the last contestent

She sat with a contestant badge on her right shoulder. People had come in and out of the room, but no one ever spoke with her. Maybe because no one understood or maybe because they never thought she’d actually win. She sat there longer than any other contestant, but she was calm because she knew one thing- she was going to win. She was the last contestant. The nurses came into her room for her next session. They smiled politely in case she was still all there. She couldn’t manage to give a smile back. They placed the headphones over her ears and the silent hospital room was drawn out.

You made it up. It didn’t really happen. No one believes you.

You can’t do it.

If you stop, you’ll never start again.

It wasn’t that bad.

Start over. You’re a mess.

You don’t even have a personality.

It’s all your fault they left. You’re too much. Everyone hates you.

There’s someone following you.

You’re never going to be the same again.

It’s a sign. They’re sending you a message.

She couldn’t help but swallow each time the message was worked. I guess she could be nodding her head as if the sentences were facts, but her body felt still with darkness. How did they know just what to say? How did they have the words that haunted her living presence? She had never given them. And someone said other contestants had the same. But she was alone. And no one could ever feel that pain.

She looked down at her thighs covered by a paisley hospital gown and the pulsing she felt between them made her more scared than anything else. Somehow, she still painted a different story of a mind-numbing experience that was easy to forget. But her thrashes and screams of stop told her something else. It was so easy to believe the doubt. And the alternative instilled a fear in her she’d do anything to stop. So, the words came. But the fight didn’t. They weren’t about her. It was a simple test. And it was supposed to be hard.

Was it her fault she didn’t see success in the eyes of the doctors? She hated that one that never even met her eyes. Like she wasn’t human. Like he had better things to do. But she was the last contestant. Would he eat it when she won? Would he be there at the finish line? She had sacrificed everything for the sake of the game. But her blacked out existence rang truth to her listening ears. Where are the game pieces then? Why had she not met the other players? She passed each phase with a stamp of ‘severe’ on her forehead. She opened her eyes as the last words of the test were said.

I will always be this way.

She managed to smile at the nurses as she took the headphones off. This session only made her slightly anxious. She wasn’t in danger. The police didn’t need to come. It was a pain that always existed despite her poor memory. The lightning strikes her brain had endured wiped some of it away. And her heart jolted when she thought she was the creator of the game. Was it rigged? What if she didn’t remember? Could she still win?

“How was it, sweetie?” the nurse asked.

“Better,” she said with a smile.

“Good. Let’s start with the test questions now,” the nurse said. “Do you feel any physical or mental discomfort?”

“I guess a little bit,” she said.

“Okay. From a scale of one to five, how discomfortable do you feel?” the nurse asks.

“Five,” she said. The nurse gave her a scathing look of doubt mixed with a condescending manual. This is how she lived.

“Do you remember any more details of what happened to you?” the nurse says. 

“A little bit,” she said defensively.

“I need you to try a little bit harder,” the nurse replies as she put down her pen. “This is essential and necessary if you want to win. I thought you understand it’s importance.” Shame prickled her belly and she grasped at memories she may have made up. How do you explain such serious pain? Shouldn’t there be more? Shouldn’t it be worse?

“Um, I did remember one thing,” she swallows. The nurse simply nodded her head for a continual. “I think that in high school, I was at a party, and I passed out on a couch, and I woke up to this boy on top of me forcing himself on me.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned this before?” the nurse said between strokes.

“I don’t know… I mean, I told some people. But I kind of blacked it out,” she says.

“Hmmm, it must not have been such a big deal then,” the nurse responds. She nodded her head in solemn agreement. She had always kept his name in the back of her head. Just in case. But speaking it made it lose meaning. Didn’t the world prove that? Didn’t they tell you that you had to act a certain way for it to matter? She did call the police once. But it was because it was happening again. Five years later. He was going to burst into her room and do it again. So why did he not stand there when the police came? Why had the people I love been disguised? “Is it like the other memory you told us about? Was it better or worse?”

It all began when she saw him on the news. When she had to defend the women he’d hurt. When they’d called them delusional. Unfit. Unreliable. LYING. A generational curse formed between simple words. It happened to her too. It happened to both of them. And she secretly hoped that winning the game would take both of their pain away. They hadn’t allowed her to play the game because of her age but maybe she could tell her how to be fixed. This Sunday was the first one they hadn’t spoken. Would she miss the phone call? Or had she already forgotten? The story battled her existence. Questions came with answers that were lies. And phone calls meant reliving it.

“We have a surprise for you,” the doctor she hated said as he came in.

“Oh?” she replied.

“Yes, you have officially been upgraded to the final level,” he explains eying his clipboard. “Now, this level is tricky and it’s going to be hard but if you pass this, you will win.”

“Okay, what I have to do?” she asks.

“You must tell your story to three individuals on the panel, and they will decide if you are fit to be released,” he says. “Follow me.”

“Wait,” a nurse said, “she just did a test. Can it wait for a bit?”

“Unfortunately, no. We need her to do it right now,” he says. “Follow me, please.”

They walked down the long hall and the nurses stared. False memories began to race through her mind, and she tried to file them into truth or fiction. They saw lies but she knew it was chemical. The doctors and her family had already asked questions about validity, but she never got the story entirely straight. There were blackouts and trauma on top of psychosis and mood swings. Was she fit to even play this game? You can only get it right once. The fear withdrew her. She knew what story she was going to tell.

“Right in here, please,” the doctor said.

She followed him into a square, dark room with a table and three individuals sitting across from her spot. And they were terrifying. Faceless. Important. She couldn’t help it when her pulse went up.

“As you know, you are the last contestant,” the mask covered figure in the middle said. “If you pass this test, you will be the one released into heaven. If you don’t pass, you can file for purgatory or hell. But this is your one chance.” She nodded her head in understanding.

“Now, please tell us your story,” the one on the right said.

She didn’t want to seem arrogant. She didn’t agree that she had done nothing wrong. But her circumstances made them reconsider. What do you do when you think of killing someone but don’t actually do it? She didn’t even know where the thoughts came from. How could God help her through only to turn her away? Like they said, this was her one chance.

“My name is Grace Foreman, and I don’t know how I died,” she says. The masked figures smiled. 

 “You didn’t die, Grace,” one of them said. “But we’re here because we know what has been happening.”

“And God was concerned that you might be in danger,” another one says. “There aren’t even any other contestants. It’s all in your head.”

“I’m not dead?” she asks.

“No,” they said. “Your own brain is putting you on trial. That’s where you go when you sleep.”

“It’s time to wake up, Grace,” they said as their figures starting to disappear.

And so, she woke up as the last contestant knowing she had won the game. Now it was time for her to fight past survival and thrive in living. Wait till you see what she’s done.