“April!” Her skeletal wrists were cut in so many places that she had become numb to the pain; her ankles were even worse, the blood around them was old and cracked from her unwillingness to wash it off.
“April! Where. Is. Your. Father?!” the woman screamed.
Hints of desperation had begun to mingle with the weariness of a worn out question. Almost not waiting for a response, the woman slammed the black button with her white-knuckled fist. April remained glassy eyed as the electricity jittered through her frail, bruised body. April had repeatedly told them that she didn’t know anything, that it had nothing to do with her, but they never listened to her. Finally, she had conceded to the fact that they would never believe her and had resorted to stolidity.
The woman still stared at her, black eyes masked with false determination, fingers gripping the button. But April knew that she had long since given up. Time passed with a surreal vagueness, fluidity. After what seemed like hours, when April’s somewhat frizzy, bright red hair was damp and pasted to her forehead, the woman realized, belatedly, that April wouldn’t give in, and shifted her hand forward a few inches to press the red button. Moments later, muffled footsteps emerged from the door across the long hallway. The nurses marched into the room without uttering a word, blue surgical masks fastened securely behind their heads, and squeamishly thick needles bared. April liked to think that their masks served the purpose of hiding their grimaces of pain as she struggled against them, punching, flailing. Or maybe they wore them so no one could see the blank expressions on their faces as they killed yet another person; it wasn’t like they ever performed surgery.
Her eyes were closed, awaiting the severity of the icy needle in her neck, when they injected her with dreamless sleep.

***
April awoke on the same chair. Forgetting where she was for a fleeting moment, she jerked her wrists up, feeling the searing pain course through her arms, her scream muffled by the cloth that had been placed in her mouth as she slept.
“April, dear, you’re finally awake!” one of the nurses mocked in a slightly nasally voice, “you’ve been asleep for ages. It’s so boring when you’re asleep. We can’t torture you!” she snickered puerilely.

“Oh! We’ve got so much planned for you, dear. I’d tell you, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise!” The nurse giggled again and strode away to accompany an equally irritating group, and April suppressed an intense desire to rip her hands out of the restraints and strangle all of them.

What could the nurse mean? April thought of their previous attempts to invade her dream world and shuddered, flashing back to the pain of the burn marks on her scalp. They couldn’t possibly be able to do it, to change something in her head that had been the same for so long. Or could they? Would they risk the death of yet another patient, especially her? April tried to evade the recurring thought, but it nestled itself in a corner of her mind and refused to leave its long occupied spot.

The day dragged on, gaggles of excited nurses and the occasional doctor talking quickly while maneuvering the hallways, a little more cheerful than usual. Too cheerful. April wondered what it was, what she had done that had so influenced their knowledge of the mind. And for the first time in a long time, she was scared. What was to come was a mystery, a frightful prospect for April, who had become accustomed to the daily routine of the hospital: the sitting, the questioning, the torture. As night fell (at least April thought so; there weren’t any windows), the tension grew into a climax of sickeningly crazed doctors and a cacophony of brain and heart monitors.

A closed cart holding enigmatic contents had been wheeled into the room earlier and was now being opened by one of the older doctors. The case opened with a hiss, and he removed one of the many syringes that were filled with a cloudy, but translucent substance that was noticeably more viscous in consistency than usual. April expected the twinge of a normal needle, but she nearly shouted out in surprise as the doctor plunged the needle into her sinewy upper arm. This was worse than electrocution, she remembered thinking, before the restless faces of the doctors disappeared from her sight, and sleep closed in.
***
The hazy summer morning didn’t seem any different from the other mornings. April watched, clutching her sore neck, as the same butterfly danced through the cerulean sky, weaving daintily through the tall grass on delicate wings. Waves of heat glistened on the roof of the distant house. Licking her lips, she awaited the excited shrieks of her little brothers and sisters. As expected, they came running out of the house, first Anne, then Hazel and Oliver, angelic smiles and opened arms awaiting a hug. She laughed and was about to say something, but then her dream abruptly flickered, and the image of her smiling siblings faded and became (one?) synonymous with darkness.
She was suddenly awake, eyes thrust open, flinching at the brilliance of the fluorescent ceiling lights. Compared to the scene before her sleep, the room had become chaotic, doctors in a frantic frenzy to check certain monitors and extracting more needles from the metal container. Eager to know what was happening, April managed to catch snippets of their conversation.
“—no, no! We have to start over!”
“Yes! I’m sure. It has to work. We just have to increase the—“
“Secure her electrodes. We’re in for another round.”

