[ CHAPTER 5: VENNA AND TOBY ]

Now, there are no more individual spirits.
Each one of us, all around us, every spirit and light and soul we were born with, was mutilated. Abolished. Eliminated.
Our eyes used to hold so much stories. So much life, so much existence, so much depth that reflected us down to the darkest corners of our hearts. Our smiles, showing so much emotion, so much richness that was held in each of us.

Now, that light is gone.
Now, our eyes are dulled and faded; stony walls of absence that can no longer be broken. Faces that hold nothing but expressions that aren't genuine, features that are no longer our own.
Everywhere I turn, I am greeted with what seems like dead lightbulbs, each and every one of us. No longer holding any essence, any substance, any spirit to show how human we truly are.
Now, I feel as if I am the only spark left; a feeble candle's flame that struggles to burn and glow and illuminate what truly lays in front of our very eyes, but we are blind to by the darkness.

But this girl was not like others.
Her eyes were not dulled, or faded, or armored to the outside world. Her face was not one of holding no emotion, her smile not one of fake depth within her.
This girl was unlike anything I've ever seen.
No, no.
This girl's eyes were dead.
Pools of eternal darkness, spheres of glass, reflecting everything she witnessed away from herself.
Orbs unable to register, unable to experience, unable to see anymore.
This girl's face was twisted into eternal despair, shaded from her hair hanging so limply to her shoulders. Her lips were pressed tightly together, as if sewn to one another with a string and needle. Her shoulders, curled in on themselves, hunched over as if she was trying to shield her very existence from the outside world.

It was when she looked at me, with those darkened glass orbs reflecting my own face, that I noticed that she had ever so pale freckles sprinkled across her nose.
For a while, we simply stared at one another, breathing.
The only sound that hummed through the strangling silence that echoed within the walls of the white, white room we were in.
I stared at this empty shell of a girl, this dead being that walked on two legs, my lips slightly parted in awe.

And then, another sound.
It's metallic hue ricocheted off of the otherwise echoing silent room; a single sentence.
"Welcome, Venna Gennerelli. Please step inside."
The short message had a twinge of irony within it, just because this girl had already stepped inside.

For one small eternity that seemed to stretch beyond our comprehension, the girl known as Venna and I stared what seemed to be into each other's souls, hidden so far down.
This girl fascinated me. The way she stared at me, eyes shaded, face hooded; it was as if I was staring into a mirror of my own, intelligent face. A small, darkened corner of my frozen over spirit was scared of the girl who looked at me like a reflection - never in my life have I ever found myself staring headfirst at a living, breathing human being, exactly like me.

She opened her mouth; I could practically see the the strings that held her lips so tightly together, straining as they stretched, as if they would snap in half and her words trapped for so long would finally be freed.
"What is your date?"
It took me a solid five seconds to realize that she was moving her sewn lips to speak.
Her voice was like a wisp; like a breath of a breeze. I could hardly hear it, floating across the room like a gentle feather.
It was then when I realized she had spoken not only to make sound, but to speak to me.

Even then, I found my face twisting into one of cautious deprivation of emotion. Why would she ask me such a question? What was the purpose?
She seemed to sense my radiating wall of displeasure at her sudden acknowledgement of my existence within the room, as her dark, captivating eyes lowered from my own.
It nearly felt as if I had broken the surface of water and took a large, gulping breath, once she had broken the eye contact that bound us together.
What surprised me was that she kept talking in that rasped, ancient voice. "Mine was January 23rd."

Her eyes would not meet mine.
Still, I did not speak to her. I didn't see a point to reply.
What would I have said? I'm so sorry that you're trapped in this hellhole with me? I'm sorry that this world is horrendously misshapen into a place that no man would have possibly imagined existed? I'm sorry you exist?
So I kept my jaws tightly clenched together, my fingernails digging harshly into my palms as my fists curled against my sides.
But as much as I willed myself to turn away from the girl with the name of Venna, to close my eyes and leave her in her void of eternal darkness, I somehow could tear my gaze away from the living mystery.

