Relinquished

[rinkhc]

Title: Relinquished
Fandom:Original Fiction
Prompt: "Eating Disorders"
Medium: Fic
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 1,270

Warning: Child neglect, bullying

Summary: In a future time, Billy has been returned to the center because he is damaged 

 

Billy wasn’t exactly certain why food suddenly tasted bad and he couldn’t bring himself to put it in his mouth anymore. His caregivers grew more and more impatient with him. Unable to coax him into eating and unwilling to continue expending the energy it was costing them, they bundled him into the transport unit and took him to The Center.

He was twelve years old, the day his caregivers signed the Relinquishment documents. He stood at the glass door and watched them as they spoke with the Intake Director. Emba waved her hands around and Billy could tell that she was telling about the Vomit Incident by the motions of her hands. The Vomit Incident had been the last of a series of Incidents that had led to him being Relinquished. Embo just stood and nodded and went along agreeing with everything Emba said as usual. Billy wondered if Embo had had an original thought in his life. They turned away and left without even saying goodbye. They had never loved him, he had always known that, but now this Relinquishment was proof.

An intern came and took him by the hand and led him away to a small sterile room where it was explained that he would sleep and keep his clothing. Sleeping and dressing were all he was to do in the room, all other activities were to be conducted in specified areas, under supervision. The intern took him to a desk and he was issued three changes of nondescript pale yellow pants and pale yellow shirts as well as underclothes the soft slipper-like shoes were yellow too. He went back to his room and put on the new clothing. His old things were taken away, he never saw them again. The only possession he was allowed to keep from his old life was a small, worn stuffed bunny that had been his favorite toy from the time he was three and Emba had given it to him as a holiday gift, one of the few gifts she had ever given him.

He would later come to learn the significance of colors in The Center. Yellow meant he had “food issues” and that all eating and drinking he did was to be closely monitored at all times. He was told by the intern that he was not to eat anything if it was not documented first by a floor worker an intern a nurse or a doctor.

Colors were important. Billy learned that quickly and the hard way. At arts and crafts session he attempted to sit at a table where some boys wearing green were drawing on tablets. The three boys looked up at him, staring pointedly at his yellow shirt and then looked away, refusing to speak to him. Every time he plugged his tablet into the central dock on the table, one of them would reach over and yank it out and toss the wire aside angrily.

“Hey, new kid. Are you stupid?” A girl that was a bit older than him, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with bright red curls wearing yellow like him poked his shoulder. “Greens don’t mix with anyone, ever. Come away before you get hurt, this lot is borderline red and might gang up you.”

He took his tablet and followed her to a table across the room where two other girls in yellow sat, both a year or two older than him along with a girl in blue that seemed his age. He sat and looked around at them nervously. “What’s your particular, new kid?” the red haired girl asked when he didn’t say anything.

“Uhm... I...”

She thumped a thumb to her chest. “I’m Aoife, I overeat.” Billy could see that easily, her seams were straining on her shirt. The dark haired girl to his left was identified with jab of a chubby finger at her shoulder. “This is Miri, she’s a sticker.” At Billy’s blank look, she mimed putting her index finger in her mouth and gagging. Miri blushed and looked down at her lap. “That’s Frieda, she eats the walls. You know, the paint, the plaster, the stuff inbetween, she’ll chew on wood if you let her.”

Billy looked at Frieda, who shrugged and went back to her drawing. She had hair that was cut shorter than he had ever seen, it looked like her head had been shaved. Seeing him staring at it, Aoife said, “She kept eating her hair, so they hacked it off, isn’t that right, Frieda?”

The girl in blue was looking at him, twirling the end of her black braid. “That’s Linda. She’s a moper.”

“I have “depressive personality issues” call things by their right names, Aoife. Why are you here, Billy?”

“I stopped eating.”

“They’ll force feed you, you know. They’ll stick tubes down your throat, or put a valve in your belly,” Miri warned with a frown and then suggested helpfully, “You should try to eat.”

Aoife glared across the room. “And stay away from the Greens and Reds. They don’t like us.”

Linda made a face and rolled her eyes. “No one likes us, Aoife. That’s why we’re here. We’re throwaways. That’s what Relinquished means. It means thrown away. We weren’t good enough for the Embas and Embos to keep us and love us so they dumped us here and went off to The Factory to get themselves new ‘springs.”

“Stop talking like that, Linda,” Frieda said.

“Truth. Sorry it it hurts, dear.”

Billy looked over to where a girl in purple was sitting with a boy in red. Trying to get a handle on the lingo, he asked, “What is the issue with them?”

“Purples are the ones that hurt themselves. Reds are the ones that hurt everyone else,” Frieda said. “Stay away from them. And the Oranges, they see things and hear things and they’ll start screaming for no reason, you should keep away from them. ”

A floor worker in white came over to the table. “Stop fueling the fueds, girls. We’re trying to promote harmony and peace here, and this ostracizing of the others and the segregation is only making things worse.”

“The Reds started it, Flossy. Everything was fine until they started pushing the rest of us around,” Aoife snapped.

“Aoife, the others follow your example. Just because you have a problem with Charles, does not mean everyone needs to. This arguing must stop. Billy, you are free to be friends with anyone you wish to.” The floor worker said in a kindly voice.

More confused than ever, Billy sat quietly and tried to draw on his tablet while Aoife muttered and complained under her breath. What had he walked into? Who should he listen to?

Linda slid over beside him and pressed a button on his tablet. “Here, use this program, it’s got better options for textures and patterns. You should just concentrate on getting better, Billy. If you get better, they’ll transfer you to the Secondary Market and you might get a really good Emba and Embo this time.”

“The Secondary Market is a myth, Linda, don’t build up the kid’s hopes.”

“Shut up, Aoife and draw something. Stop running your mouth,” Linda snapped back.

“How do you know I didn’t have a good Emba and Embo last time?”

Linda patted his hand. “If you had, you wouldn’t be one of the Relinquished. You might not even have had your “food issues.”

He blinked away the tears that came to his eyes. Linda was the first person to be nice to him in a very, very long time.

The End