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I don't know how I landed here. I remember waking up and not seeing a thing, then blackness. Waking up, blind again, but here.
The floor is cold concrete, and I think I am in a cage. I may not be able to see, but I can hear and this place place sounds like sadness.
***
I found out that there were two cages next to mine. There are probably more, but they don't really matter to me, and I wouldn't know where they would be if their occupants ever actually bothered trying to talk to me. I really miss seeing things, but I can't take off that thing on my eyes. I wish I could.
On the left, if I face the side where I get the food from, there's a woman who doesn't like talking to me. When I pestered her about it for a while, she said her name was Emma.
On the right is a guy. He doesn't sound like he's American, and he mumbles something in a foreign language every time before going to sleep. I think he's French.
***
I woke up on a table today. The men outside the cages gave everyone food, just like always, and I ate it, like I always do, but then I must've fallen asleep.
I don't want to think about what the doctors did.
When I woke up the guy in the cage on the right spoke to me, in English. He said his name was Remy, and the docs took everyone away once in a while. I asked him about his accent, and he said he was American, but that he sounded that way because he was Cajun. I could've been talking to another kid on the playground, if Remy didn't sound like he was a smoker and the concrete I was sitting on wasn't so cold.
***
I asked Remy about his mumbling, and he told me to go to hell. He doesn't want to talk about it, no matter how much I push. I still decided to stop asking, because Emma already didn't want to talk to me, and I don't know what I would do if Remy stopped too. Maybe count the bars on my cage again.
***
Today I decided to ask Remy how old I was. Last time I had been taken away the doctors looked at my brain and said I heard them saying something about a coma. A coma was something where somebody was not awake for a long time, or that was how my mom had explained it to me I don't know how long ago.
When Remy asked me how old I thought I was, I told him that I remembered being eight years old.
"Dat's not how ya look, *chile*. Not at all. Poor *petite*." He's been talking to me like adults talk to little kids ever since. He hadn't been doing that before.
***
I asked Remy about the mumbling again. "Or are you going to tell me to go to hell again?" I knew he wouldn't. He hadn't said stuff like that to me since we talked about my age.
"I talk to *le bon Dieu*, to God, *petit*."
"Why?"
"Because he helps those who believe in him.
"It doesn't sound like praying. It sounds like French."
"I pray in French. In Latin too."
"Why would God understand French? Or Latin? Nobody speaks Latin."
"God does.*
"I bet he doesn't. He probably thinks you're just mumbling to yourself."
"We'll see, Scotty."
He sounded like he actually knew what he was doing.
***
I decided to ask Remy to teach me some of what he was mumbling. I hadn't known there was a french version of the Lord's prayer.
***
Remy's gone. Not dead gone, or 'the docs took him away' gone. He's escaped, he got away. He didn't take anyone with him, but no-one's really mad, because they probably wouldn't have taken anyone else with them either.
I started praying in French. After all Remy got away, so he must've been doing something right. So now I pray in French, and even in Latin. Maybe God really just doesn't speak English.
***
There's a commotion outside my little cage-world. Nobody escaped before or after Remy, and people said he'd come back for everyone else. Others said there was a wild man on the loose, like the monster that called himself Creed. I pray, and wish I could just see what was going on.