She blacked out several more times that day, each time hearing a voice inside her head. Sometimes it told her she would be okay. Other times it told her to stop. It would stop her from dwelling on her guilt and thoughts of her own insanity, but schizophrenics are always certain that they aren’t crazy. Once she screamed back at it saying, “I killed her!” She immediately fell to the ground with phantom arms, warm and loving, wrapped around her.

Not true. Not true. Love. Love. Escape.

Sara didn’t believe that she was innocent, or that she was sane, or even that such a thing as love existed, not without her mother but she did need to leave--desperately.

Over the next few hours, the voices turned into phantoms, swirling around the room, pacing around her head in an unholy procession. The masked demons, stared at her, imbuing her with anger. She was angry for losing her mother and furious at the way she was being treated, like an animal locked in a cage.

They reassured her. That seemed to be their primary purpose. Through them she found relief. It got a little bit easier, sitting there, locked up like an animal. Sara couldn’t have killed her. There was no way she could do that. Sara loved her mother more than anyone else in her entire life.

She threw her pills away and began eating her simple dinner of beans and hot dogs, taking what strength she could while they spoke to her, reassuring her, imbuing her with a divine energy that grew, moment by moment tingling against her skin, cleansing the depression. Those phantoms showed her a way.

They were real. The voices were real, and she had power.

Tense your muscles.

She was sitting on her bed in the middle of a dark swirl of black fog.

Just your finger.

She did what they said now and reached out her index finger, tensing it as hard as she could, watching the spark of blue fire flit around the tip.

Use your light.

The force of the door flying open brought Sara back to reality as two gorillas, each with blond buzz cuts and meaty red faces walked in. “On your knees on the bed and face the wall.” The larger one huddled around her, waddling back and forth on his feet intimidatingly. “Hands on the wall.” He barked.

She placed them on the wall.

“Spread them apart.” He knocked her in the kidneys with a nightstick.

“Ow! Mothe--

He slammed her in the face. “Turn around and spread your fucking hands,” he barked.

The blow shot her head back, tensed her arm, sending electricity traveling down her spine. They couldn’t hit her. They had no right.

Fucking pigs.

They felt her up, grabbed her hands and chained them behind her back with a chain in between them and a leash connected to it so they could drag her along like a dog. Sara was being treated like a moving piece of meat, meant solely to comply and scream. She’d never been so humiliated in her entire life.

The last straw was a set of shackles that dug into her ankles, rubbing against the bone. They used the leash to throw her onto the ground and knock her head against the concrete, nearly splitting her skull open. Then they ripped her up to a standing position and kicked her in the butt saying, “Move bitch.”

She thought of maintaining a strict policy of noncompliance, but if she dragged her feet, they would just beat her and put her out. So she let them drag her while the shackles moved back and forth, her muscles tensing as they barked orders, telling her to turn left, then right down the hall until they reached a steel-reinforced black door and opened it up.

Inside was a long, white metal tube with a gurney placed inside and a two-way mirror. “What is that thing?”

She turned her head and got knocked right in the temple.

“Shut up, bitch and get the fuck up there.”

They invaded her sanctuary, threatened her with life in prison. Then they locked her up and beat her. They had violated her in every single way, and now they were forcing her to allow them to see inside her head. That’s what this thing did. It was a PET scan, and they weren’t looking for injuries. They were checking her brain for signs of abnormalities.

She was pouring out buckets of sweat, trying to go as slow as possible as they pulled the leash and dragged her backward towards the machine. She couldn’t allow it. When they pulled her up on the gurney, one of the guards spanked her hard, and nearly crashed into the mirror behind her from the blast of blue fire that erupted out of her hand.

It sent the Guard careening backward and drove a psychic wind through the air that, when she stood up, whipped her hair behind her. All she had to do was look down and her handcuffs and shackles turned to slowly fading ash. The guard still standing glanced at her, then turned around to go. He disappeared in a hate fueled blast.

The flames danced around her like the wings of angels, giving her an unholy glow. When she turned her gaze towards the guard laying under the two-way mirror, she took her time, taking in his screams while she slow roasted him. Then he went still, and she used the full force of her fire to turn him into a pile of ash.

Once the man was gone, the fire burned out and Sara collapsed.