To my surprise once more, she looked up to meet my gaze once more. Her shadowed, burning eyes seemed to sear through my own, as if she was staring directly into the spirit that was withheld from her within me.
"It's a sensitive subject," she murmured, her spearing gaze unmoving from mine. "For you, clearly. You would have told me if it was otherwise."

I was taken aback.
My thoughts whirled. How could she have known?
Venna seemed to be far much more than I had imagined - she clearly wasn't just an empty shell to discard. She could see deeper, feel deeper, think deeper than anyone I had ever met.
Perhaps that's why you're here with me.
"Perhaps," She said, her voice sounding as if it was coming from far, far away, even with her standing a few feet away from me. "If we are here for any purpose at all."
My first instinct screamed at me that the girl I was locked in a room with was a mind reader.
It took me a few seconds to realize that it  was not she who was a mind reader, but it was I who had spoken aloud.

Finally, finally, I turned away from this girl who had me struck in awe. I found myself facing another blank wall in absolute uselessness.
I felt like an idiot.
Instead, I looked down upon myself to see what on earth I could have been wearing. It was the first time for my entire conscious our that I had realized that I definitely couldn't have been wearing the same pajamas I had worn when they had taken me.
Whomever they were.
I seemed to be wearing a uniform of sorts; a one-pieced uniform, as white as the walls. There seemed to be no detail to it whatsoever, which piqued to me as odd.

I found my right hand almost at once drifting to my left forearm, instinctively brushing my fingers across the skin where my expiration date lay, now covered in strange elastic cloth.
I found myself chewing my lip once more, my middle and index fingers gently tracing the now-invisible date, almost as if it gave me comfort.
My hand snapped away, laying rigid at my side again.

"Why won't you talk to me?"
I stared at the wall so intensely that I was surprised that it didn't burst into flames before my very eyes. I wondered how long it would take for this girl to give up.
"You're afraid of this place, aren't you? You're afraid of your death. Right?"
My muscles tensed; my entire body turned dangerously rigid. I felt a furious scream begin rising in the back of my throat. It took all my remaining energy and willpower to force it back into my lungs from where it emitted.
"I don't know you." I said, without thinking. "I don't want to know you."
I clenched my jaws shut once more, not once caring of how I spoke rudely.

"You don't have to know me to speak to me, stranger."
Her words were so quiet they were barely a breath, drifting across the air and barely into my ear.
Something deep within my gut seemed to wrench, as if her words threw my whole body off-kilter. I swallowed hard, willing myself not to respond to her words, though they were tempting.
She continued speaking, her voice traveling softly around the room as if she were a gentle leaf drifting across an unseen breeze. "You must wonder where you are, how you ended up here, and why."

Pause.
"Perhaps concerned. Worried. Scared, to some extent."
Each sentence seemed to be a small, subtle question, as if she was delicately prodding into me. Willing me to answer, to speak; as if she was afraid to be alone.
Without realizing it, I turned my head to gaze at Venna once more, only to realize that she wasn't where she stood before.
For a sudden, adrenalized moment, I thought I was alone in the room; I whipped around instinctively, only to lay my eyes across her thin frame once more, sitting lightly upon one pale coffin. One hand rested delicately in her lap, the other fluttering over the surface beneath her, gentle as a butterfly.

"Why do you want to know these things about me?" I said quietly, the words slipping off my tongue before I could resist the urge to speak. "We seem to be in a very white, very bare prison cell in what appears to be an underground facility. Most people would be hysterically panicking, or crying, at the least."
I inhaled softly, willing myself to speak again, before I realized that I was about to utter the words that I asked myself so many times before.
What's wrong with you?

