Project L

I hated hospitals.

There was something about the walls, the hideous, overwhelmingly sterile sheen of unbowing white, that had always bothered me. There was no warmth to them. No soul, as it were. It was a place of death, and it didn’t seem to matter how many chemicals they scrubbed the place down with, the scent lingered in the air, and despair weaved itself into the very foundations of the building; they were graveyards without the tombstones.

The large, dome-shaped building, kitted out with state-of-the-art security and enough steel on the sealed doors to make a maximum security jail seem like a holiday home for the morally questionable, was nothing like a hospital. And yet, as I blinked in the colourless cast of the rounded walls, of the uplifting ceiling, I couldn’t help but compare.

There was no soul. No life. But there was no death either. Hopefully.

Yup! That was a great way to freak yourself out, and the nerves that I had almost ironed out came back with a vengeance; the pen in my hand trembled, and the squiggle of ink that was shaping my name became a wiggled mess.

“Sorry,” I apologized, squirming as heat seared against my cheeks. “Sorry, could I get another sticker please?”

The building’s lobby was a large room with no obvious extensions beside the sealed off doorway that we had all entered through. To the right side of the room, bending around with the curve of the wall, metal chairs were bolted to the ground. A handful of people were sitting in them. The rest stood behind me in a nervous queue.

A queue that I was holding up.

The lobby led to no other rooms, but there was a hatch in the wall, a small window that was built into the furthest wall. Behind the glass, a sour-faced woman with white glasses and matching slacks, sat, glowering at me.

She didn’t answer, but she reached down below — a blind spot to what the window perceived— and shoved another sticker through the hatch. It was a red rimmed strip with a white centre that read, Hi, My Name Is . . . and we were left to place our names in the field.

Blowing out a shaky breath, I scribbled my name, as neat as the tremors would allow: Callaghan Walsh. Peeling the back off and slapping it over my chest, I turned to her for further instructions.

“You will now take any jewelry, electronics, and valuables, and put them in this bag. Write your name on the bag, and slide it back under the desk. They will be kept and stored, returned upon completion of the project.” Her voice was a robotic whirl, and her cold brown eyes burnt into me.

Nodding, I clumsily pawed at my pocket. The Iphone fumbled through my fingers, hitting the solid tiled ground with a sickening thump. Flustering, I bent to pick it up, only to bang my head against the lip of the window hatch.

“There’s a line,” the woman huffed, scowling in annoyance. She even tutted. “Hurry it up.”

“Here.” From behind, a man stepped forward, picking up the mobile. He was a tall man, sprouting over my five-seven and a half with ease, with a charming smile that split his freckled face into a warm mask. “Just chill. Nothing to be worried about.”

“Thanks,” I chittered, accepting the device and shoving it into the bag, along with my watch, wallet and the star shaped locket that had nestled around my neck for the last six years. Handing them over . . . it was daunting. Unsettling either. It cemented the circumstances, and the reality hit like a seven ton truck.

“Take a seat with the others and await further instructions,” was the woman’s parting advice.

The distance between the waiting line up was deceptive. From an eye flick, it was just across the way, but the walk over there seemed to last for years. Every step introduced a new wave of nerves, and my anxiety skyrocketed. It felt like every set of eyes were on me.

So naturally, I tripped.

The floor rushed up to greet me, and pain spliced through the palms of my hand and knees at the same time laughter decorated the air. Gasping, holding back a mewl of pain, I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Ignore the idiots that laughed,” a voice said. Peeking, I saw that a hand had been extended. Grabbing it, I was hoisted to my feet.

Yup. Way to make a fool of oneself before the project had even started!

“I—” Fumbling over my tongue, fighting against the heat that prickled my cheeks, I met the eyes of the person helping me. They were tall and gangly with a charmingly radiant smile and a halo of soft, fluffy curls that were as black as the bottom of an ink well.

“Steady now,” the man said with a melodic chuckle. “Here, come sit by me.”

Blushing, I fell into step behind him, trying to avoid the gazes of everybody else. The chairs fell in with the building’s theme, white and cold, and as I lowered into the one beside the man, there was little to zero comfort.

How had I let Lucas talk me into this?

I could have been at home right now, eating leftover Chinese food and watching Blues Clues. I could have been enjoying my solitude while it lasted.

And yet somehow, I’d been roped into this: Project L.

It was a three-month long experiment, hosted by Connex, an establishment that specialized in catering for the needs of Littles and Caregivers. I’d found out about the experiment through a notification on the Connex app, and Lucas, my best friend, had pressured me into applying.

I had applied only on the assumption I wouldn’t get in; the application form showed the volume of people that had applied, which had staggered into the thousands, and out of all of them, there were only thirty-one spaces available. I’d never expected to get through.

But I did, and here I was, shaking from head to toe, in way over my head, with not a clue what to expect.

