Flashes Of Light

Past - Sveta

The little life I knew outside the Dormitory was soon forgotten. I never tried to become friends with anyone — I was under the impression I was better off alone.

Besides, it's not like the staff there encourages you to make friends.

There was this girl in the canteen, her name was Lix and I caught myself looking at her. Not that I was interested in her or anything, but she looked so... different from me.

I didn't fool myself that every girl in the Dormitory was the same. After all, I'd lived there for ten years and I had noticed all the kinds of girls that lived in the place already. Just because each day was the same as the one before, it didn't mean I didn't get any wiser.

I understood three vital things about the Dormitory in the first five years.

One; you were admitted there for a reason. You usually had to cause a ruckus in the streets or doing something particularly harmful for yourself or others inside of your home. I did ask myself where the criminal boys go. The Dormitory is only for the girls.

Two; there were four different compartments. Those things were left without explanation, I only had the chance to understand it on my own. A, B, C and D. I obviously belonged to D, the compartment for girls that had been left behind by society. People like Lix belonged to A, and we didn't have much in common, except the prospect that we might never leave the place.

Three; you could actually leave the Dormitory. On one condition only: stuffing yourself with all the kinds of pills they gave you. They started asking me if I wanted the pills on the first day, and since they asked so kindly, I 'kindly' said no. But it took me a few years to understand that, if I'd said yes many times before, I would be out of the Dormitory by now.

Was it worth it? I didn't think so. I'd never taken them. I was a D, and I had no family. There was no life for me outside that place. Of course I longed to see the sunlight again, and to touch the yellow grass, but being out of the Dormitory would mean that I had to build myself a new life and I couldn't do shit.

I couldn't work, I couldn't read or write because I'd never been to school, and I'd never even seen the centre of Silkton, because I'd lived in the suburbs for the first ten years of my life and in the Dormitory for the other ten. I'd heard horrible stories of how the sun seemed to shine even brighter on the city of the centre of the capital.

I used to think of it as if it had double meaning; as if the light was shining on everyone but girls like me. However, I didn't envy the heat.

It was The Anti who taught me how to read or write.

The day The Anti came to visit the Dormitory, I knew it was a special day because no one ever came to visit. Not the D compartment anyway, none of us had a family, and perhaps it was what kept us in D, since I didn't do anything too bad and so it didn't make sense why I would be between the hopeless causes.

I had this impression of this young, tall man who made his way towards the mattress I had on the floor. At first, I wanted to scream, because I had never met many men in my life, and the ones I met did more bad than good. But something in his eyes made me hold back.

I think it was mostly my curiosity though. I could hear him out, I thought. If he wanted to do bad things to me, I could simply kill him then and there. No one expected better from a Dormitory girl. A girl from A, B or C could fear ending up in D. I didn't even have that luxury.

"You're Svetlana!" was the first thing he said. I didn't understand why he looked happy to see me. No one ever was.

"Svetlana Metis," he added, like one who is saying a very important name.