character :: Rene Howell
''They tell me now that I'm a great revolutionary. That I've changed the world in some profound way that hasn't been and might never be matched; but I don't feel that way. I feel as if I'm simply the weakest link in a chain that finally broke, allowing the impossible load we were carrying to fall away, once and for all.''
Rene was once known as 829, a patient in Happy Hills Asylum with a nasty case of Manic Tristitia. Feeling. She had been in the little room off of C block for as long as she could remember; her little 5x9 enclosure with no window and one roommate. The only thing she had to her name was a rough hewn diary made from compressed paper scraps hidden within a gash on her mattress and a dream; that someday, she and all her cellmates would be free.
In her world, people like her were called harvesters, someone from which hormones could be extracted as she still had the ability to naturally produce them. Somewhere out there, multiple times a day, someone was taking a capsule that included doses of serotonin, cortisol, or even Oxycontin that belonged to her. Because outside of these walls, the people out there could only feel grey; the nothingness that came after a majority of the world's hormone producers went dead.
But there's more to this world than daily extractions from the base of her brain, more than 3 mushy meals and a roommate who more often than not stood over her as she slept whispering in her madness. And Rene dreams of it, craves it. So, the day that her cell door remain unlocked after the midnight rounds; well, the temptation was far too much. What Rene would go on to do would be the most difficult, most harrowing nightmare she'd ever dreamed. But the real question is; was it worth it?
