She held her knees as she leant over taking deep breaths. She had seen their odd unblinking eyes and suddenly they had all blinked a second set blinking sideways. A person suddenly put their hand on her shoulder, “Miss Thrimble? You appear to be unhappy. Can I help in anyway?”
She looked at the woman who was in a black suit, white buttoned shirt and her blond hair tied back in a pony tail. She looked slightly non-descript in any form of the word, which reminded her of the old television shows about secret alien organisations. One of the kids’ movies being the Men in Black. She started laughing hysterically at the woman who had no idea at her internal monologue questioning if the kids who returned were aliens. Her hysterical laughing became crying as she realised that she couldn’t even comprehend what had happened to those sweet kids and her own, what she thought of as revulsion, being a hindrance to her helping them. The woman stayed silent, until she had stopped crying.
“They have two sets of eyelids?” She questioned the woman in black.
“We were aware of the change, yes. Humans used to have the ability but it was lost due to non-use from evolution. We don’t know why they developed the ability again during their hiatus,” She explained with a calm reasonable tone.
“Should we have been warned about this abnormality?”
“Wasn’t deemed as necessary at the time. If you are unable to teach your class, we have trained people who can continue. But we feel that the familiarity will help them adapt back into your society.”
“No, I can teach them. I just need to gather myself for a moment,” she took three deep breaths.
“I’ll be watching,” the woman replied and her echoing footsteps sounded down the quiet hallway.
She slowly stood and bracing herself, went back into the classroom. She frowned and asked louder than she intended, “What happened to you?”
They blinked, normal human blinks, in confusion, as if not understanding the question. Finally Cassandra spoke in a soft voice, “We don’t know Miss, one minute we were sitting here as normal and the next we awoke out by the disused gas station, old.”
“Simon, you said you remembered that they kept some longer. Did you see where they kept you?” She asked.
“They didn’t take us, we just were there. They spoke, but not English. I don’t know why I remember, but they were concerned that I wouldn’t go back to sleep,” Simon looked like he was on the verge of tears.
In that moment she felt a heart-breaking empathy with him. She understood that they were all still kids, lost and confused by looking grown up, without having the needed growing up between the time. They would never go through learning the different stages of development, they went straight from kid to middle age and didn’t have the knowledge which was important for those stages. She said quietly, “It’s okay Simon, you did very well trying to remember what they were like. Do you want to talk more about it?” He shook his head and she nodded, knowing not to push him to give information until he was ready.
“Does anyone else remember? Anything?” She asked, unhopeful looking into their wide confused eyes.
“Miss the blond woman already asked us these questions. We don’t understand what you want?” Cassandra explained in an almost patient tone.
“I just want to know what happened to you,” she paused and frowned thinking about their naïve faces, until she could explain it simply, “I’m scared.”
“We don’t want to remember Miss,” Douglas said with a small voice, “We were treated like animals.”
“They put you in cages?” She asked and watched as they each decided whether or not to nod.
“We were studied, like a scientist putting a bug under a microscope to see its insides,” Frances shook his head and stuck out his tongue in disgust.
“Did the government people ask you about this?” She asked gently as she looked at the older than her, people sitting their with kid like confusion. She was used to kids confusion. She was not prepared for it on the faces of fifty year olds, but felt her own internal empathy reach out and want to help them.
“But no one listens to us,” Margot said in the back row.
“Tell me, I will listen and I can speak with them.”
“We woke up, they were talking. They looked at us like bugs. They put us in cages. Watched us. Gave us odd things to eat. The worst thing was they fed us things which made us die and somehow they regenerated us to live the trauma again. We remembered it. We went through it numerous times, until they found a less harmful substance to feed us with. Fifty three tries of pain, were tested on me. They kept testing and testing until they found something. It was bananas. I couldn’t believe it had taken that long to find bananas. I don’t know what the end goal was, but the insult of telling us we were the same as monkeys seemed a slight somehow. I guess we thought we needed something heroic. They didn’t ask us, only prodded us and hurt us. We were prisoners. We wanted to go home. But they couldn’t or wouldn’t understand us,” Cassandra spoke shaking her head as tears started to drip down her cheeks.
“The girls have scars which sit under our underwear and above the hair growing. The boys don’t. We all examined each other when the pain started. The wounds healed quicker than normal on the outside, but the insides felt sore for a long time,” Margot took over the explanation, after putting a hand comfortingly on Cassandra’s shoulder.
“How about now? Are you alright? Did the doctors, here, check for anything wrong?” She asked her gently.
“No, they were told not to. By the lady,” she said sucking her thumb, which had been considered a problem her parents had begged her for help with, when she appeared as a seven year old.
“You were asked to hold it a secret from a women? Was she human?”
“No, yes,” Simon nodded.
“Can you describe her?” She asked, seeing them look fearfully at each other. Suddenly the door opened and the blonde lady entered the room. Looking at her used to be kids, she saw recognition and worse than that, fear.
“Miss Thrimble, come with me please,” The blond woman asked holding the door open.
“Yes, sorry, what was your name?” She asked the woman as she accompanied her into the hallway.
“Fiona, Miss Thrimble,”
“Why did my kids look at you in horror?” She blurted, without meaning to.
The woman turned and looked at her with despondence, “They are not children, but adults. They are reacting because they have been through an ordeal, you cannot comprehend. Please understand that while we value your candour and abilities, we will no longer be requiring your service. We can offer you jobs in administration, you obviously do not register how to impart our message to these humans.”
“Humans, as in, not your species, Fiona?” She asked half willing the creature to change or do something and also fearing it. She felt her hand clutching the lighter she had forgotten in her pocket to allow her hand the stability to punch if she needed to.
“You have been allowed your freedom because we could see you as an asset. But you have determined my nature and have made that an impossibility. Time to leave Miss Thrimble.”
She found her self on a metal dark platform, naked. She covered herself with her hands and tried to peer into the darkness…
