357
The Beginning
“He’s coming around,” a voice stated above me. My eyes opened and I was cold. The lights above me were bright. I began to cry.
At that point, I had the soul of a baby. Pure, innocent, curious. I died in my mother’s womb and was brought back by scientists in an underground facility below the Hudson River. I was given life.
“How are you feeling, #357?”
Grumbled words escaped my mouth, baby talk. I knew what they were saying but I did not know how to respond, so I continued to cry, my body shaking. I looked at my legs. They were longer than they were in my mother’s womb. My arms were longer too. My whole body was much larger than the body I remembered in my mother’s womb.
“Sit him up and take him to his cell and get him to stop his fuckin’ blubbering.”
The doctor is cruel…I still see him. His name is Dr. Brown. He is in his late-eighties and was the man responsible for the program. I have tried to decipher his anger towards the experiments—what we might have done to anger him. Another experiment, #201, explained that his sister’s baby died in the womb and caused he great amounts of grief. He wanted to get revenge on the baby and that’s how #1 came to be. #1 died three days after he came into his body. That was back in the 1940s.
I was put into a wheel chair and pushed into a cell, thrown into it and left there.
#356 was there. She was a beautiful woman, her auburn hair flowing down her back, tied up at the base of her neck. Her eyes were green, fierce.
“Hello, #357,” she greeted. “Welcome. Right now you are under the Hudson River, a river separating New Jersey and New York. You were born into death in New Jersey, but that doesn’t matter now.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about but I liked to listen to her talk, and it lured me to sleep.
At that point, I had the soul of a baby. Pure, innocent, curious. I died in my mother’s womb and was brought back by scientists in an underground facility below the Hudson River. I was given life.
“How are you feeling, #357?”
Grumbled words escaped my mouth, baby talk. I knew what they were saying but I did not know how to respond, so I continued to cry, my body shaking. I looked at my legs. They were longer than they were in my mother’s womb. My arms were longer too. My whole body was much larger than the body I remembered in my mother’s womb.
“Sit him up and take him to his cell and get him to stop his fuckin’ blubbering.”
The doctor is cruel…I still see him. His name is Dr. Brown. He is in his late-eighties and was the man responsible for the program. I have tried to decipher his anger towards the experiments—what we might have done to anger him. Another experiment, #201, explained that his sister’s baby died in the womb and caused he great amounts of grief. He wanted to get revenge on the baby and that’s how #1 came to be. #1 died three days after he came into his body. That was back in the 1940s.
I was put into a wheel chair and pushed into a cell, thrown into it and left there.
#356 was there. She was a beautiful woman, her auburn hair flowing down her back, tied up at the base of her neck. Her eyes were green, fierce.
“Hello, #357,” she greeted. “Welcome. Right now you are under the Hudson River, a river separating New Jersey and New York. You were born into death in New Jersey, but that doesn’t matter now.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about but I liked to listen to her talk, and it lured me to sleep.