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EPISODE 3 — 6 YEARS OLD
TW; abuse, mild gore & violence
6.20.2004Little feet slapping loud on metal, Judas zooms across the cafeteria bridge, July fast on his heels. He wears his red cape, because he’s a pirate, and it’ll make him braver. He giggles, the sound echoing across the cafeteria, drawing looks from the crowd at the bottom.This is the first day he’s felt good again since the last time they took him, and July said they’d do something special, just for him, and he was right. Judas didn’t think July would ever agree to stealing away up here where he said they weren’t supposed to go, but they’re up there now, both of them.Vests step in the way, but Judas is small and he dodges them, and July’s more like a cat than a pirate and even when they grab him, he slips free, giving chase to Judas. They slide and dodge and narrowly avoid capture, inspiring frustrated shouts and groans from the mean Vests. Even when one manages to scoop Judas up, July jumps on the vest’s back, pulling on his ear until they drop him.“Run, Judy, run!!” July cries victorious, cheering as Judas scampers back up to his feet and takes off again, dodging the grabbing hands. He turns his head, finds July following, and yowls a great big victory cry as they successfully cross the bridge and run back into the big corridors. Vests chase them, but they’re fast, and they know these rooms better. July grabs Judas’ arm and pulls him into a lounge to hide behind a potted plant, their heavy breaths hidden under the heavy stopping outside the door. July keeps his hand over his mouth, pressing harder when Judas starts to giggle, and. When Judas turns his head, he sees that it’s because July is trying not to giggle himself.“…You two are gonna get yourselves into some serious trouble one day,” says a voice from across the room. Both Judas and July suck in a sharp breath, wide eyes darting to the voice. It’s Dr. Ritter, sat at the round table with her legs crossed, a book in hands, and her reading glasses halfway down her big nose.“Ritter!!” The two cry in unison, throwing their arms up and doing something akin to a happy prance in her direction. Well— Judas prances, and July just walks, but he follows Judas nonetheless, a smile on his face.“Judy, July,” She says, a maternal smile on her face. She sets her book down, leans over and folds her arms across the table. “Hyper as ever, I see.”“We’re playing pirates!!” Judas says, and he must be too loud because Ritter smiles something mischievous and puts a finger over her bright red lips. Judas runs over to her, and when he holds his arms out for a great big hug, she welcomes it.“You too, July,” she says, unsatisfied until she has both boys in a tight hug. She’s warm, and soft, and Judas instantly realizes that he misses her. Dr. Matthews isn’t as nice as Ritter, isn’t as friendly and doesn’t give hugs or gifts or sweets from outside. July doesn’t like anyone in this place, he says, but Judas thinks he lies and that he likes Ritter, even just a little bit. After what feels like too short of a time, she lets the boys go, something sad about her smile.“You still got squeakers? Does she need new strings yet?” Ritter asks, eyebrows raised so high it makes her face look younger than the rest of the mean ole’ Coats. She’s talking about the violin, which Judas’ decided squeaks like a mouse when he plays it even though it sounds so pretty when she does, but he promised her that he’d make it sound pretty one day, too. She gave it to him on his last day in the Ward, said to hide it real well and to keep it super safe, and to come back and see her if he needs some help with it.“Did you think I’d lose her??” Judas says, placing a balled up fist on his chest and putting on a proud face. “She sounds so bad! How do I know if she needs new strings??”“Well, she’ll sound ‘so bad’. Why don’t you bring her to my office tomorrow night? I’ll fix her up for you and maybe you two will start to get along.”“Okay!!” Judas says, bouncing on his toes, glancing back at July, who looks happier now than he did even a minute ago. The excitement in Judas’ chest bubbles and bubbles like stirred up dish soap.They end up in the lounge for minutes and minutes, talking to Ritter until she says that it’s probably safe for them to go, and that they really should before someone else shows up, but make sure not to miss their appointment. Judas smiles real big and bright, nods his head so much it seems to wobble, and chases July back to their room.When they get back to the room, they stay in there the rest of the night, and July smiles and applauds Judas’ sorry attempts at playing squeakers while they try to ignore the coats mulling around outside their cell door. Everytime it looks like they’re making July nervous, Judas plays louder, and louder, even trying to sing the words to the Rosie song to the untrained tune that doesn’t match.6.21.2004Judas is crying again. The Vests and the Coats have been outside their room now again, all day, and it makes July sad and it makes Judas scared. He doesn’t want to go back already. He cries now, he thinks, more than he’s ever cried. Earlier, he asked July if his body would run out of water to make more tears and July said that he didn’t know.They’re gonna take him again. This will be the third time. They learned from the first. Now, July isn’t given the chance to protect Judas like he did the first time. The second time and now, they put July to sleep before they even came for him. He doesn’t know how they do that— he doesn’t want to know how.He just knows that he tries to fight, but he’s not as big or as smart as July, and he doesn’t have any metals to fight them with, and he doesn’t win. They pull him away from July, and last time they locked the door behind him, and they didn’t let him out until they brought Judas back. Last time, Judas came back crying, and sleepy, and his whole body hurt and he didn’t know how or why. He doesn’t remember when it stopped, or why, or how he got back to his room. He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it to Dr. Ritter’s appointment to fix squeakers strings if they take him today, and he doesn’t wanna make her sad.All he remembered was how the dark room got real bright, and how he screamed so loud it made his voice small. How it was so bright for so long that he saw double for two days, and his eyes were so dry that crying made them burn. His skin was red and hot for days, and his body felt so soupy he couldn’t lift up his head—July tried to take him to the nurses more than once, but they said they didn’t have room for him. July begged, and he yelled, and he got real big mad until Judas asked if they could just go back.Today, before they came for him, Judas promised July he wouldn’t come back crying this time. He’d come back with a smile, cause July likes it when he smiles, and they could take a nap and he’d be okay, he promised. July tried to smile at him, but