Citizen: Season One | Uncured Series
Page 13
He opens the door. “Get in.”
I hesitate, suddenly breathless. This is too fast. Our time together is already ending, slipping through my fingers like silk, and I'm left scrambling—trying to recover, trying to hold onto what few precious seconds I have.
“Where are you going now?”
“I have to go back.”
I don’t know how to tell him I can’t bear to see him walk away, so all I manage is, “I thought you were gone.”
He lets out a slow breath. “I know. I’m sorry. I thought if I disappeared, they'd leave you alone.”
He pushes the key fob in my palm. My hand shakes as it closes around it, and I look up at him.
"You're safe now," he says. "The car can take you home."
My voice gets small again. It hasn't done that in a while. "What about you?"
Somehow, he hears me. Maybe he's gotten used to it. "I told you, I have to go back."
"But will we see each other again?"
All around us, the night is pure stillness. I just got him back and he's already leaving.
He shakes his head. "I think it's better if we don't."
"You won't come back this time, will you?"
"Everything's going to be alright, Sabine," he says, but it doesn't feel that way. He didn't even answer my question.
I look away, refusing to get into the car. I'm not trying to be unfair, but I've never been good at goodbyes. Everyone I've ever cared about has left me, usually in the most horrible of ways—usually without any words. I don't know how to do this.
"I have to go," he says. He keeps saying it, but it doesn't make it any easier. "It could be really bad, for both of us, if we’re caught together."
Now that we’re at the end, I find myself remembering the beginning. I'd gone to work, like any other day, and then come home to find him already moved in. He'd acted like he belonged there, like he'd been a part of the furniture all along and we had simply not noticed. Then there were those silent first dinners around the table, sitting rigid in our seats, knowing he was watching.
I'm here for your protection. It's my job to look after you. When he was saying these things, did they mean something else? Something more?
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Finally, I look at him, searching.
"I hope you know,” he says, his voice dropping even lower, "how I feel."
Do I? I study his face, blue eyes cutting through the darkness.
“I'll come back for you someday,” he says.
It's a promise and I hold it close. It’s all I have. Then I watch him go into the dark, boots marching the ground, black coat fading into the night.
I climb into the backseat of the car, and when the door swoops shut, it's the sound of an ending. I curl up onto the seat, feeling tired and hollow. The spot next to me is vacant, and I stare into it. The emptiness is loud, filling the car, impossible to ignore. An absence that clings to you like a phantom with outstretched claws.
The car starts to drive off, rolling softly over the uneven road, and all that’s left for me to do is go home and wait. Today, and tomorrow, and the day after, that's what I'll be doing. I'll be waiting. It seems I've been doing a lot of that lately, waiting for Alexei, and perhaps waiting is my new curse, but I don't mind so much.
I've been cursed with worse things.
X
It isn’t until months later that Rory’s face shows up on the newsfeeds, attached to a time of death and an announcement for the scheduled funeral services.
THE END
EXCERPT | SEASON 2
The cure for mental illness has existed for a long time, but it was never enforced.
Until now.
I left my family and my hometown eight years ago, to pursue a career as a healer. I honestly thought I was going to help cure the world. Four years of medical school, that’s what they promised. That we were going to help make the world a better place.
But you can’t be a healer if you’re not cured yourself.
It wasn’t what I expected. The cure. It felt like the life had been sucked out of me. I could still remember what I felt like before, but that version of myself was suddenly gone. Like going from fully alive to only half alive.
After that, I thought they’d taken everything there was to take from me. I was wrong.
HEALER | 1
The day of my sister’s funeral is bright. Unbearably bright. Insultingly bright.
My parents are here, although it would be just as accurate to say they aren’t here at all. The cure does that to people. It steals their soul straight out of their bones—if that is in fact where the soul lives, embedded in our skeletons—and leaves behind an empty shell. It’s a kind of vacancy that invades you, an emptiness that grows.
The emptiness inside me feels like that, but it isn’t because of the cure. It’s because of grief.
The funeral parlor is all white walls and glass, little fountains of slow trickling water. The space is supposed to seem peaceful, but I feel anything but peaceful, standing among the friends and family that have come to commemorate Rory’s pitifully short life.
A small service, people sharing memories. Sandwiches laid out with paper plates and napkins, lemon water in plastic cups. It all seems so inadequate, I could scream. I can feel it building in the pit of my stomach. The ceilings in here are high, I bet it would make an amazing echo, the scream bouncing around up there.
