on his door, "It's to help me recover after the Centre."

Her acting professor and advisor took a deep breath, suspecting that he was finally on the edge of discovering the root as he looked her in the eyes. "Jessie, what is the Centre?" 

He watched as she took a deep breath, evidently trying to keep herself under control. "It's... it's where I grew up," she said, staring at the far corner of his office. "It's the only place that I knew, the only place that anyone of us remembered until we were rescued."

"What happened there, at the Centre? I can see that it's affected you greatly, whatever it was."

Professor Rathen watched as her entire body stiffened at the question. Clearly, this was something that she had not dared to speak of before, and even now, wasn't fully committed to divulging. "Jessie, you need to tell me what happened there, so I can help you," he pressed, leaning forward.

"The Doctor was... " Jessie said, drawing a shuddering breath that Rathen could tell was clearly on the leading edge of the tears. "He was experimenting on us." The words came rapidly, suddenly tumbling out over each other. "On all of us, all of the kids there, that's all that we knew!" The words came in a broken torrent as she  grasped her textbooks to her chest; hard enough, Rathen suspected,  to leave a bruise. "It was supposed to be better, once we were rescued, and started; once we started our new lives. I don't want to think that Phillips isn't actually helping us. I can't even... I don't know what to do. There's too much going on, and I.. I don't know what to trust anymore, or how to keep hiding all of this."  

Rathen nodded, thinking rapidly as he tried to determine what the best approach would be, but Jessie kept going, openly crying now as the whole story began to spill out. "I lived there for years, knowing nothing but pain and terror, knowing that everyone else looked up to me, and that I had to be there for them, no matter what happened. I couldn't shield them from the horrors of that place, but I could help them through. It was the only thing to do, and likely the only nice thing that ever happened to any of them. The Boxes. I... I don't even want to know that they were doing with the boxes."

Jessie's adviser unconsciously reached out to rest a hand on her knee in comfort, but thought better of it in an moment as she visibly flinched.  Her next words confirmed an unspoken suspicion that wove it's way through his rapidly churning mind. Whatever she had endured before enrolling at the college had made her wary of any close contact.

"They were screwed into our bodies, we were made one with them, in a world of pain and hurt that always followed after we woke up. Do you know how long it took for me to learn how to walk normally again?"

Before Rathen had a chance to respond to the question that was only half rhetorical, Jessie plowed on, clearly unable to stop the torrent of emotions that had finally found their release. 

"My entire body had to be retrained for even the simplest things, because I learned to live with the wretched thing. It was the only way of life that we knew. I can't go back there. I can't let myself think that I have to face that again, I'd rather die then go back to that life, if I knew that it would keep the others safe. They told us that the Doctor's in jail now, that we're safe, but I can't help but think. What if he's not? What if it's just a lie, meant to keep us calm and complacent? Nobody knows what it's like to live with that fear, with the thought that we might just be living in a dream, and will wake up back there." 

Reeling, Rathen could only look on in barely hidden horror as she continued. Her gaze was firmly locked on his face to the point where it was painful for him to look as he sat back, shocked by the story that she had painted for him. From the disgust that she directed at herself and the inward hunching of her shoulders, it was clear that she needed his reassurances, but the story that she had finally spilled had sapped any comforting words from his mind. 

"You all wonder why I'm so different, why I'm not like you," Jessie continued, once again staring off into the cluttered corner of Rathen's office. "This is why. I never had a childhood. I grew up in the Centre, and remembered nothing of my family, or my parents, or my friends until months after we were rescued. I  still spend every waking minute fighting myself and body, trying to pretend that I'm normal and that nothing's ever been wrong."

As she spoke, Rathen watched Jessie take a shuddering breath, clearly exhausted and still frustrated with herself for so openly losing control. "I'm tired of it all. I can't sleep because the new treatment's not working, and I'm falling behind in homework because I can't sleep. I... I just don't know. I don't know what to do, and I'm tired of it." 
Revisiting the Center, in earnest.
© 2013 - 2024 openmeadow
Comments1
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Incoreus's avatar
I really like it :) Besides some minor grammatical errors it's very well written. I'm able to paint a picture of the scene which is exactly what you want done in any piece of literature :) Good job! Very emotional.