it looked like it hurt his teeth to do it. He doesn’t know why, but it made him feel smaller than he wanted to feel.Today, though, he’s going to be strong and brave, even if he is small, so he doesn’t make July so sad. Even when they came to get him, and July fell asleep without anyone there to give him no shots, Judas made sure to smile real big at him and wipe the stingy tears away from his eyes. Today, he told July he’d be okay, and that he’d see him when he got back, and they’d play that the floor is lava. When the people came to get him, Judas put on his mean face that he’d been practicing for days, and he held out his little hands for the Coats to wrap in cable. He turned back and smiled at July, waving the best he could as they turned the corner.He thought they were going to the same big room as last time, with the one big glass box with all the cords. This time, they turn different corners. They go up an elevator, and when the Coats look at him, Judas sneers, showing all of his teeth. This makes them chuckle amongst themselves and pick fun of him, but he doesn’t back down. He sneers at them all the way down the hallway, everytime they look down at him like he’s tiny and weak, and Judas thinks about all the yelling and crying they did when July poked great big holes in them and stole that Coat’s eye, and he doesn’t feel so scared of them. They’re not tiny, but they’re not strong, either, and if they didn’t already have so much power, July could take them, he knows it. Nobody but the Rats— the ones with the silver and the yellow tags on their collars —are strong, that’s what July said.For the first time in their walk, Judas looks away from them and lets his sneer drop as they turn a corner.Judas has never seen something big in his life.He’s never seen a room so small fit something so big inside of it. Hands bound in front of him, the Coats lead him into fire; like the other rooms they took him to, this room is dark. Judas' heartbeat thunders in his chest, staring up at the two glass cylinders that make up the majority of the room. They stretch all the way up to the ceiling, and Judas has to crane his neck all the way back up to see up that high. Fat cords as big as Judas’ arm come out of them, from the top and the bottom, and they crawl across the roof and the floor and the walls, hidden under see-through panels with doors. The metal bases connect, too, cords and wires and little metal pieces shared in the small space between them.Grownups crowd the small-ish room. There’s grownups in white coats, grownups in black vests, and rats that wear scrubs and don yellow tags. Some of them sit at tables, tinkering with this or that, and others wear weird, full-body suits that Judas has never seen before, and it makes him feel a little less brave. There’s big glass panels that cover their faces, tinted so Judas can’t see inside. On the back wall, there’s a big glass window that looks into another room with chairs and computers and more people, seated and looking like they’re studying hard.None of that’s the real scary part, though. The real scary thing is how every hair on his body stands on end as soon as he passes the threshold, like passing through some electrified barrier. Even the thick curly tangles in his hair try to stick straight as a pencil, pulling in all directions except where they’re supposed to lay. He hears the Coats chuckle, and he hears them comment on it, but he doesn’t look up at them. Instead, he looks at the big clear glass with nothing in it— the Coat in front of him calls it a containment unit —and the one beside it, seemingly stuffed full with something pitch black and purple and alive. July recoils, but he’s spooked foreward once more with a shrieking noise of metal grinding on metal.The boy rolls around to see another door being lowered in front of the wall; it’s like the doors in the hallways during lockdown, large enough in width to crush his small body whole no matter which way he stands or lays under it. As it lowers, slow and grinding and loud, the door they entered through closes and locks as well.This isn’t at all how it went the first time. He feels his breathing stutter, and he pulls his arms back to his body, backing up from the door until he bumps into the large Rat beside him. He’s heard the others call him Jerimiah, and his hair is white as the walls, and his eyes are pale purple like Judas’ favorite crayon. When he grins down at Judas, his teeth are fanged, and yellow, like the yellow tag on his neck.“Easy there, shrimp,” Jerimiah says, his voice a little like whiney nails on a chalkboard, “We’ll get to you in a sec’.”Judas frowns, clears his throat in such a way he can hear himself whine just as the grinding stops. With that door closed, the only other way out is into the room with the big window.Judas looks back at the mass stuffed into the glass. Everywhere it’s surface touches the glass leaves it sticky and viscous, slime pulling away and squishing in a new place. It expands, and shrinks, pulsating like one big worm, wrinkles in it’s layers and layers and layers of saggy skin. It doesn’t have a face that Judas can see, but it does have hands, which make Judas feel squeamish when he sees multiple push up against the glass all at once. Five, seven, ten boney hands, pitch black like pupils with purplish blue slime, oozing from visible pores. The glass bows, but doesn’t break or crack, and as it shifts back into place, the monster makes a noise that Judas wants it to take back. Something between a yowl and a scream and a tumultuous rumble that shakes the whole room.“Ah, quit yer’ bitchin’!!” He hears someone call from the corner of the room, and Judas shrinks again, feeling his little chest expand three times it’s size with heavy breathing. He turns back to the door that’s dissapeared behind the wall, wishing he could run out.“Let’s get a move on, guys. The unit’s not rated for this. I’m not trying to have a code red on our hands.”Judas doesn’t know who said it, but it gets the ball rolling. The chatter escalates, words Judas doesn’t understand are called across the room. Jeremiah the Rat approaches him, and with one swoop of his blade, cuts through the metal cable binding his hands together. He looks from one person to the next, hoping for an explanation with none being offered. He doesn’t want to ask, he doesn’t want to know.When Jeremiah grabs his wrist and starts to pull, every brave bone in his body shrinks and shrinks until it’s gone, and Judas thrashes. He hits and kicks and thrashes, demanding they let him go. He doesn’t notice the glass cylinder rise off it’s pedastal until he’s dragged onto the middle of it.Every grown up in this room could lay down flat on the floor of this platform and there’d still be room— he doesn’t know why he’s in a unit this big, he doesn’t want to know.He feels the cold, unforgiving SMACK of a hand across his cheek, feels the ground rush to meet him, and when he’s able to collect his barrings, the glass is already closing around him.