What you're about to read is fiction and not. It's also a draft and finished, because I'm pretty sure this is all there will be of it. The worst part about writing is the burden of "finishing" what you've started, which will never be 100% done anyway. So enjoy it while it's hot! And don't think too much about it. It's a shy, unfinished short story. It almost got deleted or forgotten.

"The pain ... it is unbearable!!"

Pascal said while poking his eye with the antenna of a radio. He held it with both hands, one to keep the antenna from retracting, the other to steady the radio. At 6′5″, he hunched forward on his seat to push the antenna into his eye, making the whole scene even more bizarre.

The two others in the room didn't say anything. They wondered how far he will go. There was much-needed excitement in the air. Will he actually poke a hole into his eye? The boredom was running its course again.

Kai got out of his bunk bed and said:

"Alright, now it's my turn."

His screams were louder.

+++

Dinner time. Marie gently ran her finger across his back as she moved to her seat. It was so gentle, he pretended he didn't notice, and was sure it meant nothing. However, he looked at her when she sat down. He flinched when her deep blue eyes looked back. He looked at his plate and pretended he had never looked at her. She was too beautiful for him, and he was afraid she could see in his eyes that there was nothing to see except emptiness—the eyes of a prisoner in his own body, one who had accepted his fate: Nobody would ever notice his soul.

He never saw her heartbroken smile.

+++

"Is it true that you've tried to strangle my boyfriend?"

It was the first time someone talked to him about what happened in the locked ward. He wondered if Achelya wanted to hear the truth, or if she was just testing what kind of person he was. If it's true, will he be proud of it? If it's not true, will he tell the truth? He didn't know what she was told. He didn't possess the truth, either.

All he remembered was that he had said to Duanys that he was going to kill him. After he notified the guards about the boyfriend's provocative behaviour, he went back into the common room, and Duanys said something that made him want to kill him. The alerted guards saw the situation escalating as much as it could and rushed into the room. They tore them apart before the physically stronger boyfriend was able to hit him with a chair. They locked him in his room, and he kicked the plastic trash can so hard that it ripped apart and flew across the room in two pieces. This raw expression of rage made him believe he would have won.

It would also later haunt him. His hands would never feel innocent again.

+++

The common room was locked. One could only imagine the amount of blood that must have been on the floor. His imagination ran wild because he had never seen someone slit their wrists. He wondered if witnessing it himself would make the surreal situation real. He had only heard about it from other patients. It happened while he was outside, enjoying the daily hour beyond the walls.

For her suicide attempt, Achelya was locked in a room for a few days and received a red point: curfew.

He tried not to think about what happened. It was easy because nobody—neither the wardens nor the patients—brought it up again. Life on Station Corboz continued as usual, and suicide attempts were a part of it. They were the reason most were here, after all.

The suicide nets looked fun to jump into, though.