Terminal Regression Read online

  I was simply in agony as they started the discussion. It was so contrived. There were so many encouraging phrases, so many generic, insincere signs of acknowledgment and understanding.

  Mimi raised her hand as I tried to convince my body to destroy itself. “This is Laura,” she said so predictably. “She’s joining us for the first time today.”

  They clapped for me. They actually clapped.

  “Welcome to the group, Laura,” this guy with his greasy hair up in a dorky little bun said. “How are you feeling?”

  I knew what I was supposed to say. I’d answered that question a thousand times. They wanted me to focus on the immediate now. No backstory, no anxiety, just a cute testament of how totally calm I felt in my safe little environment within their circle of acceptance.

  “I have literally never hated anything so much in my whole life,” I said. “I hate the ugly concrete walls in my apartment. I hate stupid flannel. I hate dirt and farming, and I especially hate pretending like this is such a better alternative to death. I hate that after all I’ve been through, after I trusted them with something so personal and delicate and then mentally prepared myself for the train ride, that I am still alive.”

  They stared at me. I felt tears coming, but I blinked them back. Maybe it was just exhaustion; I realized I hadn’t slept in well over twenty-four hours. Maybe it was just my miserable personality coming out to whine some more about how unfair everything was. Whatever the case, I didn’t need to appear sad. I had nothing to gain from crying. But if I could get obnoxious enough to be thrown out of the fun farm, well, that was certainly worth a try.

  Mimi smiled at me. “It feels good to share, doesn’t it?” she asked gently.

  I shook my head. “Nope. No, it does not. I am no better off now than I would be otherwise.”

  Man-Bun decided he needed to comment. “It’s always rough at first. But soon enough, you’ll find something to live for.”

  “That’s my problem, sir,” I said. “I can’t wait anymore. And I won’t wait anymore. If there’s nothing on this earth to make me feel good about myself, why should I keep living? Why should I have to go on feeling inadequate and worthless when I’ve done nothing to deserve it?”

  “What have you done to deserve anything else?” This infuriating quip emerged from the smug little mouth of some girl who obviously wasn’t feeling the spirit of the support group or my attitude.

  I wanted to come back at her with some brilliant, condescending explanation about the inalienable rights of humanity to eradicate personal suffering. God, did I want to put that chick in her place and show all these loser conformists that their entire existence was a joke. But I didn’t quite get there.

  Before I knew it, I was publically sobbing and wishing I knew how to wake myself up from this eternal nightmare. Because she was right. I was nothing. I’d done nothing. Sure I’d tried, but what did that matter when I’d ultimately just given up? Who was I to think I was entitled to anything? I didn’t deserve to be happy. I only deserved to rot in this unbearable torment I’d brought upon myself.

  Everybody either stared at me or awkwardly looked away. I was such a mess. Even at the freak show, I was the freak.

  I shook my head, trying to regain control of myself. “I can’t,” I stammered. “I don’t… I didn’t do anything… I never…” It wasn’t working. Besides, they wouldn’t understand anyway. No one ever understood.

  “I’m done,” I managed at last. “I don’t want to do this.”

  I got up. Ideally, I wanted to run away until my heart gave out, but just getting away from the farm would tide me over for a little bit. I wasn’t exactly sure how to get back to my apartment, but I knew the general direction.

  “Laura.” Mimi caught me. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving. I’ve had enough.”

  She looked at me with these big, childlike eyes. “But I’m supposed to take you to dinner. And then—”

  “I don’t care… Look, it’s not your fault. I just don’t want to talk. If this is my life now, I want to go to work and go home and nothing else.”

  “I can’t let you. Too much isolation in your condition is dangerous. You need supervision.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t a total nutcase. Or even if I was, there was no need for anyone to be concerned. I’d taken the train so I didn’t have to do it myself. I didn’t have it in me to cause myself pain. Pain was my weakness.

  “Mimi, I promise, if you just let me be alone for a little while, I’ll be perfect tomorrow. I’ll come back and apologize and do everything you tell me. It’s just been a horrible day for me, and I really need to be alone.”

  She deliberated. I felt awful for making her pretty illusion less than perfect, but only a little bit.

  “You swear you’ll come back?”

  “If I’m lying, may I be cursed with immortality.”

  She half smiled. “Okay. I’m trusting you, Laura. Be good. If not for your own sake, for mine.”

  I nodded. Though I couldn’t understand it, she had something to live for. I had no right to mess that up.

  Mimi couldn’t have been much older than I was, but I was certain she knew things about the world that I wouldn’t learn for years. And unlike me, she knew real tragedy. She’d actually had a good reason to leave. But somehow she now had reason to live. I had to respect that.

  “All right,” she said. “You can take a truck if you want.”

  “No, I’m okay. See you tomorrow.”

  I started walking. There was a lot to think about—too much for me to process actually. This was my worst-case scenario, cheating my well-deserved death. Now I was locked into a meaningless life with delusional farm workers.