It was supposed to be temporary, me coming home. I’d avoided coming home for eight years, but then I’d heard the news: my little sister was in a coma. As a trained healer, I was granted a work transfer and shipped back to my hometown on the next flight out. The new law had just been passed, enforcing all citizens to receive the cure for mental illness, and there was a high demand for healers like me.
I’d never intended to stay. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, which seems strange to say, since the act of staying isn’t really an action at all. It’s the opposite, it means doing nothing, but I never felt like I belonged here in Reye. Rory was supposed to wake up and resume her rightful place as the daughter who didn’t abandon her family, and the curing efforts were supposed to take six weeks. That’s what they predicted.
Then three months went by, followed by another three. Nothing went according to plan.
I don’t actually know when we stopped waiting for Rory to wake up and started waiting for her to die. Now there’s an urn on the shelf over there, reminding us she’s gone for good, and every time I look at it, it feels like a piece of myself has been ripped out.
I bet Rory doesn’t feel at peace, her ashes stuffed in that thing. A long time ago, the deceased were buried, and I wish we still did that. I wish it was still an option, at least. Maybe it would be better, to be put in the ground to become a part of the earth.
But then again, maybe not. They would put you in a box, wouldn’t they? So you didn’t really become part of the earth at all. And isn’t a box just as bad as an urn? You’re still confined. What if your immortal soul can’t escape no matter how hard you bang and scrape against the lid? Would it feel like suffocating forever?
I feel like I’m suffocating right now, just thinking about it. It doesn’t help that I’m wearing a stupid itchy dress, all black with a frilly collar that keeps scraping against my throat like the claws of a cat. It looked brand new hanging in Rory’s closet, like she’d never worn it, and now I understand why. I keep tugging on the collar when I think no one is looking, hoping to relieve the itchiness, but it doesn’t help much.
A part of me feels like an impostor, wearing her dress, but I hadn’t packed funeral clothes. I didn't think there was a need, and in retrospect, that seems awfully hopeful of me. Embarrassingly so.
At least there's something comforting about wearing her clothes, as if it’s a way of keeping her close—a way of keeping her alive. She was the same age I was when I left home. Eighteen years old, a whole future ahead. I feel guilty, like I’ve somehow stolen years from her s
imply by living longer, and it makes my eyes burn.
I force back the tears. People don’t cry when they’re cured, not even if someone you love has died. It seems wrong, of course. Unnatural. How can they do this to us? Take the humanity straight out? The more people I see being cured, the more unsettling it feels, but I can’t say that out loud.
Healers are at the forefront of the war against mental illness, which means I can’t admit to anyone that I have doubts.
I catch someone’s eye from across the room—a familiar face. Bronze skin and amber eyes. For a second, I wonder if he’s guessed my thoughts and I feel a twinge of panic, but nothing in his expression indicates he has.
Sofian Hunt and his family have come to pay their respects. The Hunts have been our neighbors for years, but Sofian especially has a reason to be here. He was supposed to marry Rory.
He looks different than I remember. Taller, more angular. Although I suppose that comes with age. He offers a polite nod from across the room, and I wonder how he’s handling this—I wonder if he’s cured.
That’s all I seem to think about now. Whenever I meet someone, I make a study of them. Are they faking it or did the cure actually work for them? It’s hard to tell. People have gotten good at pretending.
The only way to know for sure is to get them to come to the clinic for a check-up. There's a test we make them take. I’m just glad healers don’t have to take the test. It means I’m getting away with it, for now. An uncured hiding in plain sight.
Until they change all the rules again. They like to do that, shuffle all the cards, leave the world scrambling.
I watch Sofian shake my father’s hand, saying something I can’t hear from this distance, but when they both glance in my direction, I know they’re talking about me. I make sure to look away, acting like I didn’t notice.
Deep down, my heart aches. I always liked Sofian. I would have loved to see those kids get married. Maybe I would have made the trip home, just to see it. My sister deserved to get her happily ever. If anyone did, it was her. She was the one who believed in those kinds of things. Not me, the cynic.
It seems unfair, that I’m the one who gets to live, when I’m not the one with the dreams.
I move towards the back of the room, hoping to be forgotten for a minute. I tuck myself into a quiet corner and watch people filtering in and out the doors, coming to say their goodbyes to my sister’s ashes. Old schoolmates and teachers, friends and distant family.
I don’t expect to see a black coat among them.
