Page 19 of Oblivion
I was unhinged at moments, broken in places that would never be able to be glued back together, but I’d learned to find perfection in imperfect things.
There was a Japanese sayingWabi-Sabi, an aesthetic philosophy of finding beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. I saw myself in it maybe a lot more than I should’ve, but that’s what I was.
Perfect in all my imperfection, and all my imperfections had prepared me for all this.
I slid down over the floor as the first guy jumped toward me. I knocked his feet off the ground, knocking him to the floor. He went down with a thud, groaning when my foot connected with his throat as I swirled around.
“Fuck,” one of them cursed from behind me, and I turned just in time to see one of them grabbing me. “You couldn’t have made this simple and easy, could you now?” he asked, pressing his hand around my throat, cutting off my air supply.
“I-I never make an-nything easy-y,” I stammered and grabbed a hold of a knife tucked around his waist. I lifted it up within a second and slammed it into the side of his neck, turning it first right then left.
He gurgled, immediately releasing me from his hold, his hands flying toward his throat and pressing against the knife that was still sticking out from his neck. Blood rushed down his front, hidden by the black uniform he was wearing.
Stumbling back toward the wall, he slid down, choking as he pulled out the knife. His blood colored the white wallpaper in crimson as he started shaking and thrashing, his life slowly ebbing away from his eyes.
The roar behind me came too fast for me to react. Before I could duck down or turn around, an arm wrapped itself around my throat, holding me in a chokehold, while the palm was pressed to the other side of my head, adding pressure to my skull.
“We all wanted you dead years ago, you stupid cunt,” he spat at me as he lifted me off the ground. “They told us to bring you in alive, but I’m pretty sure that no one would cry if I killed you right here and right now.”
Black dots danced on the periphery of my vision, my legs thrashing in the air. I could see the death hugging the soldier I'd stabbed and the other two trying to lift him up off the ground. But what I didn’t see was the nurse I talked to earlier, standing not too far away from us, holding a fire extinguisher.
“Was this how you planned to die?” The man holding me chuckled, biting down on my ear as he tightened the hold he had on me. My throat convulsed, my larynx crushed under the weight of his arm, and he knew I couldn’t answer.
There was one golden rule for people of my size, and that was to never get yourself in this situation. He was too tall, much stronger than me, and the way he held me showed that he knew what he was doing.
But he obviously didn’t know that I wasn’t completely alone.
“Hey, asshole!” the nurse called out to him. He turned us toward her, shielding himself with my body. “This is still a hospital, you sick fuck!”
I blinked, trying to focus on her, but the lack of air in my lungs was making it harder to see anything clearly. I could see shapes and people in front of me, but I couldn’t make out who was who. They should’ve run away when they could’ve.
The Syndicate had one rule, and that’s never to leave any witnesses behind. They didn’t give a shit if the people they were killing were innocent. Hell, I killed more innocent people than anyone could even imagine, and these men would stop at nothing to accomplish their mission.
“Get out of here, grandma,” he hissed. “This has nothing to do with you.”
She frowned. “Your mother should’ve washed your mouth out with soap, young man.”
If I weren’t in the current situation, I probably would’ve laughed. She took out the safety pin from the nozzle of the fire extinguisher she’d been holding close to her body, then aimed the nozzle right at us and pressed on the lever. What probably took mere seconds felt like hours as the white foam exploded from the extinguisher, covering the entire hallway in white.
Mayhem ensued, and people started coming from all sides, surrounding the soldier and me, hitting him with chairs, stethoscopes… His hold on me lessened, allowing me to get out of his clutches. I took a step back, coughing, trying to catch my breath. A pair of hands took a hold of my upper arms, turning me toward them.
I thought it was another soldier, but it was the nurse from before.
“You need to run!” she yelled over the cacophony of voices around us. “Now, while they’re not watching.”
“I-I can’t,” I wheezed. “They’re going to kill you.”
“Does it look like they’re going to do anything to us?” She arched an eyebrow at me and pointed at the craziness happening behind us. “Police are on their way, but you need to get out of here before they arrive.”
“I-I,” I stammered. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just stay alive.” She smiled. “Trust me, honey, this is not the first time that someone else had to help those boys get their shit together.”
She pushed something into my hand. I looked down to see it was my phone—my broken phone—but the screen still shone brightly and I could see missed calls showing in the corner.
“Call your friends and get out of Santa Monica.”
“Will you be okay?”
