EXIST (part 2)

I believe my family and I were shipped here secretly by the AAUP (American Association for Unexplained Phenomenon). Sounds like a bunch of mad scientists hired by an evil mastermind to help conquer the world, and it’s not far from the truth. I was given a new identity. They kept my name though – Anna. I guess it is as mainstream in America as it is in Bulgaria.  You’d think with them being so smart, they would have come up with a more original name to call me. But I guess, it all had to be arranged pretty quickly and none of them cared to bother, so I just went on as Anna. Short, boring, mainstream name, kind of under the radar. I feel OK with it though, and I have grown to like it because I feel it suits me – me being equally boring and unnoticeable, and well…short. But I was over the moon excited when I heard I call myself differently when I’m asleep. And this name really suits my other ME. My Mr. Hyde persona – M.

I imagine M. as the better version of me – stronger, smarter, and braver. And I constantly have this eagerness to impress her, and feed her by learning all these new things. The frustrating thing is that as me, I can only learn so much. I get tired, and bored, and distracted. But M. then remembers everything. As far as I know, she can speak up to twenty languages, including Bulgarian – which I don’t. For her a swift look in a dictionary and some recorded dialogues on cassettes does the deal. She is like the better sister and I swear, as much as I love her, sometimes I want to kill her.

But I need her for now, until I know how to destroy her.

And this realization is why I’m here in the first place. Hiding from the AAUP. From Hex. 

I heard I wasn’t the only one. They were doing the same experiments on a boy eight years younger than me shipped him from India when he was four years old. Found him riding some sacred elephant 40 kilometers from his village. His mom sold him to the AAUP the next morning. 

Then there was the girl from Kiev, her dad by some twisted turn of events – the head of AUP in Russia. I think she was submitted as soon as she started sleep-talking. At least she didn’t have to travel far from home and could see her dad every day. Finally, I heard about this boy my age who tried to kill himself.  This guy had stolen a pen and injected himself with the ink, going into a coma. Unfortunately, his sleep-walk version had somehow pushed the fucking venom out of his bloodstream and then drawn a fucking picture with the ink on the floor. I did find the irony extremely amusing but it also frightened me.

I don’t want to die. I. But I need to take control over my body and in order to do that, I need to kill M. And I know they won’t let me do that, they need her to become me… but I’m afraid I might become her altogether. So how do I survive against myself? I don’t sleep? For how long before my brain fries out and I lose it? But I feel hopeful, closer than anyone else, being the only one who escaped. And as the days go by, I feel stronger and stronger fighting my deMon, capital M.

II.

                                                                 OBSSESSIONS

I have learnt that a thought can obsess your mind so badly, it becomes your only mantra, no matter if you’re awake or asleep. When I was still at the AAUP, they had me memorize all kinds of things – from children’s songs to longer poems and as I grew older and my learning capacity expanded equally, I recited Voltaire, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, ect.  as a morning routine. And then I did it while I was sleep-talking. In Latin. And Greek, and whatever language I felt like speaking. It was so bizarre watching the tapes – even I couldn’t understand myself. But then this idea came to me – if I wanted something bad enough, and though about it every now and then, M. did it. So now I had to get out of there and this wasn’t just a thought to pass through my brain but my one and only obsession. GET OUT OF HERE. FIND SOME PLACE SAFE. GET SOME MONEY. DISSAPPEAR.

And soon enough M. did it. To this day I have no idea how. She was like a wish-granting genie. Puff!-and I am lying on a mattress in the middle of a wooden floor. This bright yellow light cutting my face in half. For a second I think it’s just another day, starting on the operating table. But then I feel the light is warm. So I look around and here I am, fully clothed in red shorts and an ”I-HEART-NEW YORK” T-shirt, my right arm feeling sore underneath some bandages plus my whole mouth hurting badly. I’ve got a watch on my wrist, telling me it’s a little past twelve. And this room – empty, except for a broken sink with an equally broken mirror on top, a wooden table with some REAL cash on it (like a whole bunch of them) and a chair with a sports hat and some kind of an envelope on top. So, my first thought for a long time now is not “GET OUT OF HERE” but “WHAT THE FUCK?!” Where am I?  The other question comes second.