The information they’d fed us had been limited, covering the basics, but it fell short of accurately painting a clear picture. We were getting paid for the experiment— three months of one’s life was a lot to give up, and they had promised a compensation fee that was very much worth it. Even still, I was surprised that so many people applied. Three months, with no contact to the outside world, was a long time, and most folks had lives that would fall apart in that amount of time. Even so, all spaces were filled, and for as much as I’d considered the offer to be a joke, it was proving itself very, very real.

“You look scared. Are you?”

The man who’d helped me up had turned in his seat, his legs turning so they were angled towards me. His face was a picture of warmth; a charming, magnetic smile turned his lips, managing to effortlessly win a smile from me in return, and the brown of his eyes was so sweet and deep that they seemed to promise sincerity.

“Yes,” I admitted, glancing down at my hands. They still stung, but the skin remained intact. His smile widened, showing off a set of white, and ever so slightly crooked, teeth. For reasons I couldn’t even explain, I took an instant liking to him. Maybe because he was the first trace of life in the dull setting.

“Don’t be,” he said with another brilliant grin. His hair seemed to gleam, the bright glare of the overhead lights nestling against the curls. “You’ll be fine. My name is Dill, by the way.”

“Dill?” I echoed softly, taking his hand. “Like as in Rugrats?”

Dill made a face. His nose wrinkled, the thin dusting of freckles that gathered along the bridge of it crinkling together. “I guess. Everybody always asks me that. You’re Callaghan, right?”

Mouth dropping open, eyes going wide, I pulled back, shoulders brushing against the backrest. How did he know that? My head whipped to the right, jumping to the queue I’d just come from. It’d moved along some, the cluster of people lessening, and more seats had filled up. None of them seemed to be looking in our direction.

“How do you know that?” I whispered, hands curling into the soft fibres of my cardigan. It once again highlighted how very little I actually knew about the project. Lucas, who was one of the few people who knew about the way I regressed, had claimed it a brilliant idea, as it stated there was a high chance of coming out of the project with a Caregiver as well as long term friends, but now I wasn’t so sure.

What if it had all just been a front to lure us away from civilization, and they’d spend the next three months torturing us?

“Your face,” Dill laughed. It was a pleasant sound, sweet and melodic, and tinkled through the hushed air. It turned a few heads. “You don’t need to look so shocked. It’s on your jumper.”

And sure enough, my eyes fell down to the sticker I’d applied. Flushing, noting that he also wore a similar marking, I mumbled out a ’Oh, yeah.”

“Relax. I promise, it won’t be as scary as it seems.”

“How do you know?” I asked, eyebrows tugging together. “You’re not scared? Not even a little bit?”

“Nah.” Dill shook his head, grinning another one of those magnetic smiles. Even sitting down, the energy he had to him, I could feel it. It was a good kind of energy. Like a wave of friendliness that made him impossible not to like. “My mom always said I lacked the sense to know what fear is.”

I laughed softly. I wasn’t sure how he was capable of putting my nerves at ease so quickly, but with every word he spoke, the more at ease I felt. He was comforting, I realized. His mannerisms, the softness to his tone, it was settling. It dawned on me that he reminded me a little bit of Lucas. They looked nothing alike, but there was something about him that made me think of my best friend.

“My aunt works here,” Dill offered, elaborating. “She promised that I had nothing to be afraid of. She said it’s basically like that show, Big Brother. We’re just left to our own devices and they are the eyes in the sky. She said nothing bad would happen. I believe her.”

“That’s good.” The worst of my fears took a collective sigh at that, crawling back into their cages. “I was scared that it would be something scary and we would get jabbed with needles and locked away.”

In fact, the late night thoughts had gotten so bad that I’d been a nervous wreck for the past few weeks. I’d been tormenting myself with the horrific possibilities of what could and would happen.

“Nothing like that,” Dill said. “I hope, at least. I hate needles so if they start pulling out the sharp and pointy things, I’ll be outta here quicker than you can say lickety-split.” He ran his hand through his hair. The olive tone of his skin complimented the dark strands, and his eyes seemed to glisten in impish wonder and beautiful secrets in contrast. “Do you know what you’re looking to get out of this project?”

That question had been on one of the many forms I’d had to fill in. It had asked what we’d been looking to obtain by the end of the project.

I could have said the compensation fee. It was pretty decent. Enough so that Lucas, who had no interest in anything Caregiver or Little related, had been tempted to apply. The program covered our rent, if needed, while we were here, and what we were offered at the end was to cover the cost of missed wages or anything else.

I was fortunate enough that none of those were an issue. I still lived at home. I’d taken a gap year, and although I hadn’t put it to productive use, it still granted me a lot of freedom. I wasn’t sure how everybody else was going to cope, but that wasn’t for me to worry about.

