The Ones They Forgot
1125 Words
Lisa sat down beneath a flowered tree, letting the petals fall around her like slow snow. Her hands trembled in her lap, her pulse roaring in her ears. The garden still hummed its false peace, a balm that couldn’t reach the storm inside her chest.
She inhaled.
Then again.
Deeper this time.
The scent of blossoms filled her lungs—sweet, light, unnatural. She focused on the rhythm of her breath, the feel of the grass under her, the way Nya stood patiently nearby, wings barely stirring the air.
“I’m okay,” Lisa murmured to herself. “Just breathe. Just… breathe.”
She didn’t know why this felt so close, why Ariet’s name had rooted itself into her ribs like something growing. Maybe because it could’ve been her. Maybe because she had known silence, too. Shame. Loneliness.
“Tell me,” she finally whispered. “Tell me what happened.”
Nya’s wings gave a soft twitch. She sat beside Lisa now, folding her hands gently in her lap.
“No standard treatment was ever given to Ariet,” Nya said, her voice quiet but steady. “Not one.”
Lisa blinked, confused. “Then what…?”
“They gaslighted her,” Nya continued. “Not with medicine. Not with kindness. But with something far more dangerous—deliberate psychological destruction. They told her, every day, that what she remembered wasn’t real. That her body lied to her. That her trauma was fiction.”
Lisa swallowed hard.
“They made her repeat things,” Nya went on. “They’d ask her what happened, and when she spoke the truth, they’d smile gently and say: ‘No, Ariet. That never happened. You imagined it. Let’s try again.’ Over and over. Until the line between memory and nightmare blurred.”
“But she knew,” Lisa said softly.
“Yes,” Nya nodded. “Her body knew. Her soul screamed, even when her mouth couldn’t. And when they realized she wouldn’t break the way they wanted her to—when she wouldn’t forget, wouldn’t let go—they stopped pretending to help her.”
Lisa felt a hollow ache in her stomach.
“What… did they do?” she asked, though a part of her already knew the answer.
Nya turned her face toward the trees, the petals drifting across her pink wings. “They saw an opportunity. She was young. Her body, they said, was ‘pliant.’ They began to use her, one by one. Turn by turn. The doctors, the night staff, the silent guards who watched and never intervened.”
Lisa felt bile rise in her throat.
“They ravaged her,” Nya whispered. “Not just her mind. Her body. Until the light in her eyes went dark. Until the only thing left was the trembling shadow of who she used to be.”
Tears welled in Lisa’s eyes, hot and silent.
“And then,” Nya added, “when they’d stolen everything she had, they began testing their creations on her.”
“Creations?” Lisa asked, her voice hoarse.
“Experimental drugs,” Nya said. “Compounds banned in nearly every part of the world. Things that shattered time inside the brain. Things that bent thought into spirals. They called them ‘calmants,’ or ‘cognitive neutralizers.’ But what they really were... were poisons designed to erase.”
Lisa pressed her hand to her mouth.
“She wasn’t the only one,” Nya said. “There were others. Girls who painted too vividly. Boys who refused to speak. Children who believed in invisible friends. Men who wore makeup. Women who chose silence. They took them all.”
Lisa's voice cracked. “Why? Why would anyone do that?”
Nya didn’t answer immediately. The trees around them shifted with the breeze, sighing as if in grief.
“Because control is a religion,” she said finally. “And those who worship it cannot stand the unpredictable. They saw Ariet and the others not as people, but as problems. And problems are meant to be fixed. Or erased.”
Lisa stared at the glowing grass, her vision blurred.
“But… how did she die?” she asked quietly, afraid of the answer.
Nya’s gaze dropped.
“One evening,” she said, “a cool one, she was caught standing in the hallway, just beneath one of the CCTV cameras. She wasn’t trying to escape. She wasn’t screaming. She just stared. Into the lens. Into the eyes watching her.”
Lisa’s heart thudded.
“She stood like that for hours. Barefoot. Silent. Then… she turned and walked to the edge of the observation deck on the third floor. She climbed onto the rail. And she jumped.”
The words hit Lisa like a blow.
“She ended it?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Nya replied. “In a place built to drain her of everything, that was her one final act of control.”
A tear slipped down Lucy’s cheek.
“And the staff?” she asked. “Her family?”
“The staff wrote it down as ‘impulsive behavior.’ No charges. No questions. As for her parents... they were informed of her death.”
Lisa looked up at Nya. “Did they care?”
“No,” Nya said, her tone flat. “They were relieved. A burden, they called her. A burden finally gone. Her body was left at the research annex connected to the facility. They extracted her brain.”
Lisa gasped.
“For study,” Nya added. “For understanding the ‘irregular mind.’”
Lisa shook her head violently. “No. That’s… that’s not real. That can’t be real.”
“It happened,” Nya said. “It happened to her. And to many like her. So many.”
The garden fell into an aching silence. Even the trees seemed to hold their breath. Petals floated slowly from above, soft as snowfall, ghostly in the light.
Lisa couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Her mind had collapsed inward, images of Ariet spiraling in black and red.
The hallway. The camera.
The empty stare.
The leap.
She imagined the moment her body struck the ground. Alone. Unmourned. Stripped of everything, even dignity.
She imagined her brain in a cold dish under fluorescent lights.
Nya reached out gently, resting a small jade hand on Lisa’s arm.
“There are echoes,” she whispered. “Still here. Still watching. Still waiting.”
Lisa turned to her, but her mouth wouldn’t move. Her throat was frozen.
Because in that moment, she wasn’t Lisa anymore.
She was every broken girl. Every cast-off boy. Every silenced soul.
And there were too many.
Far, far too many.
And Lisa—she was too stunned to speak.
- Writer