“That was uncalled for…”“Whatever, man. He’ll be painting the glass in a bit, anyways.”Judas doesn’t understand what that means. He scrambles to his feet, running at the glass, as if expecting it to work when it hadn’t any time before. He beats on it from all directions, demanding to be let out, putting on his mean face like he practiced, feeling his hair pull and pull the direction of the creature in the other Unit. His whole /body/ feels like it’s pulling, keeping him from hitting the glass hard enough or keeping his footing.“Prep seemed to’ve work,” he hears one of them say.“Yeah, that’s pretty new. His buddy must’a been something real special if this works.”“C’mon. What makes you think it’s going to? It hasn’t before. What kid is this? Like— the fifteenth or sixteenth?”“Yeah, she’s right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”“Ye who hath little faith!”“Shut up.”They talk, and talk, and the others who aren’t chatting call weird numbers across the room. Some of the grown ups open panels and some of them check the cords and others retreat back into the room with the big window, taking seats in the chairs like spectators who’re just here to watch the show. Judas feels his feet slip and slide on the platform, and when he loses balance, his whole body is pulled towards the giant worm like a magnet.His back hits the wall and sticks him to it. His head hits it, and like it knocked the sense out of him, he feels the tears prickle his eyes. He pushes back, tries to pivot, begging and pleading to people who aren’t listening. July who can’t hear him. Conner, Margo, Gram-Cracker, who aren’t in this room and can’t save him.“LET ME OUT!! Please, PLEASE,” He shrieks, wide eyes fixating on the swarming mass beside him. It’s prison unit goes four floors high, and it fills up every ounce of it, sliding around like a great big caterpillar.They dim the lights, bathing the room in total darkness as the remaining staff members scamper to the room with the window.“NO, STOP,” Judas cries, desperate and tearful, pounding on the glass wall.The countdown starts, animatronic voice counting down the seconds till the bright lights start.
“PLEASE, /please/—I’LL BE GOOD!” His voice cracks as it devolves into banshee screaming, then helpless sobs.He locks eyes with it. No white to be seen, no face, no nose or mouth or eyebrows. Only narrowed slits of black and gold, glowing in the darkness against it’s ugly, writhing form. He hates it, he hates it, he’s scared.“../P-Please/,” he cries.The counting stops. Blinding white swallows the whole room, then red, and the whole building quakes around them with a roar so loud Judas can’t hear his own anguish over it. Sound turns into ringing, touch turns into raw and red and hurt. From the inside out, Judas feels on fire, noise tearing from his throat until there’s no noise at all.Even when the child falls limp to the floor, plastered against the glass, it doesn’t stop. The structure quakes; panels fall from the ceilings and peel up from the floors, flying across the room like debris in a hurricane. Green lights turn red, alarms sound, but not loud enough to pierce the roaring thunder. Violent dents protrude from the blast shield door, threatening the facility's careful structural integrity.“Shut it down.”“Don’t you DARE.”“Sir, it’s gonna—““Leave it.”6.22.2004It’s late into the night when the glass prison rises up from the platform. Judas hasn’t moved in hours, but his heart still beats, and his lungs still sputter on small bursts of air. There’s no trace of the monster in the second prison— only smears and smudges on the glass where it once existed.The whole event sprung the facility into chaos. The quakes reportedly caused widespread security failure—barriers failed, collars failed, some floors lost functionality completely. In the midst of the lockdown, Specimen of all divisions took their shot. Walls completely torn through. Running, screaming— blood splatters the walls of the facility. Staff and Experiment alike litter the ground in obscure piles of bodies. Gunfire and screams, ear splitting alarms and flashing lights.It takes hours to get the mess sorted, but the damage is done.On the outside of the dented blast shield, torn and beaten, covered in bloody claw marks, sits July. As soon as his cell failed, it’s reported that the specimen ran straight for the source of the commotion. He hasn’t left the door in hours, hasn’t stopped demanding to be let in. It’s unknown how he escaped injury.The transmutation is named a remarkably disastrous success.6.23.2004He hears beeping. His throat feels dry, so dry it burns. He tries to take a breath, and finds that it doesn’t work—he breathes against whatever aparatus is pumping air into his weak lungs, and he feels his throat constrict in an unsatisfying cough. He wants to open his eyes, he tries to, but they’re so heavy, sticking his lashes together like glue.He hears talking in the background— unfamiliar voices as echoes and distant chatter. He tries to lift his arm but it doesn’t respond, heavier than bricks and big rocks, too big for his arms to lift.He feels a hand close around his hand. “Judy?” The voice is so weak, but it’s unmistakably Julys. Judas wants to respond, but his mouth is open, and full, and he couldn’t, even if he wanted to, even if he could open his eyes.“…Please wake up…”6.28.2004Judas stirs to the violent feeling of something being pulled from his throat. It’s raw, and it hurts, and his eyes burn when tears flood them, unsticking days worth of crust. He feels soupy. He feels heavy. He feels hot, and miserable, drenched in awful sweat. He chokes, and the first noise he makes is a dry sob when the nurse tugs his eyelid open and shines a searing light into his pupils, blurring the whole room, making him dizzy.Water’s held to his lips, and he chokes on it, spilling more onto his chest than he gets in his mouth. His whole body hurts. Every touch and rustle or the blankets or clothes feels searing, like touching something way too hot.Commotion quiets him, stills his breath in his chest. Nurses shout. Something breaks. Something or someone slams into a wall, and something collides with his bed so hard it makes it roll, makes him nauseated. More footsteps follow behind, one pair louder and click-ier than the others.“J-Judy?? /Judy/..Are you..”It’s July’s voice— the only one in a sea of them that makes any sense, that doesn’t make his ear drums want to burst and bleed and fill with water.“Leave the boy alone,” says another stern, familiar voice in the chaos. Dr. Ritters, who stands near July with a hand on his shoulder and glaring eyes at the rest of the quieting staff, “Don’t you think you’ve all done enough? They’re just kids.”Judas blinks his eyes open, narrow little slits, but enough to see the comforting tufts of blond, and glassy blue, and bright red lipstick.Judas coughs, sputters, and when he turns his head, he smiles.