I blink at him, unsure if I’m seeing him right. The black coat is the uniform of the peacekeepers, a symbol of both protection and terror. This one is tall, a head of shiny gold towering above everyone else, cutting a dark shape among the mourners.
He looks like the grim reaper himself, coming to the funeral to collect.
I have to stifle the shock before it shows up on my face. I’ve been waiting months for the shoe to drop—for someone to realize I’ve been falsifying medical documents. Every day, I expect the authorities to come after me.
Maybe today is the day.
I relax when someone else steps through the door, and I realize the peacekeeper isn't alone. He’s not here to arrest me.
I recognize Sabine’s copper hair first, glinting in the sunlight like strands of gold and fire. I wonder if she resents that bright shade? Red isn’t a popular color these days. Marked, you could say.
Sabine was Rory’s closest friend, and she walks into the room with her back very straight, her grey eyes flat like still water. No one would suspect she isn’t cured. Only I know. I’m the one who falsified her documents.
The whole while I'm watching her, the peacekeeper is at her side, hovering like a shadow. It makes me nervous, seeing him stand so close, when I know the truth about her.
In the early days after the new law was passed, peacekeepers were everywhere, protecting our citizens. Which is just another way of saying they were always watching. But we don’t see them so much now that everyone in Reye has been cured, only a few peacekeepers remain, which begs the question: is Sabine being guarded for a reason? Have they found out?
Has she told them about me—about what I did?
The questions swarm around my head like bees, and I have to resist the urge to chew my lip. Cured people don’t do that. The trick to appearing cured is in the details, the littlest things will give you away. Don’t fidget, don’t squirm, don’t bite your nails.
I continue to watch Sabine as she stands in line and waits her turn. Finally, she stops in front of Rory’s urn, head bowed and eyes closed. She taps the side of her hand and her lips move in silent prayer.
She was one of the first people in town to be cured. It’s like they’ve been keeping an eye on her, more than the others. I've heard the rumors myself, about her family, and I wonder if that’s why she's being guarded—because they suspect she’s a threat?
Maybe it was too big of a risk, helping her. Maybe I made a mistake.
She finishes praying and walks away, and when she lifts her head, she spots me. I feel pinned in place, exposed. There's nowhere to run.
She crosses the room with the peacekeeper trailing close behind, and with each step of the black coat coming nearer—each stomp of his boots across the floor—my pulse pounds harder in my ears.
SEASON 2 | COMING SOON
Acknowledgement
So many people attributed to the creation of this book, it's almost impossible to decide where to begin!
First off, I want to kickstart these acknowledgements by mentioning... the lobotomy. The lobotomy was a prime source of inspiration when writing this book, therefore, thank you, precious history, for that little nugget.
Second, shout out to the global pandemic for making my book feel eerily relevant to the times. Although the "disease" in my book is mental illness, I shuddered at the constant echoes of reality tucked within these pages.
As for the lovely humans that endured my endless chatter about books, and who never failed to give my scribblings a read when asked, you are all invaluable assets to my creative process. So big thanks to my mom for being my first fan! (It's not an acknowledgement page without a shoutout to mom.) Thank you to my husband for listening to me rant about my writing process practically every day and for driving me to get Starbucks whenever I needed an extra something to keep me going. Thank you to my darling supportive group of friends and family, including, but not limited to: the badass that is my sister-cousin Catherine, the always inspiring and fellow soul Felix, the adventurous Vanessa and her mom—AKA my very own matante Pauline, who volunteered her proofreading skills like a champ!
And finally, but not least, a big thanks to my three cats for being absolutely no help at all, except to walk across my keyboard at the least opportune moments.
I wouldn't have been able to complete this book without you all!
Much love,
Mags
xox
About The Author
Maggie Ray
Self-proclaimed struggling artist fueled by Starbucks & pizza, hoarder of books & kitties.
Maggie Ray is a small-business owner living on the East Coast of Canada, where she has been writing fiction and winning book awards for the last fifteen years.
Her book, Daughters of the King, has gained a readership of 60,000+ online, hit #1 on the charts for its genre, and continues to maintain an average 5-star rating on popular online platforms. Her new series, the Uncured, revolves around a cure for mental illness, with each book (affectionally called seasons) featuring a different character.
Books In This Series
The Uncured Series
Citizen | Season 1
Healer | Season 2
Rebel | Season 3
Peacekeeper | Season 4
Stay connected!
www.mrsauthor.com