His dreams were always the same. His mother's voice filling his head with warning, followed by the darkness, an endless black, and he dreaded the moment when the thin light appeared. The light gave him a view of his room, but his eyes shut before he could see inside his old bedroom. He knew what he was going to see. The outcome was always the same and his small frame could do nothing against the man in black. He anticipated the gunshot...but it still made him jump, made his ears ring for moments long after the shot fired. The thud of his mother's body hitting the carpet never came as a surprise, not after having the same dream for so long, but the sob that ripped through him and panic that suffocated him felt like the first time, every time. In the beginning, he kept his eyes open and saw his mother fall, and he learned remarkably quick not to. He could see the life leaving her warm eyes, could see his mother slipping away from her body as she took her last breath, and he wished he could look away once he saw her but couldn't. He could never get the image of her dead out of his head, even when the features of her face were slowly disappearing and he couldn't remember anything about her anymore. He knows deep down that this dream wasn't just a dream, another form of torment, but a constant reminder of how he failed. Of how he couldn't escape even though his mother gave her life for him.
When Eren woke up from his only dream, his sensitive eyes quickly adjusted to the unnaturally bright room. To spare them, he attempted to shield them but came to the realization that his arms were lead, unmoving and tiresome. His neck groaned and cracked as he took in the overly familiar room. Everything was white and nothing was private. The walls, tile floor, ceiling, bed frame, pillows, blankets, and even the damn toilet, next to the bed, was the overused color. Occasionally, there would be something other than white. Sometimes the floor would be splattered with red, blood escaping from her wounds and eventually, his bed would become soiled along with it. Although by the time his body permitted to rest and he wakes up, the crimson color would be replaced, once again bathing the room in white with the heavy smell of chemicals. His nose no longer cringed at it since the heavy fumes and him were well acquainted. His head ached when he tries to think of how long he's been in this room and fails to come up with an answer every time. How could he ever count the days? Windows were nonexistent and the only form of light came from the flickering artificial lights above. They never turned off. Always burning brightly until one of them gives out with a crack and is replaced; the never-ending cycle. He could count the number of times the guards change shifts but some feel longer than most. Or it just feels longer because time seems to be discontinued with certain guards that like to throw slurs and insults at him. They've never once treated him like the person his mother raised him to be, like he was filth, an animal...a monster. Eren tries to push their words out of his mind but they sometimes seep into his flesh and taint his inner walls. He knows deep down, buried within his head, that he deserves this treatment; that he was truly a freak and doesn't have the privilege to be shown kindness. He told himself that he should be grateful that they've kept him alive after all this time, that he's been serving his usefulness well. The familiar tightness in his chest reared its head and he forced his stiff neck to look at the ceiling. He started to count backward from fifteen and kept repeating the action again until he managed to make the tightness fall apart. He couldn't remember anything but the four walls surrounding him and the dark lab down the hallway that he was dragged to daily but could clearly envision the first time he woke in this room of never-ending white.
Eren had awoken from a drugged induced nightmare, only the beginning of many to come, and entered a new one. His ten-year-old self-had been terrified of being in the unfamiliar white room and felt sick as it spun and turned uncontrollably around him. He slowly made out the minimal features of his cage, the hard bed that he laid on, a small sink, and the toilet that became a quick friend when he doubled over and emptied an empty stomach into it. When the only thing he threw up was air and the dry heaving had passed, his vision began to focus and make out the large porcelain door across the small room. The desire to leave the shrinking room overcame Eren and he stood on his shaking legs. He tripped over his feet when he moved to fast but made it to the door. Mind racing as he gripped onto the handle of the door and yanked with all his might but nothing happened. His breath caught in his throat as he continued to pull, push, yank, and put all of his weight into the task. Fresh tears sprinkled his cheeks when a sense of panic completely sink into his pores.
"Open! Come on, open!" he chanted.
The door remained unmobile. His strength and voice started to diminish as time passed. When his voice was reduced to nothing, his body slid down the metal and pressed his hot, wet face into it. Even with his voice becoming hoarse and nearly gone, he continued to beg against the door to be let out. His mother's laugh and gentle smile, which by now he has forgotten, kept echoing inside his head, turning him into a sobbing mess. He hated crying... but he couldn't make himself stop. All he wanted was his mom. Eren didn't know how long he sat there, it was long enough for his head to start throbbing painfully and his eyes to sting everytime he blinked. He tried to replay the events that happened before he woke up in the strange room but came up short. The last thing he remembered was his mother alive and them eating lunch together at home... when his mom was alive.