EPISODE 3 — 6 YEARS OLD
TW; gore (mild injury, eye horror) & violence
Things were new. They were bad, but they were good, and they were a little scary, but they were funner.After Judas is moved into “D-2”, or “Theology,” like they sometimes called it, things got different real fast. July said that is was supposed to happen this way and that everything would be okay, and Judas believed him. They came to get him some time after his appointment with the other kids— the ones who got taken away never came back. The ones in his group moved to the new place, with him. Some of them aren’t there, anymore.The place is… well, a /lot/ bigger, and Judas still gets lost when he isn’t holding hands with July everywhere he goes because every hallway here looks the same and they don’t like it when he hangs up coloring book pages of arrows, even though his arrows look so good, July says so. They take them down almost immediately, and they get real big mad at him if they see him do it— he’s fast, though, and the new people that stand around everywhere can’t catch him. July call’s them ‘Vests,’ cause they wear black vests and black clothes and carry around black metal things that July calls guns, and says Judas is never supposed to play with those.The hallways are big. The ceiling is way up high, too, and there’s no bookshelves or toys except for the ones Judas and July snuck in and stole from their old rooms. July says Judas has to keep them tucked away in their dressers under their clothes so the grownups don’t see them.Weirder yet, they eat with the grown-ups now, and the big kids. When the dinner bell rings, they all have to follow the herd to a room bigger than he’s ever seen in his whole life— there’s two balconies up that round the whole big room, and there’s people that always stand around up there looking bored and angry. Vests, Coats, and people that look and dress like them so they must be other Rats— they’re called rats, July says. He thinks that’s okay though, because rats are kind of cute. Judas wants to go up there, but July keeps telling him it’s not a good idea and he doesn’t really know why, but he trusts him. There’s tables bigger and longer than he’s ever seen, and benches and chairs so tall that July has to boost him up onto them so he can get up.The door buttons are too high for Judas to reach, too. If the door to his room is closed when he goes back to it, he has to go get July or a grownup to help him press the button— they always seem angry about it, but July never is. July’s taller than him, and he can reach the buttons no problem, and he always smiles and helps him even when he looks tired.He’s even got more kids that want to play with him! Darcy’s big sister is gone now, and July says she probably isn’t coming back, so Darcy isn’t mean anymore. She sits with July and Judas when they eat and sometimes she smiles and sometimes she laughs when she isn’t too sad. July says not to ask her why she’s sad, and to just try and make her happy. Conner, one of the kids who played tag, plays with them now, too— he barely calls Judas too slow anymore, and he follows him around whenever Judas thinks up new games for them to play.Now, they play tag along the big hallway, giving chase to each other and sometimes they hide in closets and empty cells. They raid storage closets for broom handles to play sword fight, like they see the grownups do in the other big room sometimes. July looks nervous when they pass that big room, though, so they don’t hang around there too much. Judas has more fun now, he thinks, than he ever had in stinky old peed-ward.Not all the older kids like him, but it’s really funny to watch them get mad when he leads his crusade of cat pirates across the cafeteria tables to stay off the floor— because the floor is lava, sometimes, and July says lava is super hot and burns you up if you touch it. They find coke cans and empty bottles and hide them in places, and one of these days, they’re gonna make their way up onto those balconies and see what's up there, because pirates are adventurers and that means he’s an adventurer, too. He’ll explore all the places in the compound one day, he swears it.Today, though, is different. Today’s not so fun as it’s been this whole time. Today, the grownups have been acting weird around Judas and giving him weird looks all day that gives him worms. The other kids that get looked at all day get taken away, sometimes, and they come back real sad or with ouchies or they don’t come back at all, and July says they’re in a better place and they left here. Judas doesn’t want to go to a better place if July isn’t coming with him, though, and they only ever take one of them at a time. Judas doesn’t want to go with them— he doesn’t want to see what makes everyone so sad.It unnerves him enough that he’s been in Julys bedroom all morning, skipping dinner after breakfast when they kept looking at him and whispering. July tells him it’s okay, and Judas nods with a brave smile that wobbles, hiding under the sheets and against the wall while July periodically gets up and looks into the hallway for them. He says they won’t look for Judas here, and Judas wants to trust him.“It’s okay, Judy,” July says, smiling at Judas when he comes back from peeking out the door. He comes back to the bed with him, fishing out the little red toy that July calls Elmo, handing it to Judas. Judas takes it, his timid smile growing ever brighter as he crawls from his huddle and holds elmo out into the air. Triumphant and real brave again for a fleeting moment.“ELMO’S NOT GONNA—“ Judas starts to cry out, much louder and excitable than he should. He’s cut off by July's eyes going wide and shaking his head real fast and holding a finger over his mouth.“Shhh, you gotta be…” July starts to whisper, but his breath and his words catch in his throat when voices come out from the hallway.“Did you guys hear that?”“Think it’s him?”“Came from over there.”July looks like a ghost. Judas feels his tummy drop. He slaps his hands over his mouth real fast, looking back and forth between July and the door, uncertain. They’re coming for him, aren’t they? He didn’t know they were that close, July didn’t tell him.The footfalls, too quiet to hear before, come closer to Julys open door. He thinks he hears July say a bad word, watches helplessly as he tosses the sheets over the top of Judas’s head and then sounds like he’s going somewhere else. Judas grips the sheet with one of his tiny hands, pulling it closer to his body as if it will keep him safe.