Chapter eight: A long time ago

“This is your walk. This is your path. You take it alone. We will leave you now. I look forward to meeting you. Goodbye.” The British teen and her chosen ones hit their gold canes on the ground, the floor around Hank resurfaced, and as he was watching the floor reappearing the teens disappeared.
 
Hank sat back down alone, opened his mouth, pulled out the card from his mother, carefully unfolding the wet paper, and stared at the word “Goodbye.” “Mom. My mom. Agnes. I’ll never forget you mom. They may make me into something else. They will. That I know. And they want me to forget you. But I won’t. You will be with me on the other side. Always.”
 
Hank took the wet card, crumpled it up into a ball and put it back in his mouth. “My bread crumb. My way back. If I don’t choke on it while I’m being…well…reprogrammed. What does that even mean? A chamber? Bow to me? Am I dreaming? Have I really been taken? A chosen one?” He was talking to himself again. Out loud. To no one.
 
Hank took a deep breath, walked toward the hall that led to a room inside a room. There was a door in the room inside a room that led to an even smaller room. And in the smaller room was a wall made of very long pins, floor to ceiling. He pushed on a pin and it moved the distance he pushed it. He figured it out. The chamber was in fact a wall of pins. He was to walk into the pins and pins would move to form fit his body.
 
Putting his arms to his sides he walked forward into the pins, eyes closed, until he could no longer move. Like he was submerged in pins yet standing up. An odd sound, like the flapping of a bird’s wings, and suddenly everything got warm. More flapping sounds. His eyes, now open, were staring right into a series of pins, more flapping, getting louder, eyes getting wider, more flapping, getting closer, then a hum as the pins around his eyes shot into his eyeballs. Then nothing. No sound.
 
Nothing.

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