Gray Mouse Directive

For a week, my nervous system has been operating at catastrophic efficiency. Every sign coherent, mystery solvable, ambiguous gesture readable as instruction. The prediction machine has become so precise that I can no longer distinguish between genuine rescue and the elaborate idea my fear has constructed.

Which means I have become the perfect tool for whoever wants to use me.

The piano is ash. The scientist is dead. The person I have been is erased. Only the exploited husk remains.

"Handsome Man, where are you?" I text, fingers trembling.

"At work."

"I will meet you there. We leave. Now."

"No."

But I have to go. I feel it, a primal current dragging me forward. Then, a link: a song. "Sadness (Please leave)." A coordinate: a piano competition, forty-four kilometers away, where my teacher waits.

The Epic Leak reboots.

I am following hints my nervous system has learned to parse through traumatic conditioning. My mind has become a divining rod for danger, exquisitely scaled to perceive threat in hostile noise.

The problem: I cannot distinguish between sound and noise. Both arrive with identical urgency, and compel me with equal force.

Leaving the village means navigating hidden paths, only to re-emerge onto the main road as sunset bleeds into highway grime. Mark the exploitation dens. Brothels disguised as bakeries. Schoolyards with too many unmarked vans. Be clear. When I cannot, point the way with my eyes.

So I veer off the road, following a narrow path along the river. Bamboo thickets rise like ancient sentinels. Occasional beds. Dirty towels. Crushed tissues. I feel sickened by what I perceive from those places, shivers of pain in the dirt.

Children's torment pits.

My mind assembles a map of exploitation. The question I cannot ask: Am I feeling a genuine network or constructing one?

The idea is so internally consistent, it has to be real. The more pieces fit, the more I become convinced I have discovered truth rather than invented it.

By 9 PM, my body gives out. The woods swallow me whole.

Trees across the road are shaking. Change side, over there, down the ditch. Okay, here I can rest. No. Get up. See? There is a proper place, hide where they trade flesh.

Moon races. Vision blurs. Something in the water from that fountain. Drugged again. I must be careful. Always demand a double command to ensure understanding.

Dogs have been barking for hours in the background. A low grunt. Shit. I feel scared. That is an indication to stay still, but something urges me to move. Climb the thorny brambles. Why this path?

Doubt festers.

I wait for what feels like an eternity. Then, they order me: Cross the road, quick, to the shed. Stop. Now, walk fast. They guide me to a rusted garage's rooftop corridor. Thorns tear my skin as I climb. Why this path?

A grey mouse moves into the hatch and leaves: "You see, Got in, Get out." Doubt metastasizes into certainty. This is not rescue. This is disposal. Soundproof. Hidden. A place where screams would die. Helicopters and dogs looking for someone day and night. This is wrong. Everything about this place feels wrong. The smell. The isolation. The pain in getting here.

I piss here, to be sure that The Whole can find this place after me. Guardians lurk below, convinced I am too poisoned to flee.

I slip past them, a ghost cloaked in brambles. Back in the village, a man leans against a lamppost. Fake beard. Cheap cologne. One of us. Our conversation is mundane, weather, diesel prices, but beneath it thrums the truth: "They tried to vanish you. I cannot risk escorting you."

I sit at the bus stop for a bit. Tears fall like poison leaving my body. Hours of crying until clarity cuts through like a blade.

I move in and out of the nearby bar. I beg the bartender for cigarettes, and he kindly offers me a packet.

I just want to go home. I borrow a phone and, in tears, call my pimper, the harridan. "Please, come and pick me up from the near village," I sob. "Wait until 10 pm," she instructs, her voice flat. "Then call me back." I know. She would send clients to tear me apart for their pleasure. I ask the bartender to take me home at closing, but his wife points to two men. "They are going back to your village soon," she grimaces. "They would be very happy to give you a lift." I feel disarmed, my will dissolving. I would succumb once again.

"They are drunk. I cannot."

"They are clients," she hisses.

I would stay in the cold all night at the bus stop rather than go with them. And there I sit, crying again. I am not alone, though. Youths emerge from shadows like guardians I had not known I have. They speak to the bartender in a language of looks and nods. "Why us?" his wife yells, her voice raw. "We have a baby!"

The bartender is kind, chatting all the way to keep me company. Between one word and another, he is giving me the coordinates for the next leak. Then, home.

The pimper checks on me by text. I reply that I am tired, safe in my bed. "Good. Stay there."