Clapping.
The sound of a dozen palms meeting was the girl’s first sense of awareness of the real world. What followed was the bone-chilling cold that can only be associated with the novelty of nakedness.
"Excellent work gentlemen. Look at her! The first batch is coming along splendidly."
First batch? The girl would've been quite content sinking back into the comfort of darkness and succumbing to the splitting migraine clutching the back of her skull, but it was sheer confusion that forced her eyelids open, only to view five men in peculiar white coats smiling down at her. They beheld her as one would behold a favored pet performing a new trick or a shiny piece of China displayed in the hall. She noticed these things now, for at that moment she had not known of China and pets and the trinkets one could find in the nooks of a home. After all, she had only just been created, nearly a decade after a mysterious pestilence claimed dominion over the world, killing all females.
What followed were a series of tests she could barely recall. All she could focus on was the rush of information that came to her slowly, like the tide when serenaded by an effervescent moon. First came the rudimentary. Door. Window. Floor. Me. Then all of these things were overshadowed by an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards the men that had given her a life, a body, a mind. She could not help but feel even more gratified when the men in the white coats allowed her to choose her own name out of five pre-approved options.
"Pick a name, young woman. And in two years' time you'll have a last name to go with it." She hadn't understood what a last name was or that it represented a receipt of her purchase, so she preoccupied herself with the names displayed. Her eyes roamed over the screen and paused thoughtfully at the name Cassie.

It was almost painful to speak it. Almost painful to move her lips as all her senses rebelled against the name her soul had chosen:

"Cassandra." Fighter.

​

***

​

"Cassie!" A sharp cry pierced the air as the plate slid from the woman’s hand on her way to the kitchen and shattered into a million pieces on the polished white marble floor.
Silence.
The woman’s husband rose slowly from his place at the dining room table, disappointment dancing at the harsh lines framing his lips. He approached her ever so slowly, like death stalking its victim through the shadows of the night. With every step forward, the woman’s shame and horror grew until the bitter taste of guilt overrode her every sense, almost choking her. Finally, he stood before her, anguish evident in his eyes.
“Why do you make me do this?”
He sounded tortured, though it was nothing compared to the woman’s pained scream as the back of his hand came into contact with her cheek, her head banging with a sickening thud against the dark mahogany table on her way down.
Silence.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m
sorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry-”
It was not the first time the woman’s body had known the agony and torment that came with bruises, though it was the first time her ears had ever been blessed by an apology muttered from her husband’s lips. When she finally opened her eyes, however, she recognized the feminine voice as her own, her lips moving incessantly, apologizing to an empty room. Stop, she thought. And for the first time, her lips obeyed. As she picked herself off the floor, she squinted her eyes at her surroundings. Has the world always been this bright? No. She had to prepare dinner, she had to sweep the floor, she had to scrub the blood off the tiles before her husband came back home, she had to, she had to, she had to.... Stop. She tuned out Karen next door ironing her husband’s shirt, and Mary in the house up front cooking her husband’s steak, and Josephine three houses down crying as she often did when she remembered that she was bearing a female child due soon. Though scientists at the health center had found a way to create women through updated cloning technology, it was with a sickening twist of fate that they were bound to exist but at sixteen and give birth but to male children. Female newborns were always stillborn by the time the first breeze caressed their skin and the first tear fell with shattering abandon. And so it went, that females were created to be married at eighteen, give life to the fruit of masculinity, and serve their men until death claimed them. She waited for the everlasting gratitude to overpower her senses at the fact, but for the first time, it never arose. In fact, she picked herself off the floor and simply held still, her dress swaying to an invisible tune, marveling at the feel of empty hands and a free mind and the overwhelming beat of a heart she had not realized had been cleaved until she came across its other half.
Cassandra rushed to her back door and flung it open, breathing in the fresh breeze. For once, she felt like she was more than just a shadow presiding over the edges of the world, like her palm would burn a mark on the trees dared she touch them, like she owned more than just tears and blood. And it was as she commanded her lips to form her first smile that it froze suddenly at the sight of a young girl of around nine years of age playing with a red ball at the edge of the woods, dark hair streaked with a snow-white strand. The young face looked up at her and brought her finger to her lips in a shushing motion, then simply stood smiling eerily.