“July—??” Judas tries to whisper, only to be hushed by his friend. He curls up in the corner, listening to the dresser drawer open and close, something banging around on it’s way out. Next thing he knows, July is shoving pillows all around Judas, squishing him into the corner, hiding him in the bulk. Just as the voices get closer, July jumps onto the bed with him, half on top of him, and Judas tries not to wheeze under the pressure. July scoots right up into his lap, elmo toy in hands like hes playing with it as they come in. From beyond the sheet, behind July’s shoulder, Judas can see the dark shadows in the doorway. Big, too big, too gruff and too scary. Judas keeps one hand over his mouth, tries to hold his breath and be still. Conner told him he’s still no good at hide and seek, but he really really wants to be.“…Watcha’ doin’ there, kid?” One of the shadows ask. He feels July shift and temporarily, his shoulder blocks his view. Is he shaking? Is July scared?“Huh? Nothing,” July answers, his voice almost clear and almost believable, and maybe the shadows will believe it since they don’t know July like Judas knows July.“You weren’t at grub today. Neither was your friend. Happen to see him?” The other voice asks. She sounds mean, and her voice crackles like an old toad with a rattle in her chest. July shakes his head, and one of the shadows come back into view because they’re getting closer and the closer they get the bigger they are. His chest feels tight, and wormy, and he exhales the quietest, slowest breath.“Hm. Right.” They say, exhaling breath like a huffy dog settling down for a nap. They’re gonna leave, right? They believe July cause Julys a good fibber and they’re gonna leave.“Say, kid. That’s an awful lot of pillows you got on you bed. You allowed to have that many?”July stiffens, and Judas tries and tries not to squirm, tries not to reach out and grab July’s shirt like he’s done so many times before.“I just found ‘em.. I didn’t know there was a limit on them,” He lies, and lies good enough Judas can barely tell it’s a lie. He knows it is though, cause Judas and him chipmonk pillows every time the supply closets left open. That doesn’t seem to matter, though.“Why don’t ya go ahead and take some of them back? We’ll help.”“N-No. That’s alright, I don’t need any help. I’ll take them in a minute,” July tries, and judas can hear the strain in his voice this time. They must’ve heard it too, because they’re coming closer, their shadows getting bigger on both of July’s shoulders, like the biggest parrots he ever saw in the pirate book.“Get up, kid.”Things move so fast Judas can’t keep up. July’s body jerks, and the shadow /wails/, and blood spatters on the white sheet in front of him, blotting out his view. Judas whines, breaking his cover, falls back into the wall with his palms outstretched, trying to get the blots away from him, the germs and other people's worms that he doesn't want to touch him. In the process, he pushes the covers off his head, away and into July’s back, desperate and disturbed.He’s only more disturbed when July pushes back on his body, shielding him as the commotion spirals. The biggest shadow— not a shadow, a coat— holds his bleeding hand, blood pouring from a hole in the middle like a bathroom sink. The other Coat comes at July, grabs for his wrist to pull him away, but July yowls like something Judas’ has never heard and pumps his hand like Judas does when he’s trying to stab a hole through paper with his pencil. The coat yells, growls bad words and wrestles July back on top of Judas, trapping him under their writhing bodies. July kicks, and screams, and stabs, and when Judas hears metal clatter to the floor, July bites, shaking his head like a mean dog with her arm in his mouth.Judas tries to squeeze out— his body is mashed between July and the metal wall behind him, can’t take a breath in, can’t let a breath out, can’t move his foot that's trapped beneath the knee of the grownup. The Coat’s free arm raises, hammers July on top of his head and he hears July’s muffled grunty-growling behind each hollow thunk. Blood slings and spatters from the puncture holes in her arm all in their hair, his face, and the wall behind him. Sticky, hot, oozing with her bugs and germs and crawling on his skin. She pounds and pounds until July lets go. Judas screams, reaching out to put his sticky hand on her face and shove her away, but it’s pressing on a brick wall that doesn’t give.“Stop it, stop it!! Stop hurting him!” Judas hears himself cry, making his tiny hand into a fist and grabbing what he can— A wad of hair, a sliver of her eyelid, tugging and hitting. He pushes on July’s writhing body, trying still to wiggle out from under it so he can breathe, so he can fight. He hears the Coat shout more guttural curses as she chops down on Judas’ arm and calls them both names.As soon as Judas’ hand gets batted away, July’s hand shoots up, as if learning from Judas. Claws first, fingers extended, and time moving in slow motion, Judas watches in horror as Julys fingers jab right into the socket. Clear liquid, yellowish liquid, and blood explode from her eye in a sickening POP, and an even more sickening squishy noise as July scoops it out and smears it across her face, trying to push her back.She screams. Her hands leave July, and shoot to cover her gouged eye socket. She fumbles backwards off the bed, crying out profanties and dancing in an agonized circle, bumping into the other two men on her way out of the room. The men stare at the two boy’s in near disbelief and outrage. Judas feels big fat gobules of tears wetting his face, feels sticky cooling ooze on his face, feels July’s body panting heavy against his. July’s arm’s are outstretched again, guarding Judas— protecting him. Judas feels himself crying, hearing the choked, suffocated sobs as if from another person, in another body far away from here. With new eyes, that didn’t see that, doesn't feel blood ooze down his cheeks and stick his hair to his forehead.Suddenly, July’s body leaves him. July dives for the floor, for the bloodied scalpel he lost in the scuffle. Judas see’s the impact coming. He inhales sharply, ready to scream, but he’s not fast enough. He sees the Coats white sneaker swing hard. He sees it collide with July’s head hard enough for it to bounce back, smack the metal bed frame, and land hard on the metal tile, lifeless.Judas dives for him, arms outstretched for his friend, but the unharmed Rat catches him. He grabs Judas by the back of his shirt, dragging him up and over July while he cries and writhes and fights.“GET UP,” He wails at July, beating on the Rats fat hands, clawing at his knuckles and his fingers that don’t give. July doesn’t move, doesn’t even look up at him. Judas screams it again, and again, and fights as hard as he can, but the Coat wraps his arms around his body and the other grabs his feet, hauling him out of the room. Judas screams and thrashes and cries, cries until he can’t breathe and he can’t think and he can’t tell where they’re going.