A Hole In The Wall

• Anastasia Baggley, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2014

White light assaulted my eyes as a sterile, antiseptic smell crept into my nostrils. The light was too bright, the smell too strong. Involuntarily, I shivered. The thin hospital gown I wore offered no protection against the cold metal table I lay on. My hands and feet were shackled to the table and a restraining band was tight around my waist. A face loomed into view, a doctor’s mask veiling their features. More faces joined it, each identical to the first. Gloved hands reached for me and I panicked as I saw gleaming surgical instruments. Piercing screams bounced off the walls – my own.
“Subject 1653 may now be removed.” A cold, robotic voice rang in my ears. “The operation is complete. Take it to the underground. Put it with the others. Separate cells, no contact. Oh and-” CRACK. The loud noise startled me, shocking me awake from my nightmarish recollection. I swung around, searching for the source of the noise. Peering into the shadows in the far corner of my cell, I saw a pair of eyes gleaming out of the darkness.
“Hello there.” A hoarse whisper carried across the room. I slid off my bed and crawled over to where the eyes watched me warily. Up close, I could see that my visitor had knocked a brick out of the wall. The brick lay in pieces on the ground and, as I crawled closer, I felt shards dig into my hands and knees. Moving closer, I could see that it was a man. A dirty, matted beard hid the lower half of his face and, above that, a pair of dull green eyes and a crooked nose completed the picture of his ravaged face. The man’s face was strangely familiar, and then it hit me. Looking at his face was like looking into a dirty, grimed-up mirror.
I stopped, perhaps half a metre from the wall, and stared at him. He stared back, eyes narrowed and teeth bared like a wild animal, a mirror of my own expression. Finally, he broke the silence, “I bashed the bricks through. With the bed frame.” I nodded, and a gaunt, withered hand shot through the gap in the wall. With surprising speed it latched around my emaciated wrist.
“Why do you look like me?” He sounded almost petulant, and I laughed, a rough, grating sound. “I don’t look like you. And you don’t look like me. We all look like him, The Original. All 1653 of us. I’m just the newest addition to their collection.” He rocked back, the realisation striking him like a blow. After a long pause, he met my eyes again. “Well I think it’s high time all 1653 us out got out of here.” I laughed again, this time almost hysterically. There was no way out. He was crazy, just like the rest of us. He shook my arm, vying for my attention. Then he spoke.
“This is not the only hole I've made.”