I hesitated.
Venna seemed to sense it; as if I had sent a mental message across the still air of the room, a tiny electronic spark that she had piqued at.
"I suppose I am just not like most people," She said quietly, dark eyes searching my face. "You hesitated. Why?"
This girl was like a soft-spoken, powerful river. I could hardly register one sentence she spoke of before she produced another. My tired, overridden brain could hardly understand her.
I stared at her for a good long time before realizing that she had said that she wasn't like most people.
As if she had plucked the very thought from the inner walls of my immense mind.
I suddenly found myself to be frightened of this girl, as she was so much like me it was as if we came from the same mother.

A tiny, flickering emotion peeped up, from somewhere deep within my cold chest. An emotion, tinny and fleeting; the ever so quiet voice of desperate hope.
But it was doused quickly, like a pathetic ember tossed into the sea. No matter how much I held onto the useless concept of hopefulness, there would be no way that this girl would have been my sister.
I almost found myself becoming angry at my own, uncontrolled deflation.
"Not like most people," I found myself murmuring softly under my breath. "I hesitated for reasons you would not know of."
I turned away. I couldn't look at this girl who made emotion rise within me. It was dangerous. Uncharted, unrefined, unknown. I hated it.

    I was met with silence.
I set my jaw, my gaze held firmly upon the polished floor, as if it held the answers to the reason of life. I refused to look at Venna, sitting so quietly, just a bit away from me.
And then; she spoke again.
"You are very formal, unknown person. More formal than they taught us in school. Why? Is it just your personality?" Pause. "I suppose it is, stranger."
"Mortal." The word came out of my mouth, slipping off my tongue with ease I hadn't felt in a long time. "My name is Mortal."

    I wanted to look at her, but I didn't.
"Mortal," She repeated, a gentle tenderness slipping into her emotionally devoid tone that I knew no more of.
And she let the subject fall away into the soft lull of silence that comforted me for so long. I found myself to be grateful for the action.
I let my mind wander.

    For the first time since I had arrived in this mysterious place, I wondered why on earth I could have possibly been spared in such a way.
Perhaps we were to be released, back into the world. The thought almost made me recoil. But the thought quickly flitted away whence I realized there was absolutely no possible way they would let us go that easily.
Maybe, if it was just me, there would be a difference.
But I quietly let that thought go, as well.

    Then a more disturbing thought entered my mind.
Perhaps they kept us alive for testing. Maybe for medicine, or for poison. For murder? Perhaps they were testing new elimination methods.
Just the horrible idea made me physically cringe, my mouth suddenly as dry as if sandpaper scraped my throat raw.
I felt my arm slowly emerge from where it had been stiffly at my side, my numb hand pressing against the wall to hold myself up.

    And then, the door opened again.
This time, I was oddly unfazed. The silent hiss of the door had grown familiar to me, nevertheless how morbid that sounded to my own ears.
My eyes were drawn to the noise through pure instinct, only to be even more surprised by what scene emerged in front of me.

    This time, it was a boy.
He was small. Thin, wiry, short. His face also seemed oddly shaded, just like the girl who came before him. His large, deep greyed eyes flickered around the room, as if he was documenting everything in a little notepad within his head.
For a moment, he simply stood there, looking as if he was unable to process anything that had just unfolded in front of his oddly captivating eyes.

    And then, the metallic voice that was growing just too familiar for comfort hummed through the floor once more. "Welcome, Toby Rengkos. Please step inside."

    As if the smooth, cold muse of the computer had awoken him from a trance, the boy's head jolted up quite suddenly.
"Oh. Um - oh." Words seemed to stumble out of his mouth, as if he was trying very, very hard to fill the awkward silence that had followed his failure of action. He then, presumably ungracefully, stumbled into the room, almost falling forward to the point that his trembling legs would have fallen out from under him.

    The door hissed shut behind him with an terrible, odd sense of finality.
The small boy jerked upright once more, his large, silvery eyes flickering between my presence and Venna's. He opened his soft lips, as if to speak, but closed his jaw once more. He reached one, tender little hand to brush away his dark bangs.
For a good long time, I stared at this boy who had literally stumbled into my life.

