Manifestation

Clari’s fingers ran along the dots of the book. Ze paused pondering over the word. Carmine, the dots said. First, it was the usual definition hir mind suggested: bright red colour, pigment, hex code #D70040 – empty notions ze had learnt by heart in false hope it would give hir orientation. Then suddenly, where a week ago there was the uniformity of blackness, a fountain of juicy vividness spurted up in hir imagination. It rose high and dried in the flight, settling down as crumbly, thin flakes, much less dazzling in appearance. Ze rubbed the rusty – that was the word – dust into hir left palm with hir right thumb; the monotonous gesture stirred the memories of the agitated mind and brought back whispers.

“Holy shit, the kid made a mess of her wrists – will she survive?” the always grumpy voice of the inspector puffed in her face.

“It’s hir and ze,” somebody – the doctor? – corrected.

 “Fuck, in my custody. You know what hir dear father-president would do to me if ze kicks the bucket?! She was their last test subject! You’ll go down with me if she isn’t fit for her trials tomorrow.”

“Ze would need transfusion and rest. Surely, they can reschedule if it’s so important.”

“You tell him yourself then, that the fucking stuff in her head is going to be lost.”

“What do they want with hir anyway?” fingers in sleek latex gloves pressed at hir temples and rubbed hir neck. “Isn’t ze blind?”

“Which makes her ideal to grow some special gilial cells in there.”

“It’s glial and please call hir ze.” The doctor lowered hir head down and clicked their fingers. There were footsteps, and ze was raised off the floor.

“I don’t care! And so shouldn’t you. Because without those glial things, the implants in your and my brain and all the rest of survivors are gonna turn our grey matter into sludge. Fancy that?”

Clari didn’t remember the reply. Instead ze remembered the jolting, the nausea, the strange tingling in hir muscles as more of the world ze’d never seen slipped away – smells, sounds, surfaces (she panicked – wasn’t she supposed just to switch off remembering all that?!) and finally the terror-tales of zombies her father-president tried to scare her with – descriptions of horrible brainless creatures she could not picture in the secure underground rooms of the mansion. He would say ze had to feel guilty for her irresponsibility, for abandoning hir people to deteriorate. But all ze wanted was to go away while ze still remembered what it is to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell – building blocks of the world the trial had been taking away from hir.

The current Clari was still rubbing the imaginary dust into hir palm and staring at it in hir imagination. The door opened – there came the familiar, heel-heavy footsteps of the doctor. Hir eyelids fluttered, and the layers of greyness began to shed off, revealing a tall, lank figure with a prematurely balding patch on the crown of his head.

“How are you feeling, Clari?” his baritone was wary, yet he still smiled.

“I can see you,” ze gasped, blinked, but the picture only got sharper. “And you have a carmine lanyard for your badge.” Was it hir dream? Just like the spurt of colour and the rusty flakes? Ze never had visual dreams before.

“Well, I could let all those glial cells go to waste since I made them postpone the trial. I decided I might use them to repair your optic recognition zone. Give it a few more days and it will be fully restored and synchronised with your implant.”

“But doesn’t it mean I won’t be able to grow them anymore.”

“Well, your father should have thought better than to use your brain as an incubator. Rest and explore your new world,” he said and exited.

Clari expected to hear the heel-heavy footsteps and thought that ze would have to observe the doctor more and connect the sound to the image. But the footsteps didn’t follow. Instead there were dull thuds and painful screams and the dragging of something heavy and limp.