Returning to the white room felt somewhat surreal as the first and last time I had been here previously was upon my arrival to The Contra. It was much smaller than I had remembered, yet the clinical memory imprinted in my mind’s eye was perfectly accurate. I struggled to comprehend the instruction to spend the day cleaning this tiny space. How such a small and pristinely kept room would take the whole day with two of us on task baffled me.
“Child, you have returned!” Judith exclaimed, her voice full of inappropriate, annoying excitement as she stood to greet me. Despite the fact that I simply found it disrespectful, I found it even odder that Judith should refer to me as ‘child’, particularly as we were much closer in age than I was to The Alia. Why was it that Judith longed to be so much
