My Daughter's Smile

There were a lot of buildings that they could have reconstructed. Sure, some of them had architecture that would be hard to replace, but they could have tried all the same. To see it is to understand it. Or better yet, not understand it. No amount of time can heal the wound that tears open the second that I look out on what was once living.
What was once a bustling street is now vacant. What was once a tree is now a hole. What was once a family is now gone... in the most literal sense of the word.
They could have tried to grow back the grass in the park, but they didn’t; instead they chose to keep the landscape a barren reminder. The only thing they rebuilt was the clock tower.
Grey has become more than just an adjective, or a colour. It’s now a mood, a state of being and, the most disheartening of them all, an insipid description of life. It seeps into the world like an infectious vapour, clinging on to the remains of a lost humanity.
Today is wake-up day. We’re allowed to go outside; my daughter and I.
I hold her hands high above her head while she takes the third step forward on the tire-flattened road. One of her legs limps beside its longer pair. I can hear her breathing, like running steel wool against metal. She tries to take her fourth step of the day, but her knee gives way and she starts to sag onto the ground. I grab her desperately around the waist and hoist her up onto my hip. She turns to look up at me.
I’ve never cringed at my daughter’s face. She is the most beautiful thing in my world. I know that the few other people that have seen her differ in opinion, but they also don’t see the grey quite the same way that I do. Seeing my daughter is like having a burst of hope after living in an eternal purgatory.
Her nose is slightly off-center, bending in an irregular way, and her cheek bones jut out as though she hasn’t had food in years. When she smiles her lips curl up off her teeth revealing gums that are twice the size of what a human’s used to look like, so when she stops smiling to close her mouth her lips can’t reach each other in the middle. A few little white teeth peek out from between them.
It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault. After all, she wasn’t walking on concrete ground when everything changed. Instead she was trapped inside of me, and inside of the body that then became little more than a human waste.
We were here, in this same spot. Only everything was different; brighter, and not grey.
A siren goes off at the top of the army base beside us. My daughter puts her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes. I coo to her quietly, holding her in my arms.
The guards start to walk through the exit doors, and out onto the road.
“Miss, your time is up. You need to return back to your suite.” One of them says in an army regulation voice. He does a double-take at my daughter, cringing.
I look down at her, “Do you want to walk to rest of the way to the door?”
She shakes her head vigorously, so I take the four steps back to the metal doors with her tightly wrapped around my waist and neck. I press my palm against the red scanner by the entrance, and it beeps loudly, then I take a quick glance back outside. The clock tower reads 11:57.
The doors creak open slowly, like I’m being introduced into a great hall.
Except the inside is just as grey as the outside, and there are no people here that want to meet me.
I walk through the three archways to the elevator, where a man in an army suit is standing with a clipboard.
“Jones?” I say swiftly.
He looks at me, then at my daughter. He cringes too.
“Danielle Jones, and daughter, Emily Jones? Level Four subject?” he confirms.
I nod my head.
“Please go immediately to your suite and take your medication. You’ll be allowed out again next month, same time.”
He looks at my daughter again.
The elevator is the only part of the entire building that isn’t grey. It’s black. Every time I walk in I feel as though I’m walking into a coffin. The doors close around us, and darkness is instantaneous. All I can hear is Emily’s jagged breathing, and the sound of the elevator slowly descending into the ground. It blinks five times. Floor one; where the army labs are. They do... testing. Floors two through five are subject wards. The walls are thicker, the barriers are stronger, and the suicide rate is astronomical.
There is no stopping at the levels in between. Finally the cart comes to a halt on floor five.
“Here we go, baby.” I say as the doors slide open in front of us. And now we’re back to grey.
Stone grey walls, made of material too thick for anything to be able to pass through. It’s as though they think we’re emitting, ourselves.
We pass six suites until we reach ours. A guard walks past me, nodding to himself. He stops for half a second when he catches a glimpse of my daughter, then turns quickly back to his walk.
I sigh, and prepare myself for the necessary protocol that is entering my home.
“Emily, you need to stand, and put your hands out on either side of you. You can lean on me for support, okay?” I put her down just in front of my legs. She looks up at me and nods, and then does as she’s told. I can feel the pressure of her body against my legs, even through the thick grey jumpers we both wear.
I press my hand up against the next red scanner and it beeps twice, flashing a bright green light around us. A familiar tingling feeling jolts through my body and I feel it go through hers too. She starts to cry. I have to force myself to be very still, and not reach for her.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s almost over.”
The light fades to nothing, and then an automated voice calls out from the speaker above the door, “Clear of hostility. Please take your medications on arrival to your suite.” Our metal door swings open.
They call it a suite, but it’s more like a cell. In the one room there’s a bed, a table, and a chair. A small blue bowl is sitting on the metal table, with pills soaking in water. I pick up two of them and shove them in my mouth, then pick up the others and slide them between Emily’s lips. She coughs and sputters, then makes a disgusted face.
I walk over to the single bed, and lay Emily down onto the grey sheets. In her jumper she blends in. Her lids start to droop, the effect of the pills catching up with her. They’ll put her to sleep faster than they will me, and when she wakes up maybe she’ll be able to take that next step. The idea makes me smile, something that has long been absent from my face. I almost thought the expression had been lost in the explosion.
Before I can make another movement I start to feel as though my energy is being flushed out of me through an invisible drain on the bottom of my feet. My legs feel numb and I stretch out, hoping to reach the bed before my eyes shut and I’m locked into a deep unconsciousness. I can almost sense my fingers grip around the rough fabric of the bed, and then I lose all thought.
I can’t feel what they’re doing, but I know. I can’t see what they’re doing, but I know. They’re cutting into me, taking things out of me, testing me, trying to fix me. I’m their guinea pig, along with every other subject. We are their play dough, and they mould us until they see that we are right again. I wonder if they ever realize that we are people too. They believe we are less than them, but I see us as more. After all, we’re the ones that have to suffer the consequences, and we’re the ones that feel the pain that leaches through us.
They call us subjects, like we’re meant to be studied. They say it like we’re poison. They say it like the sickness I suffer through every moment I’m in waking is not their fault. They call us subjects, but I call them butchers for the world that they created.
When I wake up I’ll be able to see my daughter again. I’ll be able to read the clock tower. Will it be 11:56 or 11:58?
I’ll be able to see the grey walls, the grey roads, and the grey world that our society has made her live in. I now realize that I’m teaching her a useless skill. What is the use in walking, if there is nowhere you can go?