  I hated how ordinary everything was this side of the wall. There was only the road, the buildings ahead, and the farm behind me. No statues or paintings or anything of significant architectural value. It was all so lifeless, so tragically bleak. If not for the overwhelming sense of dread eating me alive, I’d have had no trouble believing I’d finally transcended into a painfully insipid state of limbo.

  I passed the plant, apparently heading in the right direction. The workers were getting out. They all wore gray, somewhat damp jumpsuits and had an odd way of walking. They were obnoxiously loud, but not in any way I’d heard before. It was like they couldn’t see each other or couldn’t understand each other.

  I thought it best to ignore them, but one of them called after me.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” When I looked at him, I wasn’t expecting so much concern in his eyes.

  “I… I’m going home,” I said uncertainly.

  More of them noticed me. They grabbed onto each other and stared at me. Like I scared them.

  “Can I go home too?” the first guy asked with that same vacant anxiety.

  “I think so. Maybe ask your supervisor?”

  Suddenly, he dropped to the ground and started sobbing. The others backed away from him, afraid of the sound.

  Something was seriously wrong with them. I felt sick watching him cry like that. So I left. I didn’t run, but I backed up slowly until I was at a less noticeable distance. Then I tried to continue on as if nothing had happened.

  This was bad. Wherever they’d sent me, not only was it not death, it wasn’t life. It was delusions and psychopaths and too many unknowns.

  I found my apartment and busied myself making up the bed and unpacking my box of possessions. Of course, that only took a few minutes. I had years left. Years of enduring this half-life of mediocrity. It only made sense that I’d eventually become like the plant workers. This place broke us. They’d saved our bodies, not our minds.

  Chapter 7

  <<<

  I was just ridiculously upset at everyone and everything, but I’d promised Mimi I’d be better. And I was. The next morning, I put on my dehumanizing unifor
m, carpooled with other farm workers in my building, and greeted her with a forced, barely detectable smile.

  Naturally, she’d forgiven my behavior the previous day. I was certain there was a policy in place that valued such things. But Grant was waiting with her.

  “How was your first day?” he asked a little too knowingly.

  “Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”

  He looked me over, skeptical about every single aspect of my person, no doubt. “I see. Well, I’ll be joining you today. We’ll do a little apple picking.”

  Mimi grinned. “That’s his favorite part,” she said. “If it were up to Grant, we’d do nothing but harvest all year long.”

  Mimi was sweet enough, a regular ray of sunshine, but I didn’t think it really warranted the smile he gave her.

  “But that’s impractical,” Grant said. “You have to sow before you reap.”

  Mimi laughed a little in her unsettlingly bubbly way. “Well, look who’s suddenly patient,” she teased.

  He shrugged, trying not to blush so much. “I’m working on it.”

  There was a brief moment during which neither of them wanted to look directly at the other. I was still right there, watching all this go down and growing steadily more uncomfortable.

  “But apples are in season?” I asked to change the subject. They seemed more like a fall crop, but what did I know?

  “Something’s always in season,” Grant said. “Remember the light manipulation?”

  “Right, interfering with nature. How could I forget? Well, if it’s apples the gentleman wants, it’s apples he’ll have.”

  There was a supply shed next to the greenhouse. We each grabbed a basket and headed across the fields to the orchard. It was a lot of walking, but Grant never complained. Except for the bad leg, he was fairly well built, so he kept up without a problem.

  The moment we reached the orchard, Mimi was literally up a tree picking from the higher branches. Grant and I stayed at ground level.

  “What’s her story anyway?” I asked him as I scoped out low-hanging fruit.

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “She did, but I think there has to be more to it than that.”

  He looked up at her. She was a good couple trees away, but he kept his voice down at a near whisper. “She’s a special girl. She took to this job effortlessly. Most of us need an adjustment period. I’m sure you’re experiencing that now. But not her. Maybe she wants to forget him.”

  I glanced back and forth between them. Between her innocent, treetop effervescence and his sad, dreamy gaze.

  “But that’s awful,” I said uncertainly, thinking perhaps she was already on the brink of moving on.

  He shrugged. “People grieve in all sorts of ways. Mimi does everything she can to avoid talking about herself and her background. She’ll make small talk, compliment you, even pretend to be interested in whatever you’ve got going on. Sweet as she is, she never lets anyone too close.”

  I picked an apple. It wasn’t very big or pretty, but it seemed edible enough.

  “That must suck for you,” I muttered without really thinking.

  He looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  I tried to play it cool, pretending to be super fascinated by that apple.

  “Hey, I get it. She’s cute. Just because she’s tragic doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything.”

  He shook his head. “See, this is an example of how not to talk to your supervisor.”

  I sighed. “Pretty much everything I’ve ever said to you could be classified that way. Are you really surprised?”

  Reluctantly, he smiled. “Not at all. You’re crazy.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t doubt it. But I’m not blind.”

  He looked up at her again, that same doting look in his eyes. “She lost him not even two years ago. They were so young, too young in my opinion, so of course it devastated her. You don’t date someone in mourning. And besides, this place isn’t really a relationship-friendly environment. No one’s really stable past Terminal B.”

  That was for sure. Fun farms, support groups, and crazy guys falling in the street kind of gave it away.

