I did figure out the purpose of the treatments on the last one that I ever got. I don’t understand why it took me so long to see the meaning of what was happening around me. Every time I had a treatment, I not only had to say my name, but also my mother's name. Every time I was being recorded, Doc kept saying he was only doing it because of my mother. It was all so obvious that it baffled me that it took a new form of trauma for me to understand what was happening.

  I was sitting quietly in my spot in the sleeping room. Carlos had been working to get the comfort that he thought we needed, so we had a pile of clothes more than 2 layers thick underneath our spot. I knew that some of them came from Boss’s pile when he left. I did not really know where all the rest came from. They just sometimes showed up with a new jacket or pair of pants without explanation.

  The group around him had grown since Boss had left. I felt like the power plays and violence of Time Out were detached from me. I feel like this was partly because my brother protected me and partly because we were living in a bubble. There was no way for us to impact the outside world, and there was no way for the outside world to affect us.

  Food had just been served, and most of the kids were out in the main room, eating or fighting over it. I normally went out late and just ate whatever was left after everyone else grabbed what they wanted.

  Over time, as more kids were brought into Time Out and more kids received treatments, I was not the only one of us who embarrassed the quiet life. There were now 4 other kids silently observing me. They did not bother me, and I did not bother them. I did not know their names, and they did not seem to need me to know them. They would watch me when I went into other rooms.

  When we moved around the place, we would always hear insults. They called us ghosts because we were dead yet still roaming the world. It did not matter what they did to us; we would not respond. Take our clothes, it was warm enough to be naked. Hit us, it was not going to be worse than what Doc did to us, and if it was, Marge would stop it. Starve us, Marge made sure we all ate, or we might not be healthy enough to recover if we needed a treatment.

  As time progressed, all the other kids stopped bothering us. The ghosts were dead; why waste your energy on the dead?

  I could hear less fighting outside as the rest of the kids settled down. I was considering getting up to see what was still left to eat on the tables. When I heard the shout of a voice I had hoped to never hear again. It was coming up the hallway to the outside.

  “Open the fucking door already. I will handle this one myself. That bitch thinks she can negotiate terms. We will see how she likes the outcome of her big gamble.”

  I could hear Domingo barge into the main room. “Carlos, get the fuck over here, don’t try shit right now, I am not in the mood.” I had no idea how he knew my brother’s name. We had only met him for a few minutes years ago.

  “Where the fuck is Jaun? Whatever Doc has been doing has been far too soft. I am going to show you how to enforce compliance.”

  After a couple of seconds of someone, probably Marge, speaking too quietly for me to hear through the door, Domingo came barging into the sleeping room.

  He locked eyes with me, as all the other ghosts hugged the wall, hoping to be ignored. I did not understand how, but he was drastically more intimidating than last time. He still had that hungry smile on his face, which made me think he wanted to devour everything. He was now much bigger than he had been. This was not as easy to see because he no longer wore a tank top; instead, he had on a dark gray suit with a blue tie.

  I felt like I could see a glint of blue behind his eyes. That might have just been my imagination, considering I knew he now had the infinity system.

  The other boys had started playing a game in which they tried to guess which of the Thugs who came in through the door might have gone to infinity. It seemed like there was an endless progression of different guards for them to speculate about. I could see now that none of them had anything close to what the infinity system gave you.

  Domingo moved through the room like he was a ballerina of pure force. There were no wasted movements, but he looked like he could stop a runaway train. He was holding Carlos out in front of himself by the back of the neck. His arm was fully extended, and Carlos was dangling in the air, trying to reach behind himself to get free.

  Carlos was no longer small; he had grown a lot and was almost the same height as Marge now. It seemed like he was going to be bigger than her any day now. Holding him out while he angrily walked over to me was the first time I had seen something that looked superhuman. I was trying not to compare him to my mom when she used to swing me around, but that memory came right back to me like it was waiting for me to remember with clarity how my mom would grab me with both arms and spin me around her body as she twirled.

  I was still deep into remembering when he grabbed me by my leg and picked me straight off the ground like I was a feather. The tears that were pooling in my eyes from remembering my mom dripped down my forehead into my hair as Domingo carried us both, not into Doc’s room, but the visiting room.

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  “Lock the fucking door behind me. Oh, and make sure Doc is ready to handle any complications.”

  Domingo threw us both to the ground and walked over to the computer. In the corner of the room that we were not allowed to go near, one of the thugs brought us in here to visit with our mom. He started typing away at it, like he was some master hacker. I could barely see what he was doing as windows popped up and disappeared in seconds. It felt like he was doing things faster than anyone should be able to think, but he kept typing for a few minutes while muttering to himself.

  “Fucking bitch thinks I can’t find her if she complies with the government. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. She needs to understand what type of fire she is playing with.”