Days, maybe weeks passed by, he had no idea, and he was offered no contact with anything. A slot on the bottom of the metal door would deliver him food. It barely opened enough for the food to slip through and he sat on the floor for long periods of time to prove to himself that it wasn't just appearing behind the door and magically slipping itself through. The amount of food on the tray was meager at best and almost unbearable to eat. Everything was tasteless. The meat, if there was any, was either tough and required too much effort to rip apart with his hands or teeth or so chewy that it felt more like gum that lost its taste than actual food. He quickly learned that crying got him nowhere but a painful headache and leaving him feeling exhausted beyond words. Whenever he wasn't sleeping or eating, he would sit on top of the hard mattress, placing his only blanket, white like everything else in his cage, on top of his head while he stares at the wall. Eren knew that there was people outside of his walls. When he pressed his ears against the metal and ignored the buzzing of silence in his other ear, he could hear faint whispering on the other side of the door. They were too hushed to understand and he wondered for so long if it was truly just his imagination, slowly turning him mad from the amount of time he was surrounded by silence.
He constantly thought of his mother, the features of her face and the gentleness of her voice began to fade away at a startling pace. All the effort that he took to latch onto his memories of her were turning into a waste, and it was the same when he tried to remember his two friends. Eren could envision playing together with them and the numerous sleepovers that the three of them had but a heavy gray fog was covering their faces. Even when their mouths moved to speak, nothing came out, like they were all submerged underwater. When he thought of his friends and mother, a heavy pressure pressed against his chest and it became hard to take a breath. It felt as if he was being dragged deep into the ocean and he couldn't escape no matter how he tried fighting against the current or to vanquish the thoughts out of his mind.
He believed that an extensive amount have time passed before his schedule of solidarity changed, and he only believed it because the clothes that he wore since he arrived had shrunk on his frame. Eren had awoken from another recurring nightmare to feel painful pulsing and a burning sensation erupting from his chest. He'd never felt that intense of pain before, not even when he broke his arm over a bet gone bad with another one of his faceless friends. His hands clawed at his bare chest, trying to focus precious air into his lungs and the panic rapidly descending upon him hadn't helped his breathing. I'm going to die.
I'm going to DIE! I'M GOING TO DIE!
He didn't notice that he wasn't screaming in fear just in his head but his lips were moving along with the words, his throat beginning to scratch. Whether it be from screaming or trying to breath, he couldn't tell, couldn't care. Many times since he's been trapped in his solitary he's yearned for the end of silence and to slip into an endless sleep where he would never wake up and see the white walls again, but he was a coward. Even though his room being mostly bare, the many hours of solitude let his mind run wild with ideas and creative ways to rid himself. However, the words that plagued his nightmares, his mother's words, comes screaming and destroying every thought that didn't have to do with living. In that moment of extreme pain, every thought he ever had of ending himself vanished. Eren never wanted to feel something like this ever again. The muscles in his limbs began to spasm and seize, making them useless to move, and his fingers numbed. The screamed that escaped his throat burned as his chest pain increased dramatically, sweat beginning to flood his forehead and back. He looked down to see a crimson rash breaking out on his chest and the muscles spasming at different rates. The pain never lessened, only increased as the only thing he could do was curl into a ball and beg for it to go away. His screams continued to bounce off the walls and Eren never wished harder to see his mother again, for her to hold him through the pain. If this was the way he was going, he wanted to see her one last time.
"Sedate him! Now!" a noise boomed through the room.
Eren pushed through the burning to snap his eyes open, trying to block it out enough to take in the sight in front of him. He had to been having a near-death experience because the metal, sealed door was wide open and two large men stood next to him. He couldn't make anything out about them besides the black uniform that hug their bodies, nothing to prove that he wasn't truly hallucinating their presence. One of them reached for his arm, which he tried to pull away but it did nothing but seize in the man's hand. The man pulled a syringe from his back pocket, sending Eren more into a panic. He tried using his legs to kick the man away from his, screaming louder, but the needle still sank through his flesh. He managed to knock the needle out from his wiggling, only after the liquid had been pushed into his blood, and soon his vision began to become unfocused. "No! No! No!" he heard himself yelling as the haze continued to take over. He tried to fight against the drug but was quickly losing. This was the moment he's waited in isolation for, what he's been waiting for since being introduced into this prison. He's been wanting nothing more than to understand why he had to deal with his solitude. Now the opportunity was slipping through his fingers and there was nothing to stop it, nothing to do but surrender himself to the haze. His vision began to tunnel until the darkness engulfed his eyes and he couldn't tell if the screaming in his ears was still him or echoes.