—He never felt the sharp prick in his neck that sent the waking world falling away, and when he wakes up again, he doesn’t see July, even though he looks.Instead, the room is filled with Coat’s, Judas lying on the floor of something cold and glass. Their voices are muffled, but he doesn’t know why. They walk around, talk amongst themselves, stepping over fat cords and wires that snake across the floor. They hold clipboards and tablets, and some sit behind computers, typing things in and ignoring him.It takes him a minute to move— his head feels woozy, and heavy, and if he tips to one side too much he falls back over. They don’t notice him until he’s made it to his knees, hand oily, crusty handprints smudging the glass that closes him in on all sides. From the container's edge, he can see now that the cords all snake from him, from the round metal base he sits on.One of the coat’s finally notices the commotion. Judas realizes he’s crying again, already, and that the tears burn his eyes bad and make his vision blurry. He falls back away from the Coat as he approaches, but his back hits the other side of the glass before he can get away. Breath coming fast and hard, Judas bites his lip, snivels, and tries to look mean, but he feels his mean face wobble.“Welcome to the circus, little man,” The coat says, kneeling to stick his face right up to the glass and speaking loud so he can be heard. “Heard you caused a lot of trouble gettin’ here. A fighter. That’s good.”Judas sobs, aggressively wiping at his eyes, keeping his face mean and his mouth shut as best he can.“We’re just gonna run some tests today,” He says. His voice is /almost/ sympathetic, and Judas would believe him if he didn't remember July lying lifeless on the bedroom floor. “My name’s Dr. Matthews. I’ll be takin’ care of you from now on.”Judas still refuses to answer, refuses to stop looking mean. He feels something red and hot in his chest, something wormy, and for a second, it makes him feel brave. He pushes off from the floor, half stumbles and half runs to the glass wall, and bangs on it hard with both his fists. This apparently spooks Dr. Matthews, who falls back on his bottom with a gasp, and then a big laugh.“LET ME OUT,” Judas screams, putting both hands on the glass and pushing hard. Matthews picks himself back up from the floor, looking around at his friends who fill the whole room up with chuckles and giggles and great big laughs.“Whew! Spunky. Don’t you worry, kid. You can leave and go back to your friend once we’re done with ya’. Heheheh. Damn.”The man walks away, and Judas can’t hear what he says after that. He doesn’t know that he wants to as that something brave leaves.
EPISODE 2 — 5 YEARS OLD
Judas rocks nervously on the balls of his feet. The labcoats in front of the group he’s in check and double check their clipboards, giving brief glances to the children in front of them. He’s sure they’ve glanced at him way more than once, and one of the coats even jerked back his shoulders in a faint lunge, taking sick joy in the way the lot of kids stumbled back. Every one of the unfamiliar grown ups in this room have been mean. They sort them and resort them into different groups, two of the groups clearly smaller than the other. It makes him nervous the way they haven’t exchanged his place even once.The kid beside him— older than him by only one year —gets yanked out of their group by his arm so abruptly that Judas stumbles back with a weak yelp. The kid protests, whining miserably as he’s shoved into the smallest of the three assortments. The kid lands on his hands and knees, then scrambles quickly to his feet, bleeding into his tiny back like a herd of sheep forming a protective unit from a snapping cattle dog. Eyes glued to the exchange, Judas pushed back into the girl next to him, desperately trying to disappear behind their larger bodies. He grapples for the girls hand, only for her to hiss and jerk away.“Don’t touch me, stupid,” she snaps in an angry, shrill whisper, tucking both hands in her armpits. It’s obvious she’s scared, too, her glassy eyes and brave face locked on the clipboards. Judas bites his lip, feels anxious tears spring from the corners of his eyes. Where’s July? Why isn’t he in one of the groups?“Keep it down,” Scolds the coat, keeping a watchful eye on their group. Judas shrinks, pushing backwards and backwards, stepping on toes and bumping into his peers until his back meets the cold wall. Why is he in the biggest group? What are they even making groups for?From the faintest break in their stronghold, Judas watches the lead Coat nod at his collegue, taking a headcount of each group with an aggressive pointing finger and mouthing to himself. His assistant writes something on the clipboard, and after each count, he points a new Coat to one of the three groups.“Alright listen up,” The big one calls, his big voice carrying across the big room. He gestures to the smallest of groups, and Judas peaks over to see them all stand rigid, “Group D-1! You’re to follow this nice lady here and do as she says. No speaking, no getting out of line, no pee-breaks! Got it?”The children break out into hushed mumbles, all the children exchanging terrified glances. All the kids except Judas, that is, who has no one to look at and no one to look at him. Some kids, like the boy who always plays tag and tells Judas he talks too much, put on a brave face, though even Judas can see the quaver in his bottom lip. They’re taking him, and 5 others, lining them up in a small single file row and leading them down the hallway to their right. They all glance back at least once, helplessly trying to peak around each other. It’s not long before they’re out of sight, disappearing behind the sliding door.“Alright!,” The big man says again, pointing his fat finger at the other small group. As if learning from the first group, they all bump into each other trying to form a line. Judas watches their own group leader step in front of them, popping a piece of gum and grinning as the children all take cautious steps back from him.“Group D-3 is to follow this good man here! You already know the drill, don’t make me say it again. Do NOT touch anything, keep your sticky hands to yourselves!”The mumbles break out across the room again, louder this time as the bulk of the herd watches their friends get led away. Somethings not right about it, and they all know it— the girl with her hands in her armpits is the first of many to sniffle, watching her sister leave in a single-file line she won’t return from. Judas hugs his arms to his body, sinks against the wall until his knees can shield his body. The mechanical whirring of the left-most door signals that the others are gone. He peaks between the other kids legs, frozen, but all he can see are the Coats black scrub pants and their shiny white tennis shoes. July’s not here. They’re gonna take him away in a big group to a weird part of the Lab and July isn’t here to go with him.