It wasn’t the compensation fee, however, that had appealed. That detail hadn’t come up until after I’d submitted my application and they’d emailed back with more information. I’d been caught up on the potential Caregiver part.

I was tired of being alone. I was tired of hiding. I just wanted . . . more. But more importantly, I needed more.

I loved being Little. I loved the way it felt and the afterglow that followed. But by myself, it could be a nuisance. It made the simplest of things hard. My brain would turn to literal mush, along with my co-ordination. I could barely talk. Barely move. And if I stayed like that for too long, then I’d get upset and hungry, and I couldn’t figure out how to rectify that. Lucas had helped me a lot, but it wasn’t really fair to put that on him.

It was also how my mom had found out, and that hadn’t gone down . . . well?

“Maybe a long term Daddy or a Mommy?” I winced after I said it. It sounded almost taboo to say my deepest desires out loud.

When I regressed, it was non-sexual. My brain was too mushy to even process the possibility. But outside of that, I found both men and women attractive, and it was hard to pick a preference. I did lean more towards the idea of men, but that was more of a confidence thing than desire.

I was submissive. I was timid and nervous— a mousy little thing, in Lucas’ words. It was easier to find a boyfriend who accepted that than a girlfriend. Men had their egos and loved to prove they wore the pants in the relationship. Girls held men to stereotypes, and it made it hard to find one that would accept a man that needed them to catch the spiders for him.

Dill considered that. “I was told, confidentially, of course —” He gave a quick wink. ” — That they’re hoping for a 30% success rate in long term matching. Apparently we’re being paired up based on our personality test results and the questionnaires we had to fill in.”

If that was the case, it made sense as to why the questionnaires had been so long and in depth. There had been pages worth of the stuff, and I’d almost given up on filling them in.

We spoke some more. It was a needed distraction. It cured the worst of my nerves.

It was a long wait. The queue fizzled out and soon everyone was seated. Impatience stirred in the air, manifesting a restless ambience. Some paced. Some chatted, as I and Dill did. Others watched silently.

A loud, metallic grinding sounded sometime later. The high-frequency wail comendeered everyone’s attention, every head whipping towards the direction it was coming from. My hands had snapped around my ears, trying to block out the awful sound of metal on metal, and I tried to pinpoint the source.

It quickly became apparent.

To the right of the wall hatch, which had now vanished, becoming one with the wall, the large white brickwork slabs that made up the walls were moving. They parted in the centre, half winding up into the ceiling, the lower half sinking into the ground.

I was sure that I wasn’t the only one whose jaw was left on the floor.

Once the wall that was not a wall had vanished, two people stood in its place. One was aman — tall, broad shouldered and stiff-lipped. The other was a small woman — round glasses that framed her pointy face and dark hair that had been ragged back into a bun so tightly that it seemed to strain the flesh of her forehead.

They didn’t have to ask for everybody’s attention as they stepped into the lobby; they already held the focus of every set of eyes in the room.

“My name is Mrs. Black.” The woman spoke first, her heels clicking as she swayed over to us. Her tone was flat and without emotion, and her stare was dark and invasive. It didn’t matter that her eyes flicked between the seats, it instilled the impression that even when she wasn’t looking, she was still focused on me. I shuddered. I didn’t like it. “This is Mr. Parke. In a few moments, we are going to take you into the main assembly area. Once there, you will be split into three groups.”

“Group A, B and C,” Mr. Parke continued, finishing on from where Mrs. Black had finished. “These groups have already been specifically chosen and there is no possibility of exchanging. In these next few months, your group will be like your family. You will win tasks together or you will lose them together. You will reap rewards together, and you will face any punishments or forfeits together.”

“What kind of punishment?” A man called out. He was too far along the row of seats to really see him. Too many bodies were seated between us.

“Those will be explained to each group once you’ve been assigned. All questions will be answered then, too. If anybody wishes to leave, the option will be continuously available throughout the upcoming months. If anybody wishes to leave now, the doors are there.” Mrs. Black pointed a long, red-tipped finger at the doors we had all entered in. They were still sealed, barricaded with metal shutters. She waited a beat, and when nobody stepped forward, she nodded and flicked a hand towards her co-worker.

“If you would kindly form two lines,” Mr. Parke said. “Caregivers to the left. Regressors to the right.”

For a moment, it was chaos as everybody jumped to their feet. Dill gave me a dimpled smile. “Which side are you on, Callie?”

Blushing at the nickname, I pointed to the line forming on the right hand side. He made a humming noise, as though he already knew that, and nodded. “Guess this is where we part ways. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”

As he made his way into the opposing line that was built up of other men and women, I made my way over to the other. I ended up standing behind the man who’d picked my phone up for me earlier. He smiled at me. I tried to smile back but the nerves had crept up again.

And then we began to walk into the long stretch of corridor that had appeared behind the wall that was not a wall.