April prepared, tightening in advance for the coming pain, but was asleep before she felt the needle.
Usually, sleep blanketed her in a pleasant way, reducing the impact of the earthy ground. This time, though, she fell quickly, and the harsh folds of darkness fell onto her like a waterfall of burning needles. Early rays of sweltering sunlight had just begun to paint the crests of the hills with lavenders and magentas when April careened into the earthen wall, hitting her shoulder especially hard, the taste of grass strong on her bloody lips. She lay there for a few minutes, wincing as she drew in air for each shallow breath and noticing how the butterflies landed on the clover, flitting about so innocently. Their life was so simple; all nectar and flowers, but she pushed away the idea of being one as soon as it arose in her mind. Being ingenuous was no way to get by in a world like this.
Wiping the blood from her mouth with a trembling hand, she scrutinized her surroundings: same as always; grassy hills stretching on for what seemed like forever. At least they hadn’t done anything drastic. She soon realized, though, that something was different, not just the falling part, but the intensity of the sun hitting her face and the way the clouds were shifting in the sky, signaling a coming storm.
Although she could already see the house, the heat was almost unbearable, and her tongue was swollen from dehydration. You can’t die in a dream, she assured herself, but inside, she wasn’t certain that this was a dream. Everything felt more concrete than usual; maybe she was reliving a snapshot in time, and maybe the snapshot was as real as her other life.
Somehow managing to drag her feet towards the house, she arrived minutes later, collapsing on the bottom step, rotting wood almost caving in from her weight. She heard their footsteps before she saw them.
“APRIIIIIIIIIIIIIL!” A pile of small bodies engulfed her with hugs and sloppy kisses. No. This was too familiar.
A harsh, but kind voice cut through the high pitched screaming. “Children!” the middle-aged woman standing at the door chided, “April is in no state to be outside in this heat. She must come inside. You can come see her later.”
The children, with disappointed looks displayed on their normally joyful faces, solemnly scattered into the foremost part of the wood that bordered the house. April’s mother, who had become strong from carting firewood from the forest to their home, picked April up with ease and tenderly lay her on top of a comfortable cot in the room that branched off from the kitchen. April looked fondly at the familiar simplicity of the furnishings; the painting of the meadow, the small mirror, her nightstand, all arranged in the way that she had put them when they first moved into the house.
She remembered the day very clearly. It was a day much like the one now, ghastly hot and in late summer. They had driven down the dirt road in their old car, a rusting Ford from the late 1970s that they had named Ralph, quietly anxious to see their new dream home. The cloud of dust obstructing their view of the home had not yet subsided when they parked the car, but she and her siblings had sprinted out of the car, stomped up the three rotting steps, and ripped open the weather beaten door. The smell that hit them was earthy and musty, and they had loved it. Oh, the glee of something new, something that they thought would last forever.
April’s mother, having rushed off to the kitchen, presented a glass of water to April, who accepted it without thanking her. She downed the glass in a matter of seconds, the condensation pleasantly cool on her feverish hands.
“Slowly, April. You’ll be sick.”
“Need more.” April croaked. Her mother hurried to the kitchen once more to refill the glass, and she was left to think. They had hit her weakest spot, and virtually the only spot that she hadn’t wanted them to hit. Then she remembered: this is where she had to fall asleep. No. No no no no no. Not again. They couldn’t do this to her. In her mind, she saw her family, dead on the floor, pools of blood staining the worn floorboards and flowing through the cracks between them. Anne, Hazel, Oliver. She could remember the looks on their faces, looks of terror that hadn’t been erased by death. Then her mother. When April had found her, she wasn’t quite dead. The knife had stabbed her just below her heart, and her flowered blouse was drenched with her blood.