  After a long time of Carlos and I just watching him from where he dropped us on the floor, he shouted in excitement.

  “Fuck Yeah!, There you are, hope you are ready for a front row seat.”

  The screen we normally used to talk to our mom finally turned on. The screen was shaky, and everything was sideways. It was hard to understand what was happening; there were a bunch of people running around in the background. It looked like we were shaking up and down, and every now and then, a huge hand almost blocked the screen. We could hear several conversations at once.

  “Have you secured the kids yet?” “On route, about to make contact.” “Who is dealing with the press release?” “Our window is closing.” “Are medics on route? We don’t know their conditions.”

  Domingo watched the screen silently for a few seconds, then shouted in a teasing voice, “I can see why you thought this was a good idea, Maria, but you will regret this for the rest of your life.”

  There was a gasp, and then we could see our mother’s face on the screen like normal. The background behind her no longer looked like a bedroom full of pretty colors and a nice bed; it was a busy office with people running around. I tried to say something, but Domingo talked right over me.

  “I know you think they are going to run into that building and rescue Jaun and Carlos here in a few seconds. Why don’t we both watch what happens next? Keep the camera close, I want to see the look in your eyes.”

  Our mother was already not looking great, seeing both Carlos and me behind Domingo on the ground, but her eyes lost a little light at hearing how confident Domingo was. There was some shouting in the background. She looked down at the phone with a frantic look in her eyes.

  “Oh, did you think your children were just killed in that explosion. That is what would have happened to them if I were not already 50 steps ahead.

  I don’t think I ever told you how I got my name. Do you know what Sunday is? The Lord’s day of rest. It is such a beautiful thing. I love that, I love it so much that I am willing to extend that day of rest forever.

  I think it would be best if you found a nice private place to take this chat we are about to have, while there is still enough chaos for you to slip away.”

  We all watched as Mom ran with the phone in her hand down a hallway into a quiet section of the building and locked herself in an empty room. When she looked back at the phone, she was already crying. “What are you going to do this time?”

  Domingo looked down at Carlos and me. “Now you are worried about them. That is surprising, considering how many times Doc has had to torture poor little Jaun here. It felt like you didn’t even care about them at all. Now you are all worried about what I am going to do with them, after you just tried to destroy my whole operation.”

  Mom looked heartbroken, “You are a monster. I did everything that you told me to. I was a slave to Mr. Normal for years. You only told me what I did wrong after you sent the video. How was I supposed to read your mind? I only took this risk because the videos of you hurting my poor Jaun did not stop, and they were never going to stop.”

  Domingo grabbed a hold of Carlos and dragged him to the front of the camera. “Maybe all of those videos were supposed to be a warning for what I would do to them if you ever decided to disobey my instructions intentionally.” He grabbed Carlos’s left hand with one of his massive hands and Carlos’s wrist with the other, and started pulling. Carlos started screaming, pushing, and kicking Domingo frantically, but it seemed to have no effect. There was some sickening pops, and then a wet slurping noise, and then Carlos’s hand ripped off. Blood sprayed across the room, and Domingo dropped Carlos to the ground.

  I could not pull my eyes away from all that blood. It was not my blood, it was the blood of someone I loved. It was covering the floor like that night. The night when Grandma died. The night that her haunting, missing eye started staring at me. I could see it again. It would sometimes follow me into my dreams and watch me. I can’t always find it, but I know it is there, watching me as I hide. When I hide in my whole under the grate, and when I hide in the emptiness outside of myself.

  I could hear both my Brother and Mom screaming in the distance, but I just wanted to get away from that eye. I curled up there on the floor and started chanting “Not like Grandma” over and over again. Sometimes, when I was alone, it helped me escape.

  Domingo did not care what I was doing; he just picked me up like my brother. As he brought me over to the camera leaned over to hear what I was saying.

  “Not like Grandma? Well, thanks for the brilliant idea, kid. It is kind of boring to do the same thing to both of you. I like the idea of switching things up.”

  He held me up over the camera by the back of my neck, then used his other hand to claw towards my face. I tried to put my arms in the way and block his hand, but it did not matter; he just pushed past anything I tried to put in his way. Two of his fingers pushed into my eye socket and then squeezed my eyeball between them. The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before. I tried to escape into the emptiness, but it was hiding from me somehow.

  He pulled my eyeball out of my head as I screamed the whole time. I could feel every second of it as each fiber and nerve stretched and snapped. It was so much worse than anything that Doc had ever done to me.

  When he was done, he dropped me right on top of Carlos, who was covered in blood cradeling his bleeding stump.

  “Don’t ever test me again, slave. You do what you are told and nothing else.”

  He left the room with my mom watching Carlos and me lying on the ground, screaming. I don’t remember anything after that.