“Kay!” The big one barks one last time, an air of amusement in his tone that feels like it rattles Judas’ bones, like little caterpillars chewing on him, “You guys are the lucky bunch! You get to stay in D-2. Kiss ‘yer sweet hineys, cause you get to follow me. Line up! Move, move, move!”It happens much too fast. At the booming commands, the eldest of the bunch grabs Judas up by his shoulder, hissing quietly that he’s gonna get them in trouble, that he’s not gonna be the first in line. He pushes Judas in front of him, then behind the girl with her hands in her armpits, forming a line with Judas close to the middle. Another booming command later, and they’re all following the booming man, the remainder of the Coats taking up their flank to keep them all moving. The eldest kid keeps his hand on Judas’s back, pushing him harder when he slows down, causing him to stumble and bump into the girl in front. This time, she doesn’t react, tears in her eyes and snotty sniffles making trails down her red face.They’re led past the pediatric ward doors and down two winding hallways, into a room that’s filled with more computers than people. The big man leads them to the empty space in the middle, tells them to sit, and they do. Every kid bunches closer together, shoulders and knees touching as they squeeze in close and take in the room and all the people in it. These grownups aren’t wearing lab coats; more than half of them have on button up shirts and pants that he’s heard July call “jeans,” but they’re rough and July says they’re not comfortable. They each have big yellow badges with numbers on them, and carry around tablets and scanners, and little black tags with numbers engraved on them.“These guys here are gonna call ya’ up! You listening? When they call your number, you follow ‘em to the room and you answer their questions and you be real still. Got it? When they’re done with ya’, they’ll bring you back here and you’ll sit back down and wait.” Judas gulps.It goes exactly how he said it would. One by one, each kids number is called and they’re taken down the back hallway with a button-up stranger, and they’re gone for too many minutes. Judas tries to count the minutes, but he gets lost on the way there, and he can’t remember what all the notches on the analog clock in front of him stand for. Eventually, his name gets called, too, and the boy behind him pushes him hard when he doesn’t jump to his feet. He shoves him again, and Judas stumbles up, tripping over the legs and bodies of the kids around him. Two button-ups join him, talking amongst each other as he’s lead down the deep hallway.“This is the one, right?” One says.“No, yeah. That’s what it says,” The other answers.“Cool. Cool cool cool cool.”Judas feels the tears prickle at his eyes again, and he takes a page from the girls book and tucks his hands in his armpits. They lead him into a small room; there’s a chair against the wall on one side, and a computer and several other things Judas doesn’t know about yet. They instruct him to sit in the chair, and he makes his way there, joints creaking like rusty hinges, too scared to go eagerly. As soon as he’s seated, the bearded one rolls over to him in a rolly chair, fiddling with the tray of things on the counter beside them.“What’s goin’ on?” Judas asks at last, his voice coming out smaller than he himself has ever heard it. The bearded one ignores his question.“How old are you again?” He asks instead, and Judas mumbles that he’s 5 and 6 months, like July told him last week. The man nods, and Judas see’s the other man peck-type something on the keyboard. He reaches towards Judas with a weird tool, and scolds the boy when he shrinks back into the chair to get away from it.“Be still, kid. It ain’t gonna hurt you unless you get to movin’ too much.”These words don’t inspire any faith in Judas, but they do cause him to go rigid and let the bearded man do whatever it is he’s doing. He can feel his hands trembling, fat globs of tears rolling down his cheeks. The tool makes a noise, and the collar around his throat beeps three times, rumbling with something inside of it. Suddenly, the collar falls loose, air hitting the boys throat in place of the warm, snug metal. The man unhooks it’s clasp from his throat and removes it.“H-Hey! W-Wait, why— why did you do that? That’s..” Judas starts, panic spinning in his gut and wrenching palpitations in his small chest. He reaches up to his throat, tiny hands itching at the moist skin and hating what he feels, “That’s mine!”“Shhhhhut up,” the man answers lackadaisically, scooting over to the countertop and fiddling with the device, “your just getting a new one. This one here’s gonna choke ya’ if it’s on another 6 months. You don’t want that, do you? It’s reached it’s max’ motility and its not gonna grow with you anymore. Just cool your jets.”Judas finds himself panting, scooting further up into the seat and holding both hands around his exposed throat to keep the cold draft away from it. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all, he feels like he can’t breathe. Despite the childs reaction, the man doesn’t look up from his task.“Jeez, you ever had one react like this, Bobby?” He calls back to his friend, who cackles from in front of his computer screen.“Not in my twelve years here, nope,” Bobby replies in a thick accent, glancing up from over his glasses at the scared boy, “better wrap it up ‘fore the kid keels over.”“Bah, I’m working on it,” he says, making enough noise to draw Judas’s eyes back to him. There’s two collars on the counter now, and a cord plugged into both of them and a tablet. A loading screen, almost filled up. By the time the loading screen maxes out, Judas feels lightheaded, like there’s worms on his neck and they’re crawling and crawling and making him want to jump out of his skin and run. The bearded one picks up the new collar, bringing it to his neck, and Judas removes his hand as quickly as he can; the device rests on his shoulders while the man clasps it together, ice cold metal biting at his skin. He then grabs the tool, presses it to the collar and the noise sounds again. Following the beeps, the collar starts to tighten— the bearded man lifts it to its rightful place, letting it tighten and tighten until it forms a snug grip around Judas’ throat.For a second, Judas thinks it’s going to choke him, squeezing tighter and tighter— then all at once, it stops and backs up, losinging bit by bit until its the same snugness as the last one. Judas heaves, clawing his fingers into his T-Shirt and shorts, grabbing at the device the moment the grownup’s hands move away. He itches at the skin around it, tears making his face so sticky it’s bleeding down to his throat.“There. See? It’s back. N’you got a new number, too. 6-6-6. Welcome to permanent residency in theology, little man,” the bearded man says. Bobby snears from behind him.“Demonology at that. Good luck to ya’. Now get outta the way, Brice, and let me take a picture.”
