welcome to my world /River/

[River Tam]

**follow the voices**

My name is River Tam. I am fifteen years old. I was born in London, a normal child to an equally normal family. One dad, one mum, and my brother, Simon. Simon was eleven at the time. By the time I was two, I was doing long division in my head. By the time I was three, I was correcting Simon with his spelling, though I could hardly crawl across the floor. I went to kindergarten when I was six, just like any other little girl or boy. But I was different. When my classmates were napping, I was drawing crossword puzzles on my blanket with a marker. I always knew the answer. The others didn’t accept me. They turned me out of the circle at story time.

When I was eight, I convinced my parents to pull me out of school and let me teach myself. They bought be textbooks, so many, one every subject possible, but I was done with them before they could bat an eye. I started going to school with Simon, tagging along to high school. The teachers didn’t mind-- I was quiet, did my work just like everybody else, and seemed to make Simon happier. But soon, I was passing even the most advanced students.

When I was thirteen, we got a letter from a special school. The Sussex Institute for Gifted Children. We were all ecstatic. I begged my father to let me go, and eventually, he relented. I packed my things and headed off to school.

We all drove out to Sussex. It seemed like a normal enough school, classrooms filled with orderly rows of desks, a cafeteria with tables and a buffet, posh dorms for the students to live in. I was assigned to room B241. We didn’t have roommates.

For the first couple of months, I was in heaven. So much to learn, so little time to do it. I stayed up until all hours reading books, writing up essays, and the like. I sent home letters every second Tuesday. Until the headmaster approached me with a task he felt only I would be able to handle. I would become a test subject, on the matter of the brain. I would be put into a special wing of the building, fed different food, my letters would be screened, and I would be basically controlled in every way. He said it was worth it, for science. He lied.

I was put into the top floor, room X541. Immediately after I moved in, I was hooked up to an IV, various chemicals pumped into my blood-stream. One month after I moved rooms, an attempt at murder was made. Not by me-- one me. Two of the headmaster’s thugs came and took me to a room, one I’d never seen before. A fountain sat in the middle of the circular chamber. One of the henchmen took me by the hand and led me to the fountain. I allowed it. Before I could even blink, I was shoved face-first into the water. I screamed, thinking it was a mistake. It wasn’t.

They held me down until I passed out. After that, I remember waking on the floor of the room, doctors surrounding me. Two burn marks were on my chest. Defibrillator marks. They had killed me, and brought me back to life. They took me to my room, told me to relax, write a letter home.

So I did. I told about my day, about drowning. My letter was read, and given back to me. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to write about that, in the best interests of science.

I was put on different medicines, all still delivered by IV. I was drowned. Again. This time, I was a bit scared to be in the fountain room, but I followed. After I passed out, they left me to float. I woke up in the fountain, not sure where I was, and screamed for help. I was left there for another hour or two.

The whole process was repeated again and again, so many times that I lost count. After a couple of months, I began to concoct secret codes in the spelling of my letters and send them back home in a frantic attempt to tell my family what was going on. They didn’t understand.

A month later, I gave up hope that they would come for me, and began to come up with an escape plan. But that was until the Operation.

One night, they added something different to by IV. It made me sleepy… So very sleepy. I fell asleep. No idea how long I was out, but when I awoke, I was in a dark room. So dark that I couldn’t see outside of the sphere of light surrounding me, cast by a spotlight high above.

I didn’t have to wait long to see what was going to happen. A man stepped out of the darkness, face hidden by a surgical mask, and cut into my scull. It was the worst pain that I have ever experienced. He took the top part of my head off. I was still awake when he cut into my brain.

I don’t know what he did. All I know is, five hours later, put back together, I was sent back to my room. The next morning, they drowned me again. This time, I didn’t yell for help. I slipped silently from the fountain room, and ran.

I couldn’t go home. Couldn’t go anywhere. Nowhere but away.

And so begins my story.