An incessant light burned past my closed eyelids as I came to. The left side of my body ached in heavy waves. Every waking muscle felt like it had a hundred additional pounds pressed down onto it. Briefly, the glow was the sun’s attempt to challenge my nocturnal habits and I about turned against my bruised side. Motion dragged my attention to the awkward bulk of my ankle. Recollection came down on me like a crack of thunder. I shot up to a seated position, aggravating my head into making the world tilt.

Once the spin of my brain subsided, the pale space was easier to navigate. I was left on a long, thin, horizontal seat, resembling a white operating table, in the center of a rectangular room with bleached walls and floors. The setup was suspect, so I poked around my body for any signs of surgery and came up short. Fluorescent beams were abrasive against the white, an opinion assisted by my time spent in otherwise darkness; my eyes still attempting to adjust to the disparity.

From the mid-point up, the wall in front of me was a mirror. I had a good look at myself then. My still present trash bag gown did nothing for me, my nothing hair did even less. It was worse than I imagined. I had the urge to verify the reality of what I saw with my hands but ended up dragging my eyes away instead. I recalled Jay’s expression and didn’t want to reenact the shameless devastation of something so temporary. It would grow back, I reminded with force. My clothes on the other hand…

A stool shoved tight into the corner had folded cloth piled high on it. All I needed to dispel what I was wearing was present. Gray sweatpants and a sweater made the new ensemble, both pieces enlarged to the point it would deprive the wearer of their human form. The tracksuit smelled so heavily of peroxide I considered the possibility of it corroding my skin. Betraying the item's usual association with comfort, the fabric was scratchy to the touch. Could argue it was more comfortable than plastic though.

With the cuffs gone, I could dress easier, but my mind wasn’t as freed from the prison’s control when it told me to reconsider the mirrored wall. I pressed my hand to it, a replica appearing and reaching back for the original. Intuition said the mirror was two-way and I had no reason to believe it wrong. I wouldn’t be afforded privacy now or later. After a lot of years of teachings in favor of feeling shame for my skin, the change was and would be challenging. Not that I ever minded keeping covered, it was only until I was forced out of my endorsed comfort in privacy that I disliked how unable to adjust I was. Things were different with doors and windows I had no control over when opened and shut. Doubled by someone else dictating when I was clothed and when I wasn’t.

I changed like I didn’t think the mirror was deceptive. The clothes fit about as well as I expected, yet stayed on somehow despite the bagginess. The shoes by the stool's legs were grey slip-ons that would pinch my heels till wore in. I rolled the sleeves up to my elbows so they weren’t halfway to becoming mittens and left the old trash bag on the ground where I stepped out of it. Riding my hands up underneath the ensemble to answer the itches it spread across me chased none of the irritation it caused away.

My nails stalled from grating my skin to dust at the rumble of a lock sliding. Without being able to distinguish the sound's location, I was looking in the general direction when a door-sized part of the wall swung outward toward me. In the exit were two (and if I was lucky, new) unfriendly chaperons. Without Jay, I’d been upgraded from one guard to two. If my mood had been better, I’d take it as a suggestion of a threatening danger I possessed, but I knew better than to kid myself. It stopped being enticing to try to.

The men came over in unison to hook my thin arms with their built ones, levering me off my feet and out of the white room. When the camouflaged door shut behind us, I was plunged back into the dark’s territory. Once more, I couldn’t discern a thing. Dismounted from the lift of limbs and given a stout shove onward, I moved in hopes I wouldn’t collide with anyone or anything. It took a few steps and blinks to give the black blobs surrounding me a minor definition. In a corridor sized to accommodate only the three of us, we strolled side-by-side. Latched to the ceiling, the only lighting was two dim, blue fluorescent tubes that went as far down the hall as I could see into its depths. It encouraged the blue of the guard’s uniforms to become a pair of elongated flashlights down the entirety of both sides. I stared at their glowing belts and tried to make sense of the instruments within. A task that didn’t provide more information than what I already knew: they were prepared and waiting for a misstep. A gloved hand came down and clamped onto the baton stick. I shot my stare away without meeting the owner’s face in mock ignorance of the intimidation. Was all the employed defense here raring for an opportunity to play offensive? I itched again at my stomach.

We passed some panels embedded in the walls. Every entrance, without knobs or buttons, was hands-off. None of them would open for me alone. The oxygen was thick and my hands went clammy. What was potentially a side-effect of the underground placement of the facility could also be attributed to the onset of claustrophobia. Tight spaces that never bothered me before became a different beast altogether when you were caged. I attempted to keep steady even as the consistency of my bones turned to gelatin.

“Cell number 157.” One of the stiffs mentioned while the other punched a code into a keypad beside two double doors. He used one hand to cover his working one so I couldn’t determine any of the numbers. Following a beep, I was pushed inside before I’d even gotten a good look at what was ahead. A slam reverberated behind me like a crash. Then a confirming lock.

The slip-ons squealed when I spun around, ears buzzing. It didn’t matter to me where I was as much as I needed to know where I could go. The sealed metallic doors and their card-reading keypad blared at me “Not here! Not here!” The outfit, the hair, the ankle brace all joined the deafening yells reiterating that there was no way of returning. I had to have known it all along, yet only now did that knowledge have a tangible truth to it that I could see and feel crushing every organ. By the time I could form comprehensive thoughts, it was only to realize that my life’s end had officially begun. As they had said, “I” no longer existed.