EPISODE 1-- 4 YEARS OLD
It’d been a solid 20 minutes now of endless chatter. The pediatrician wrestles with the tiny blond boy to be still, to sit up straight, to take deep breaths. No, don’t touch that. Stop talking and breathe, you’re gonna catch flies in that open mouth of yours.“Did you know dinosaurs were this big??” Judas chirps, throwing his tiny arms above his head as a demonstration, “too big to fit in this room!”“C’mon, J’. Please be still,” Dr. Ritter says to him, placing his arms back by his sides so that she could round the measuring tape around his shoulders. Judas was hitting all his benchmarks for any healthy, happy four year old, which she supposed was the best possible outcome for any of these kids.“They’s was so big that maybe they not even fit in the food-room!”“The Cafeteria. Try sounding it out.”“Caf-ter-ah,” he tries to repeat, the sounds falling flat off his untrained tongue. The doctor smiles at him, encourages him to try again. Instead, Judas chirps about the supposed size of these ancient creatures and how airplanes would probably hit them in their heads but they’d survive because they’re super cool. The doctor takes his temperature, shines lights in his bright blue eyes, and counts the number of teeth in his mouth— one had already come out, which she notes on her clipboard. Even with her hands squeezing his chubby cheeks, he manages to prattle on about how he doesn’t think airplanes are real because July told him they existed but he thinks July makes up stories sometimes because airplanes can’t be real cause their wings don’t flap and how can planes stay in the sky if their wings don’t flap?“Shhhh, Judas,” Ritter scolds, placing the light in his ear to peer in, free hand on the top of his head to try to keep him still for longer than a few seconds at a time, “Airplanes are real. Julian didn’t lie about that.”“You’ prolly right,” Judas chirps, nodding against her hands. As soon as she lets him go, the youngster hops right off the table with a stumble. He hits the ground on his hands, but picks himself up in the next breath and holds out his arms for a squirt of sanitizer for touching the floor. It’s hard for the doctor not to find the child absolutely endearing. She gives him his sanitizer, instructs him how to smear it around his hands and wrists, and gives him the all clear— Judas bounds out of the room like it’s on fire, barely managing a wave goodbye as he races down the corridor calling his friends name.—“JULY, JULY!!” He shrieks, little bare feet padding down the tile as quickly as they’d carry him. The hall turns left, then right, and he blazes past the grumpy guards without so much as a glance in their direction. He lands himself in the pediatric ward, crawling with other kids of all ages and the nurses assigned guardianship of them. Babies, either asleep in their bassinets or cradled by the staff or older children, quiet or giggling or crying. Some children play board games or blocks or sit together in groups and play with puzzles. Other kids play chase around the room, ducking under chairs and jumping onto tables. Cries of glee, cries of dismay, cries of hungry infants without enough attendants to get to them yet. Judas browses each one of these groups with hopeful eyes, searching for his friend who isn’t yet there, searching for another friend to keep him company while he waits.One of the older kids looks at Judas, then at his toller friend who sits beside him. They lean closer together, mumble a hushed exchange, and then sneer in such a way it makes Judas’ stomach feel full of worms. July says his belly doesn’t actually have worms in it, though, so Judas wills the thought away as best as he can like July told him to. He looks over to the infants in their cradles, but the last time he tried to play with them the nurses shouted at him that he was being too rough and he wasn’t allowed anymore. The demon puffs out his cheeks, and crosses his arms haphazardly over his chest.The kids who play with their puzzles all day say that Judas isn’t smart enough to play with them. The kids who play tag say he’s not fast enough, and the kids who play hide and seek accuse Judas of not knowing how to play right because he doesn’t know how to be quiet. The guards and the nurses and the attendants never want to play with him— they never want to answer his questions, either. Where’s July? July always plays with him. July answers his questions, too. He tells him all about the ‘Outside.” The place where there was dinosaurs and there’s things called cars and things called parents, which he tells Judas he must have, somewhere. Judas has to have a mommy and a daddy somewhere, because all little kids have a mommy and a daddy. July says he’ll meet them, some day. He tells him of dogs and cats and lizards, but he doesn’t tell Judas about bugs anymore because talking about bugs gives Judas worms— no, makes him feel wormy, because July says Judas doesn’t have worms in his body, it’s not possible. July reads him books, but not the book about the hungry caterpillar anymore, because Judas had nightmares for two days about the caterpillar trying to eat him.Whatever train of thought led him there, it matters not. Judas stands in front of the bookshelf, dodging the little kids who run and chase, and tries not to stare at the kid who places his finger firmly over his mouth as he hides behind the curtain, telling Judas not to rat him out. Judas trains his eyes on the books, plucking one at random, because it doesn’t matter what the title says when you can’t read, and he has to entertain himself because nobody but July likes to play. He flips open the pages to drawings of cats and big bold letters he can barely sound out, and then he takes the book over to the small space behind the shelf, where the other kids can’t see him and the older kids can’t sneer at him. He and July come to this place sometimes, because it’s dark and because July says the walls muffle the sounds of all the other kids and sometimes Judas needs to take a nap but July knows it’s hard for Judas to sleep when there’s so much going on and he wants to be involved in every bit of it.Judas curls up with the fluffy red blanket July had stashed away in their hidey-hole, and flips through the pages of the book, pouring over all the pictures. Cats in pirate hats on a big boat in the middle of big water that July calls the ocean. One cat has an eye patch and there are great big bubbles of words over its head and a great big sword in his hands, and Judas imagines what the words might say as his eyes get heavy and the blanket feels warm and cozy.When he dozes off, he dreams of being one of those cats, a blanket cape tied over his shoulders and a great big sword in his hands.
