It was the same lies that she had long since memorized that kept everyone from turning on her- killing her.

She still remembered the first time she had been forced to lie. It had been like laying down the first brick in a new building. And it had been the first building block- but just not in the sense many would think of it- her name.

It was with her first lie that a now familiar excuse was born- that she could simply not remember anything of her life following her trauma, both physical and mental. It had been a nurse that had suggested the name, and since then, it had stuck.

Jenny Doe.

Hospital life, for her, had a dream-like quality to it. At times, she felt happy, despite the eccentricities that surrounded her everyday life, and other times, the place took on a nightmarish quality that could beat any dark feelings she may have experienced in life before the hospital.

The smells. These people with all their strange ways. The family who came to visit her. The medicine, some of which she had acquired and had since gotten over having an addiction for. But, out of everything, the two things that often played on her tissue-thin sanity was the creature she saw in the mirror- and The Lies.

She had to tell The Lies; wouldn't anyone have done the same thing in her situation? Wouldn't they? Who would, after all, consent to be killed after being discovered to be an impostor?

But, as much of a pain as everything she had gone through felt like, there was some sick delight she got in telling The Lies. Oh yes, she was a victim. Yes, the face she now wore was her own; it had, after all, always been her own- they only had to repair it. Every once in awhile, when she didn't feel disgusted of herself by either thoughts of what she had been before becoming what she was now, or by equally as disgusting thoughts of what she now saw in this new person, she would look in the mirror and see what others saw of her now. And of what they would see, once everything was finished to all of the surgeons' tastes.

But nevertheless, she still found it near impossible to stop herself from analyzing everything on the canvas that was her face, her body. Her nose, for example, was an entirely reshaped mass. Her eyes, her feature that she was most ashamed of, were miraculously fixed. And her teeth, what few she had had, were now white, and what she had not originally had they had somehow given her in the form of fakes.

Yes, she was being treated like a victim- and beyond. What few people knew of her miraculous act saw her as a hero. The family themselves did not know that the very person they visited in the hospital for the past year was not who they believed she was.

Earlier they had come to visit, in fact. The boy, the one she had thought only of admiring from afar when she had first seen him- then had saved from death- came bearing a colorful bouquet of flowers. She was grateful to him for more than just visiting with his family, keeping her company; she was also grateful that he had not questioned her about why it was that she had been wearing the pullover that she had stolen from his family's truck. A victim stealing from another victim was a story that would only hurt her and possibly reveal her for what she really was. Or, on the same note, if any of them had caught a good look at her face during all of the action- before she had taken her plunge. Which thankfully, they hadn't.

The other three had come, too- the older man, the girl that she always felt uncomfortable around, and the child. But, aside from being allowed to cradle the young one, the only one she cared about at her bedside was the boy. And, just like every time they visited her, she asked if they would fulfill their promise.

That she could stay with them.

And, just like always, one of the members of the family- this time the blond haired girl- held her healed hand, and tenderly repeated the promise that they had told her the first time they had seen her in the hospital.

Jenny Doe had no family, no memory of her past life, or any ideas about how to live in civilized society. Or so she had told over and over again.

She had been found on top of the man, no, the creature she had hated for so long that she could not recall ever not hating him, after she had planned on sacrificing herself. All she remembered afterwards was a light so bright it was nearly blinding- then waking up after being thrown into the world she had always dreamed of.

Everyone thought that the broken body found atop the creature that had absorbed the shock of her fall in its death, with her horrible face and body, had resulted from injuries in the fall or from injuries she had sustained since being captured and hurt by Them. The story they had assumed about her- first the boy's family, then everyone in the hospital- was the one she had taken for herself. She was a victim whose own family had been killed.

If only they knew that it was quite the opposite.

After she was finished with constructing her new self, built with nothing except her imagination, an endless cache of lies, and the sympathy of others around her, she was going to become Jenny Burkowski in one more week. And never again would there be a creature named Ruby.

She had died on an operating table more than a year ago, after all.