“April,” she had whispered laboredly, “it wasn’t your father’s fault. Tell them that. Please. I—“
Her last words had faded and her eyes had closed. April had begun to sob hysterically, shaking her mother as if she could wake her up. That’s when the government had found her and taken her into custody. Vulnerable April.
No. She couldn’t let it happen again. Droplets of rain began to pound the tin roof and splash into the gutter, flowing down the windows in a familiar way. She had to get up now.
“Mother!” she called. “I have to tell you something!”
She called for her again, but what greeted her was silence. Pushing herself up from the bed, she stumbled to the door, the sound of her footsteps echoing loudly. She carefully opened the door, the brass doorknob cold to the touch. They’re probably outside, thought April, the dread beginning to spread more quickly throughout her body. But she knew what she was going to see before she saw it: Anne, Hazel, Oliver, and her mother, dead on the floor. Her fingertips began to tremble, but she held in her grief. She knew what she had to do.
***
The biting rain streaked her face, converging with her salty tears as she stumbled blindly through the flooded streets. Reds and blues and silvers drifted through her blurred periphery. She felt a numbness slowly began to creep through her body, yet she continued to stagger across the hilly terrain, urging herself towards the glistening glass skyscrapers that covered the ashen sky and hid in the blanketing clouds.
Reaching the nearest of the massive edifices, she tore open the door, feeling the dry air-conditioned air wash over her in a wave and bringing her to her senses. She was a crying sixteen-year-old girl who had been running through the streets in the pouring rain and who had just walked into the most lavish apartment building in the city. Her old, mud-stained t-shirt was almost transparent, and her crimson hair was knotted in the back of her head. There was no way that the guard would let her inside the elevator. Unless…
“S-sir,” April sobbed to the guard, “m-my mother ju-just—“ April broke down into (mostly) genuine tears in front of the heavy-set guard, her body shaking, balled-up grief suddenly turning into something palpable.
The guard, not quite knowing what to do, stood awkwardly at his post, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth. Taking a deep breath, April continued. “I’m sorry about…my breakdown,” she apologized, staring fixedly at her chaffed sneakers and pausing to wipe a tear from underneath her eye, “my mother just p-passed away and my d-dad lives on the sixteenth floor. H-he doesn’t know yet…”
April drifted off, hoping to catch more of the guard’s sympathy. It didn’t seem to work.
“Out. Now.” The guard prepared to drag April out of the building, but she was too nimble for him. Tearing towards the elevators, she slammed the glowing “up” button, praying that it wasn’t occupied on a higher floor. She waited a few seconds before reluctantly giving up and using the steps to the right of the elevator. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the guard dialing a number, presumably the police, in the phone on the wall. How real was this dream?
In her momentary adrenaline, the flights of stairs were less daunting than ever before, and she found herself standing, dazed, sweaty, and alone on the roof of a skyscraper before she had even thought about where she was going. The rain had finally stopped, and a thick fog had settled over the city, obstructing her view of everything but her immediate surroundings. April pressed the tips of her tattered sneakers up to the ledge and stared down into the murky gloom. She could barely make out the shapes of tiny toy cars as they crawled ant-like through the narrow and crowded street below.
Spreading her arms like a bird, she tested herself. She yearned to feel fear, or even dread in the pit of her stomach, but all she felt was emptiness. Then she made her decision. Breeze ruffling the small hairs lining her forehead, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, maybe her last. And she fell. She fell, and the ground swallowed her.