ANTIVENOM.

I wake up and stare at the blank wall in front of me. I hate it. I hate the pristine white sheets, the perfectly arranged cushions on the armchair beside my bed. Unusual decorations for a teenager’s room. Even if I am in an hospital, I do deserve some colour, a picture on the wall perhaps.

Now I know I am kidding myself. I want glass, a piece of metal, anything really, to break the bars on my window, to shatter the lock on my door.

She’s back now. The lady, with another blank white uniform to go with her blank expression. She comes here every morning. And evening. She always carries a tray with some tablets for me. As if I need it.

I swallow today’s tablets without a sound. I don’t protest too much; some of those drugs give me a nice, cloudy feeling and I fall asleep easily after that.

I don’t know exactly why I’m here. The doctor says it will come back to me, that I’m probably too shocked to remember what I did.

But by the judgemental looks of my classmates and former friends when they come for a ‘visit’, I know it must be pretty bad.

But I know I’m not crazy. I always have reason for what I do. It was for revenge.

Amongst the haze in my mind, a memory struggles its way to the top; it’s a documentary, set in a hospital not unlike mine. They show a person bitten by a poisonous snake, and the doctor says:

“In cases like these, we administer a serum known as antivenom; the venom from another snake cancels out the poison of this one and the person has a chance of surviving.”

Two wrongs do make a right.

I settle back comfortably in my bed, convinced I have done nothing wrong, and allow my barely conscious mind to drift into a restless repose.