“I don’t want to go here anymore.”
My mom eyeballed me resentfully. “You have no choice until you get better.”
“The place isn’t going to make me better.”
Her scowl never faltered in her expression. “And why not?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I realized as soon as I did that there was nothing else to say. She could never understand. “It just won’t.”
She shook her head sadly. “Go inside. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
Disdainfully I got out of the car and walked slowly towards my doom. I opened the building’s door and carefully stepped into the enclosing brown walls, in a shade that reminded me so much of the earth, closing in around me. The receptionist didn’t smile as I walked up to the counter. ‘What can I do for you?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Lee,” I mumbled, my voice hidden within myself.
The woman looked over the books leisurely, her frown never fading from her face. “You’re a little late,” she muttered. I only nodded. The argument with my mom had shave a few precious minutes off the appointment.
“She’ll see you now,” she said simply, gesturing towards a narrow brown hallway. I felt like I was going to swallow my tongue as I entered the corridor. It was as if I was in a labyrinth deep within the earth, walking deeper and deeper to my eventual death.
An Asian woman with a faked smile was standing in the doorway at the end of the hall waiting for me. She gestured for me to come inside her office, which I did, wishing every second I was somewhere else.
I sat down on a deep brown couch amid the clay-like walls and faced her. The window behind me was shut, blinds closed, leaving the air stale and bathed in shadows. I was trying with all my strength not to panic, not to feel like I was being buried alive.
“So how’s the new medication working out?” she asked, her accent thick.
“Fine,” I said meekly, my eyes darting about the room for an escape, besides the locked brown door.
“That’s good. How have you been feeling?” she asked, jotting down some notes in her report.
“Fine,” I repeated, unable to form any other words in my mind. My lungs were beginning to constrict, my throat tightening. My breath was coming in shallow gasps, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“That’s good. Could you elaborate?”
“I’m not…angry anymore.” No, I was only terrified. My greatest fear was coming to life above the earth. I was being buried in this office. I was entirely alone; nobody I loved knew I was there, nobody would be able to find me when I disappeared. Nobody would be able to hear me scream as all the air slowly seeped out of my confinement. A cold sweat was beginning to surface on my forehead as the psychiatrist studied me carefully.
“You seem nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I lied. I was more than nervous.
She began to speak to me about how the room was a safe zone, although it was quite obvious to me that it was so much the opposite. The brown walls were growing closer, seeking to crush me between them, to suck all my air from within my chest and leave me to suffocate. I was already suffocating; my lungs refused to work the way they should, and my gasps were growing closer together and more frantic. The room was still growing smaller, and my eyes darted about frantically, tears beginning to surface.
My breath ceased altogether. The earthly walls faded away as I collapsed to the floor, everything fading to black.

I woke up in a similar room, earthly brown and unbearably small, informing me that I was still in the place. I was lying down on a hard bed, apparently constructed of some sort of wood. I groaned; my head was throbbing from the fall, and the room was weaving back and forth in my vision. I attempted to get up, but failed. It was as if my arms and legs were bound.
A bright light flashed on above my head, and I clenched my eyes shut in pain, groaning again. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” a voice said monotonously. I opened my eyes to see a masked doctor within my line of sight, staring down at me indifferently. I didn’t like his eyes; they were cold and blue, devoid of any sort of emotion. He was like an automaton, affecting and affected by nothing.
“Where am I?” I slurred, trying again to sit up.
“That’s no good,” he said calmly. “Sit still, you don’t want the straps to cut into your arm.”
My heart skipped a beat at his words, and suddenly I realized why I was unable to move. I looked to see four leather straps confining me to the bed, completely immobilizing me. My breath began to grow shallow again as panic took hold of me.
“What do you want?” I whimpered.
“Oh that’s easy.” Dr. Lee’s accent was immediately obvious to me, and she walked to my bedside from some dark corner. “My office has been doing a study on phobias for the longest time; our evidence is beginning to demonstrate that the cause is biological.”
“Biological?” That meant it wasn’t my fault.
“Yes,” she affirmed, a wicked smile on her lips. “And when you fainted in my office, I knew I had the perfect opportunity to do a little testing. You see, I’ve met your mother. I know nobody loves you. Nobody’s going to miss you when you disappear. Everyone will just assume you ran away.”
I whimpered again, staring up at the evil woman’s eyes with terror. “So my team is going to remove your brain for examination. We’re sure we can find something if given the chance.”
“No,” I whimpered. “Please, don’t. I’ll scream.”
“Scream all you want. No one will ever hear you.”
It was then that I discovered a fear greater than being buried alive, and at the same time the same. I was going to die, and I was going to be forgotten. Nobody would care what happened to me, nobody would miss me. Nobody would be able to save me, and nobody would want to. I was all alone, and I was going to die.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, and the automaton doctor promptly struck me across the face. I yelped, and he struck me again, until I finally grew silent. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as he started the electric razor, and I felt the blades whirring against my head, my hair falling to the floor.
The air was cold as the razor stopped, and by now I was sobbing, my death becoming more and more eminent. I saw the doctor hold up a round saw, spinning at an impossible speed, and my heart nearly stopped. They were going to cut out my brain while I was still breathing.
“Now be sure not to damage it,” Dr. Lee instructed. “We don’t want this girl’s death to be a waste.”
The doctor nodded, and the saw drew closer and closer to me, until I felt the blade slice through my skin just above my forehead. I screamed in agony, the pain unbearable. The blade began to grind into my skull and the doctor slowly moved it left, aiming to remove the top of my head. I writhed within the straps, screaming, as the blood rolled down my face and into my eyes. The brown walls appeared red in my vision, like red clay to seal my fate.
After what felt like hours of agonistic torture, the saw stopped and I felt fingers push their way between the bone. I wailed as the top of my skull was lifted off, exposing my brain to the cold air. What was left of my head was throbbing, and blood was oozing out of the empty space into my eyes.
Dr. Lee approached, a sinister smile still present in her expression. “This might hurt a bit,” she told me, as if the torture of having my skull cut off was pure heaven.
I felt her fingers wrap around my brain, and there was a sudden yank. I screamed, and the place faded away…