An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away By Lindsey H.

April 21, 2042

A Message from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

The government has passed a new law stating that animal testing is no longer allowed. It is not humane, and anyone found conducting experiments or tests on animals will be prosecuted immediately.

Thank you.

***

I walked down the sidewalk, my feet crunching in the snow with

every step that I took. “Bye Stormi,” my friend, Isabelle, said as she turned down the street of her house.

I decided to take the route through the alley because it was shorter. The sky was beginning to turn a shade of purple as the sun was setting, and the shadows seemed to follow me. I turned around. Nothing was there. I continued walking down the alley, and I heard the sound of footsteps coming from behind me. Again, I turned around and looked behind me. It was nothing. My mind was indeed playing tricks on me. I turned the corner, and a dark figure came out of nowhere. I fell, and hit my head on the hard pavement. I heard a scream. No, wait. That was my voice. Why did my voice sound so distant? I became dizzy, and everything went black.

I woke up in a cold, damp, and dark room. It looked like the basement of a warehouse. The walls and floor were made from cement bricks, and one wall was made of metal bars. It was a cell, but surely I wasn’t in prison. What could I have possibly done to get myself arrested? I heard rustling behind me and turned around. My eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark yet, and I rubbed them. The image a boy and a girl appeared before me.

“Who are you?” I asked them.

“I am Aiden, and this is Persephone,” the boy answered. Both of them had sickly features. They were both so pale that they looked as if flour covered their bodies. They both had gaunt faces and large black and purple circles ringed their eyes. Persephone had long, matted blonde hair and Aiden had shaggy black hair. It seemed as if they had been here for awhile, but they looked to be about 18 or 19.

“Where exactly are we?” I asked, puzzled.

“We are in ‘The Observatory.’ This is the building in which all the animal testing was done for new drugs and products. Persephone and I were both locked up here about a year ago. You get one shower a week, your shots every other day, and an apple a day. It keeps the doctor away, y’ know?” Aiden spoke with cold humor. “We’ve seen it all. They bring in new people, they give them their shots, and many of them end up getting really sick. Sometimes they’ll just die, and sometimes the men in white coats and safety masks will take them out of the cell to who knows where.”

I was shocked. If I was standing, I would have most certainly fainted. I was probably going to die. I had to get out of here, but how?

***

Every single day for about the next year I received my apple, and every other day my shots. On this particular day, the men in the white coats unlocked the cell and led me out through a very brightly lit white hallway. We passed many white, locked doors, and I heard the wildest noises: Screams, growls. It was terrible.

I was situated on a cold, metal table, and a syringe about 4 inches injected an unknown substance into my blood stream.

The door burst open. “Doctor, we have a code ten-ten in the hallway.”

The doctor grabbed a syringe off of the table, and rushed out of the room. I was all alone, and decided to have a look. I opened the door slightly, and saw a terrible sight in the hallway. A sickly looking man was in the hallway on the floor with his mouth foaming. He had welts all over his body, and he was attacking anyone who came his way. Two men in white coats grabbed him by the arms, and the doctor jabbed the man with the syringe. He crumpled to the floor.

“Record on the man’s charts that a negative effect occurred, and take him to the incinerator,” the doctor said.

After hearing that, I had enough. I quickly went back into the room and waited for the doctor to come back into the room.

***

When I returned to the cell, I found Persephone and Aiden in the corner. Persephone was lying down, and Aiden was crouched beside her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Persephone is ill. I think this might be her last night with us,” Aiden told me mournfully.

Aiden and I spent the night in the corner of the cell with Persephone. She was having trouble breathing, and her forehead glistened with sweat. While we were with her I told them both of the scene I had encountered when I was receiving my shots.

“Record on the man’s chart that a negative effect occurred? Send him to the incinerator?” Aiden repeated a bit puzzled. “It’s all coming together now. The shots we receive – those are the products and we are the animals. They’re testing drugs on us because they aren’t allowed to test on animals anymore. We have to escape, and we have to tell someone what’s going on in here.”

***

So, the next day our scheme unraveled. The man who opened our cell the next morning to bring us our apples was our only hope of escaping the fate that was soon ahead of us.

We heard the man’s keys rattling, and Aiden knew it was time. He and I worked together to lift the heavy, stone bench in the middle of the room. When the man came into view, we ran into him with it and he was knocked out.

“I’d say we have a good ten minutes before someone comes looking for him,” Aiden told me. I ran over to Persephone.

“Persephone, we have to leave now,” I said, shaking her. She was still asleep. “Persephone!” I said a bit louder. I grabbed her wrist to feel her pulse, but it wasn’t there.

“What’s wrong, Stormi?” Aiden asked.

“She’s dead.”

***

Aiden and I sprinted through the bright halls looking for a way out. I pushed a door, and an ear piercing alarm sounded. We were going to be caught! We were going to be murdered!

“Stormi, come here. Quick!” Aiden yelled as I saw two men rush out a room at the end of the hallway. He pushed through one las door. This door was our last hope of life.

Thankfully, it led out of the building. We were in the middle of a city, in our grimy clothes and with our sickly pale bodies while people walked by us in their expensive designer clothes and with briefcases.

How was no one observant enough to know that this horrible thing was going on in this building that they walked by every single day? How come we were in there for about a year and nobody ever knew?

A woman passed us and was staring. She looked away and started walking again, but decided to turn around and come back. She gasped. “Aren’t you that girl and boy from the newspapers?” she said. “Come with me,” and with that she led us down the road in our grungy clothing all the way to the police department.

***

We told the police every single detail. In return, they told us of our fame. Apparently Aiden, Persephone, and I had our photos plastered over every newspaper and website. Nobody had any clues on where we were. Our parent’s thought that we were dead.

The police arrested the men in charge of the whole operation. They were given the death penalty for killing so many people, and all of the people who were held captive were under quarantine at the hospital, and they were under the watchful eye of the doctors there.

All was not well, however. Aiden found out he had cancer. The drugs that the men had injected him with caused a tumor to grow. It didn’t go away, and he died after about a year.

I ended up being alright. The drugs did nothing to me and I lived a pretty good life. To this day my past still haunts me, but that experience has given me so many new views on the world, and I’m grateful to be alive.