Tick tick tick.

Someone needs to fix that stupid thing. It talks too much.

Talks?

No, that's not right. Humans talk, clocks don't.

Although, one could argue that clocks do talk when they tick, but when they tick they tock, they don't talk when they tick, just like how they don't tock when they talk, they tick.

Tick tick tick.

You shouldn't think so much, you're not supposed to, remember? That's their job. With their white coats and their clean shoes and their clear minds.

Clear minds. Something you'll never have, right?

Tick tick tick.

They've got you so high up on those little red and blue guys you can hardly function through the cloudy ignorance blown into your brain. But that's just how they like it. It makes you easier to handle, less likely to challenge their dull words with your own colored ones. You lose all your personality and self worth, nothing more than a checkered zombie in a sea of clones, fed not with brains but with pills.

But zombies aren't real. Except they might as well be, at least in here.

In here up against the frigid, blank walls that hold about as much individuality as you after "dinner." On top of these soft, fleece blankets that you've found yourself gripping tight enough to kill had it been a living thing. All for the smallest bit of reality, anything to ground yourself to. All to their delight. Them.

Tick tick tick.

Them. With their monotone questions and empty reassurances, condescending looks and hesitant compassion. Their voices so void of emotion that it hurts. Their talking so boring and expected, predictable.

Do they tick when they talk?

You'll have to ask the next time they bring you your reds and blues.

Those little things they make you swallow, the ones that force you into that familiar numb abyss, your emotions tucked back into that unreachable part of your mind, too far gone for retrieval after the smallest dose, hidden behind the purple curtains your reds and blues combine to create.

Tick tick tick.

You've seen it yourself.

When you closed your eyes that one time and pulled back the velvety curtains. You saw the big gray doors with the weird little swirls on them, almost like a dead language you had never learned, ten feet taller than you and just as wide, covered in a thick layer of shimmering dust.

You tried to open those glimmering doors, but they were locked, and you didn't have the key. More like you weren't allowed to have the key. Off limits, just like your dilapidated imagination.

And then you had opened your eyes and suddenly there were four people at your sides, commenting on your heart rate and the lack of color in your face, feeling your wrist and tapping on your forehead, asking if you could hear them.

You wished you couldn't.

Because then they told you that you were just "sleeping," that you had a "dream," but you knew better. Those white coated statues, they lacked the sensibility to see what you did.

Tick tick tick.

That's why they gave you more reds, more blues, and even a new pink.

So you could sit in your crisp, clean bed with your back against the wall, your eyes going in and out of focus. Pupils dilating and lids unblinking, limbs heavy with sedated relaxation. Breaths coming out in noticeably shorter puffs, until all you had was that vexatious numb feeling.The one that forced you to stay away from those soiled but pure gray doors, that fed you vacant dreams, the one that only let certain thoughts slip through the cracks of your wilted, withered, barricaded mind.

Thoughts about the weather and how nice it looked out today.

About lunch time and what you would be served in your nice little room that you loved so much.

About the nice lady two doors down who liked your eye color and the style of your hair that you didn't really care about but maintained for her compliments.

Or about how you were still losing yourself, how you'd never truly be ok. How you lacked the mental strength of your peers, required specific care that you couldn't give yourself because you were so lost in that foggy mind of yours that you could barely tell what day it was.

It's Tuesday today, isn't it?

No wait, Tuesday was yesterday, not today.

Or was Tuesday last week?

How many days are in a week again?

Five? Seven?

You think it's seven, but doesn't that mean that last week there was already a Tuesday?

How can today be Tuesday if last week was Tuesday and today is today?

Tick tick tick.

Somebody fix that stupid clock.

Because when it ticks it talks and when it tocks it ticks but it doesn't talk when it tocks because clock don't talk.

Clocks don't talk.

Tick tick tick.