Days become weeks, the visits to the basement continue, the treatment-experiment-conditioning, whatever it is, each time washing over you in a stream of detached disinterest; each time, returning to your room and recovering in bed after another steady shuffle around the green garden with your fellow patients-subjects-inmates where, trapped on this endless treadmill, no-one speaks or makes eye-contact.
Food arrives on a tray – greyish porridge, brownish soup – delivered by the blank-faced orderly; later, a shot-glass of something sweet and very orange; later still, the lights dim and you sleep: is the orange liquid drugged you wonder, as you drift away again.
You request a newspaper for some distraction, but the request’s denied; instead, the orderly brings you a mindless magazine filled with photos of people you don’t recognise; you consider the art of paper-folding, but your fingers won’t cooperate. You study those fingers; your fingernails never seem to grow, still short and neat, just as when you arrived; your hair, as far as you can tell without a mirror, is the same; are you groomed in your sleep?
Another day, and when you return to your room, a TV screen has been installed, high up in the corner, just below the dull red camera eye; the orderly switches it on and just as the picture flickers into life, there’s a commotion in the corridor outside; a siren wails, there are shouts, running feet; the orderly spins around and rushes from your room.
In his haste, he leaves the door unlocked.
Confused? You might be! Read previous episodes of The Facility here.
Written in response to two challenges:
– Di of Pensitivity101‘s Wednesday’s Three Things Challenge – HIGH, DAFT, SHIN
– Denise Farley of GirlieOnTheEdge‘s Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt – DISTRACTION
Photo credit: Scott Webb on Unsplash
Click here for more Six Sentence Stories. Better still, bring your own and join us!
Can hardly wait for next week!!!
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Neither can our protagonist… 😉
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🙂
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😱 Eagerly waiting to see if he or she escapes!! But what kind of a world will they escape to?🤔
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Two very good questions, Debra! Maybe there’ll be answers next week. 😉
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Oh wow, new developments!
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Excitement on the way…
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Cool. You’re a wonderful storyteller my friend
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And you are so very kind to say, Sadje! Thank you. 😊🙏
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You’re welcome ☺️
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Spooky new world-building that amps up the tension – great story so far!
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Thanks, Tom! Definitely a different world…
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Yeah! Now what!!!
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Ah… we’ll see next week, Punam!!
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You ended on a very promising note, Chris.
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I thought so. But as you know, Punam, anything could happen in the Facility! 😉
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Oooh! You know how go reel in your reader. 😀
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😉😊
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😉😀
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Cliff hanger!!! (I was almost afraid to open this post, not knowing what new, untoward experience might befall our poor protagonist.)
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Oh dear, Liz. Sorry for that! A pleasant outcome is always a possibility next time (although I wouldn’t bank on it!)
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Oh, I’m not banking on it!
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“…a stream of detached disinterest.”
My ‘wish-I’d-written-it’ line of the week.
Very visual, which, given my own tropism towards words-as-pictures(of-a-world), my highest of compliments.
Then, from the learn-as-you-read lobe, excellent leaving the story with a ticking urgency scene,
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I’m delighted by this beautiful bouquet of compliments, Clark! 🙏
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Oh my goodness, will he, won’t he? I can hardly wait for next week!
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Try, I’m sure, succeed… maybe? Thanks, Keith!
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If he succeeds the story might end. Mmmm.
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There’s always another story!
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i look forward to this every week. excellent six, good use of the cue.
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Thanks so much, Paul, that’s a lovely compliment!
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I went back and read several of your previous sixes in this series. I hope this is the time for an escape and hope your subject is ready and the outside world is ready for him. Captivating series.
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I’m so please the story has engaged you, Pat! It might be time for a break out…
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Perhaps a chance to escape. Although where would one go, but worth a try. I like the description of the fingernails not growing.
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Thanks, Frank. I think it’s time for our protagonist to try, but nowhere seems safe…
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I like the idea of being groomed in sleep. It will be good to wake up all set to face the world.
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Wouldn’t it just!
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The word Control keeps echoing from this story; or the loss of it.
As in Create One Nightmare To Replace One Life/Lie.
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Maybe it is all a dream? (But that’s lazy).
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The mood of aimless confusion, really brought home by musing at the fingernails that never need clipping, the hair that seems the same…
Wil the protagonist have enough focus to see and escape?…
(Next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel!!)
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As you say, Liz… tune in next week! 😉
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😀
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I am so rooting for the protagonist! What a fabulous way to end this episode 😀 Looking forward to next week’s… escape? 😀
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Time to up the ante for our poor protagonist!
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Ah, there’s some life in the place yet, as it sounds like someone has taken exception to the “treatment.” Escape to a better world would be nice.
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Gearing up for a mass breakout… perhaps? 😉
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Just when you think it can’t get more chilling, along comes sentences #3 and #4 and bam! Then you find your feet and drift into the novelty of a TV set in sentence #5… perhaps not the pixelated or HD drama you imagined, but a drama from outside? By sentence #6 you notice that a door has been quite literally left open…
Your 2nd person pov prison chiller just took a sharp turn!
(heck, and you realise suddenly you are commenting in the comments section in the 2nd person too 😨)
(checks fingernail growth, checks hair length)
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So you decide it’s better not to catch a glimpse of your reflection on the way out… 🤣
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A big leap forward in this story…
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More so next time (I suspect)! 😉
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Ooo! I’m so desperate to find out what’s going on in the hallway, but I also want to know if the unlocked door will remain so long enough for escape. But then, is the facility on an island or an oil rig? As you can see, you’ve really captured me with this story. (I actually laughed when I read, “are you groomed in your sleep?” I wish I was.)
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I haven’t quite worked out the detail for tomorrow’s episode… an oil rig? 🤔 But I too was tickled to find out about the overnight grooming – a pity that part of the story can’t be made into reality.
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I’m glad I’m a couple of episodes behind because I don’t have to hang on that cliffhanger, I can go straight on. By the way there is something truly sinister about being groomed in your sleep – wonderful piece of detail!
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You know, although it’s slightly sinister, it would be awfully handy to awake, ready and presentable for the day!
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Hi Chris. This is great. I’ve been in such a place, a psych ward, on numerous occasions, unfortunately. I do love how you tell this story!
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Hi Carol Anne. Glad you liked the story, so sorry that you have experience of such places. 🖤
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