    He was so .. strange. Compared to Venna, it was as if I had experienced both Yin and Yang.
His name was Toby.
He was so soft. I couldn't describe him any other way, no matter how hard I searched my rugged brain.
He was small. Thin, as if the softest breeze could gently push him aside. He had large, doe eyes, the kind that you would see on an innocent child, not yet exposed to the horrendous cruelties of the world. His face was round and velvety smooth, resembling one of a newborn baby's.

    13 years old?
He didn't seem old enough to even be in Second School.
It was only when Toby's silvery eyes seared into mine when I realized how long I had been staring at what a strange specimen he was.
I clamped my jaw roughly, whence I had realized that I had done the exact same thing when Venna had walked through the same door, now seeming so long ago.
It wasn't as if I had never seen other Middle children of my age. Why was I acting as if these beings were any different?

    Because they're exactly like you.
I looked away.
Three coffins. Three children to fill them.
What a sad, sad statement.

    I found myself breathing out softly.
"Um," a soft voice piped up quite suddenly, replacing the smooth, mechanical voice in vibrating through the silent blanket that covered the room. "Did I - interrupt something?"
The voice was one I had never heard before - a voice so thick with emotion, so laced with life and truth, that I nearly did a double take when I realized it had come from the mouth of the new boy.

    He glanced around the room nervously, visibly swallowing hard as he swiped his bangs out of his eyes once more.
With a jolt, I realized he wasn't as much nervous as he was awkwardly uncertain. As if he had walked into the wrong classroom, and thirty-four pairs of judgmental eyes speared into his own.
I blinked. This cautious boy, so filled with depth, asking if he had interrupted something.

    "What makes you think that?" I verbally spoke the next segment of my thought in response to him. I realized that even through my serious tone, the slightest hint of underlying amusement was present.
I wondered if he had caught it.
The small boy shifted his weight, an almost seemingly suppressed laugh bubbling up from his chest. "Um," He squeaked, fidgeting his stance once more. "It's just - really quiet in here. I thought that - um - hey, you know what? Never mind."

    He paused, as if waiting for a reaction from the bemused Venna and I.
When he received stoutly no response, he swallowed again before continuing. "I'm Toby," he said quickly, just as his face shifted expression. "Although, I guess you would know that already. Um. Oops." His large, doe eyes flickered downwards, almost as if he was ashamed of his slip up.
I could practically feel my mood softening. I nearly felt pity for this awkward boy who clearly did not do very good in the subject of precision of language within school, ending up in such a hell as this one.
Almost. Yet, not quite.

    "My name is Venna," came the gentle voice of the girl beside me, entwined with the slightest hint of curiosity.
The boy, by the name of Toby, looked up quickly, as if surprised that one had responded to his odd greeting. "Oh," he said quietly, offering a shy smile to the one who reached out to him.
The only thought that appeared to be running through my head consisted of, good lord.

    His doe eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, as if he was inviting me into the conversation. Into the interaction that seemed nothing but useless, in my eyes.
My gaze flickered away, piercing the wall just over the boy's right shoulder.
Toby seemed to wince, as if I had pointedly insulted him, but quickly glazed over my rejection before any could settle upon it for too long.
He cleared his throat, his quiet voice seeping into the lulling silence of the enclosed capsule we remained in once more.

    "Forgive me for asking," he said, quite softly, as if what he was about to speak of was a sensitive topic to one of us. "But - does anyone know why we're .. here?"
I didn't need to look at the tiny gesture of his hand to recognize what he spoke of.
I heard Venna inhale just the slightest, as if she were about to respond, yet I found myself beating her to the line.
"To die," I said quietly, my left hand curling into a fist just the slightest bit. My eyes still didn't meet his.

    He breathed out audibly; a soft wheeze, as if he deflated at the words.
"Why didn't they kill us already, then?" He asked, his voice a rasped peep. "Why are we still here? I thought .."
His small voice trailed away into a tense silence that seemed to freeze the air that surrounded us.
I found my gaze being dragged to the three long, smooth cases, resting so