TAINTED | Zayn Malik

Chapter 62| That's not all part 1

9 years ago

The entire place was filled with a bunch of kids, all of them greeting their parents and walking around the faculty. I could hear the excitement in their voices, as they practically invaded the halls. It was a different type of atmosphere lingering in the air, but I guess it was meant to be during family day. But it wasn't nothing compared to when the day everyone's family was allowed to visit landed on a holiday, that meant everyone was twice as happy. 'You did so good on this painting, Billy' and 'Wow, Tasha your behavior chart is outstanding this week. I am so proud of you!' It was all fake, their pretend love acting like they cared about their children was funny to me. Because if any given wholesome parent loved their child, they would think twice before sending them off to the Looney Bin which is what Harry called it.

And frankly I agreed with him even though I didn't take kindly to those words, but it was the very harsh truth no one wanted to admit. Some people labeled this as the in-between for kids that needed extra guidance that parents couldn't do, or didn't want to do - in my eyes. I saw it like this, if two people had a child and they didn't meet the standards of perfect or thought something was off about them, it would require the parents to send their child to organizations that decided to accept us into their world. A place where you're constantly monitored and drugged, a place where you must politically and scientifically correct otherwise you were punished. This place was hell for minors, sadly I was among the crowd.

"Zayn?!" I could hear the shouting from my good mate, Harry running down the halls. He stopped in the doorway of my suite, looking confused before taking it upon himself to walk inside and sit on the floor.

We were both quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of teachers, doctors and therapists talking to parents while everyone laughed among themselves as if they were truly happy.

"How come you're not downstairs, man? They got the good shit out." Harry said after a while, his breathing still heavy as he ran all the way across the campus from the cafeteria to tell me about some stale ass cake they've been hiding since the beginning of the year. It was almost December.

I pushed myself up from the lumpy spring mattress, as I threw on a hoodie that I wore early today when I received the news. As the seasons passed by, the air began to grow colder faster than usual. But it was nothing compared to the chilled feeling of being in this place, they always ran the air condition on a high temperature. During the summer it wasn't too much of a problem, if we didn't have that whole entire thing about it raining constantly. The UK was known for it's gloomy weather, although some days may have been amazing. It was very rare.

But I figured out it was a mechanism they used to keep us in control, the biotic's they damn near force into our bloodstream is meant to calm us down so it was easier to submit. They didn't want to really deal with a child that had a habit of spazzing out, giving them a hard time. But it was like that, some of us really did belong in a place to help work out built up aggression. Just not in a place like this, where they abused power.