  “Hey, do you know anything about the plant?”

  “A little,” he said, grateful for the subject change. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was going home yesterday, and the guys there. Are they okay?”

  I could still hear them sobbing in my head. I hadn’t thought there could be a more emotionally disturbed bunch than the suicidal farmers, but the way they’d looked at me, with such vacant, ignorant terror, something had to be seriously wrong.

  “Not exactly,” Grant said, shifting into supervisor mode. “We’re divided based on our reasons for taking the train. We’re volunteers; management jobs and general laborers get selected. Plant workers are the undesirables. They get cast out of society for any number of reasons.”

  Undesirables? That was a pretty harsh way to put it. They were still people after all, regardless of what was happening in their heads.

  “And no one helps them?”

  He looked at me. “Helps them how? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard you’re not the biggest fan of support groups.”

  “Because I don’t need help. Clearly, there’s something wrong with those guys. Is it even safe for them to work in a power plant?”

  He sighed. “Laura, they don’t want to be helped. Working there is all they’re good for.”

  I really wasn’t expecting that from someone with his own disability. “Well, I just can’t believe that.”

  He set his basket down and stretched his crutch arm. “Look, I’m not saying this to be mean. If we could do something for them, that’d be great. But my superiors told me this. Wherever you end up in this place, it’s what you deserve. There are people over in management whose only job is to evaluate people in Terminal A and find them an appropriate place in Terminal B. It’s a system. It’s working. I’d rather not question it.”

  I could have fought him on it, but he was lower level management. I doubted he had any influence with such things. I wondered if there was anywhere to make a complaint or if we were all supposed to be perfectly content with our lives here.

  Mimi jumped down with a full basket and went to empty it into the larger collection receptacle on-site. She had a couple leaves in her hair, but she was chipper as ever.

  “You’d better hurry up,” she said. “I’d hate to beat my supervisor.”

  Between us, Grant and I probably had about ten apples, him having the majority.

  He smiled at her. “Since when is it a competition?”

  She stepped closer and cocked her head to the side. “You scared?” She attempted to size him up, the lamest intimidation tactic I’d ever seen.

  Grant picked the leaves out of her hair almost instinctively. She seemed a little uneasy but for only a moment.

  “Bring it on,” he dared, letting the tension that followed linger longer than was really necessary.

  She grinned and scurried up the next tree. Grant laughed a little bit and looked down at the leaves in his hand. Suddenly, all the awkward humor was gone. I’m human; it was pretty adorable. Unfortunately, I’m also Laura.

  “Maybe I should excuse myself,” I said, making that blush he was fighting creep further up his neck.

  “Laura, please, for the love of God, stop talking.” He tossed the leaves to the ground but couldn’t quite stop smiling.

  “I’m just saying, she didn’t even look at me. And the hair thing. Chills. You’re a pro, Grant. I’ve got to hand it to you.”

  He turned beet red. “I think I actually hate you.”

  “I bet I know somebody you don’t hate.”

  “That’s enough,” he said sternly but not altogether very angrily. He picked up his basket. “Get to work or…I’ll
dock you or something.” He quickly turned his attention to the apple trees.

  “Can you even do that?”

  “I don’t know. Just leave me alone, okay? Please?”

  I nodded. “Fine. But seriously, Grant, if I had an opportunity for joy like that, I’d take it.”

  Oh, relationships. The ultimate sign of acceptance. How I envied those doting, unappreciative idiots who could trust their hearts to a perfect stranger. Being such a colossal waste of flesh, I’d never meant anything to anyone. My mom loved me because she was supposed to, but no one had ever noticed me and thought, “That there is one lovable creature.” I was just a background to those sort of stories. I didn’t even have sidekick status.

  Grant appeared to ignore what I’d said, but he spent a lot of that day watching Mimi from afar. People say hopeless things are the most beautiful. Doom and tragedy somehow make you feel things you couldn’t feel otherwise. I’d never believed that. I knew firsthand there was nothing at all beautiful about being miserable. But I did get the tiniest empathetic ache for Grant. Much as he would have liked to believe he was perfectly content with this life, it couldn’t ever truly satisfy. Love had no place among the dead.

  Chapter 8

  <<<

  I refuse to say it got better. I became acclimated to the situation, but nothing improved. I merely had a routine, and familiarity added a tolerable quality to an otherwise torturous existence.

  Every day, I’d wake up to naked concrete, put on the same tired outfit, and eat the same tired breakfast. Meals weren’t very creative. I didn’t have a kitchen, so I was forced to travel two blocks down the road to a cafeteria of sorts. At dinnertime, I could take my food back to my room, but breakfast and lunch were in the company of those horribly happy farm workers.

  Then it was off to work, usually by riding in the bed of one of the trucks with upwards of six other people. We swiped our cards at Grant’s office, near the entrance of the greenhouse, and selected our individual work schedules from the menu of available jobs. It was hard to be bad at any part of the process. No matter what pace we worked at, quotas were always met. Grant had mentioned a night maintenance crew once or twice, and I was pretty sure they were in charge of picking up our slack.