Cassandra could not believe it. A little girl – a female child – was impossible. She would not believe it. She hurried back inside like the devil was chasing her, nipping at her calves, and stood panting in the middle of the living room. For a second, a sense of safety blanketed her, but it was not long before she looked around, paranoid, tracing the patterns of cracks in the walls and ceiling with her eyes until she stood staring straight at four blinking red cameras attached to the ceiling of every corner of the room. Of every corner of every room.
For the second time that day, Cassandra found herself stepping out of her house, now twice more than she had ever done before. She ran with the wind, following the tide to whichever doom was sure to be awaiting her. It was not until the men in the white coats approached her that she gained awareness of her surroundings. The health center.
“Help me. Help me please! There is a creeping shadow bearing down upon me and a little girl playing in my woods. I can feel them watching me at every turn!”
As one, they approached. “Ma’am, we need you to stay calm. A special medic has been sent to see you, but you have to tell us exactly when these mad hallucinations started.” It was then that, as one, their faces seemed to elongate, their teeth sharpening to fangs, and their pupils taking on an ominous red sheen.
“They are not hallucinations! They are real. They are real I tell you!” And again, she ran, this time through the maze of rooms the center seemed to hold hostage within its jail-like walls. Cassandra did not stop. She swore to never stop again, but shock held her captive in its scabbed palms once more as she stumbled upon the farthest room in the center. The room itself was nothing out of the ordinary. Customary white walls, polished white tiles, not a speck of dust or mold in sight. However, it was the dozen or so girls ranging from newborn to adolescent contained in tubes of varying sizes that turned every nerve in her body to ice. Suddenly the walls seemed to morph, droplets of blood streaming down the walls, drawing grotesque figures on the marble tiles, and the floors seemed to melt and gave way where the tubes made contact.
Cassandra could no longer take the horrors before her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands tightly on her head while rocking back and forth to the haunting melody of insanity. “Lies. Lies. Liars! Let them go. LET THEM GO!” Suddenly she was airborne. Flying. Arms were holding her up, then down, then chaining her to the freezing floor, the cold flames biting on her cheek like an ironic sort of hell.
“Woman! You are mad! Delusional! Stop blabbering about these hallucinations at once. There is nothing in this room!”
And it was true! For the minute the man started to lead Cassandra away, she turned back around only to find an empty white room, as bland and bleak as her life before her newfound freedom they called madness. But for a minute, for a simple second, she thought she saw a streak of snow weaved through black hair, and a conspiring smile. Her shrieks arose again. Then... Silence.
They chained the woman to a chair, black straps digging painfully into her breasts and stomach. They brought forth an old man with cold eyes to inform her of the on-goings of her mind, not looking at her face once as he spoke in a croaky voice that was more raven than man.
“Cassie Smith, you are suffering from an extreme case of schizophrenia-”
The woman did not acknowledge his words. “Look at me.” she whispered.
“-along with on-set seizures brought on by traumatic shock-” he continued, eyes still on his charts.
“Look at me.” she demanded.
“And an extreme case of-”

“LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME!” the woman roared. Screamed. Shrieked. Howled. Cried. Died? Died. The blow of the mallet was quite a shock indeed.

Silence.

***

​

“It is done sir.”
“Excellent. Bring the girls back up”
“Yes, sir.” The young scientist bowed his head to his senior and pressed the fourth tile on the right wall of the infamous “blood room” as they now mockingly called it. Suddenly, the floor opened up and rows upon rows of females contained in cells of clear liquid, tubes overflowing their mouths like vines, rose up and settled in place. The closest one to the door lay still and empty.
Suddenly the feminine cry of a newborn filled the hallway with its symphony.
The older man turned his glare on the young scientist: “Did I not tell you to make sure the babies are completely sedated at all times? It is imperative we are most cautious, now more than ever.”
“S-so sorry s-sir. I-it won’t happen a-again-”
“Just instill the obedience program in her and shut her in. We’ll see if this little stunt affects her in sixteen years.”
“Yes, sir... Sir, what if there are more... like her. The rogue. What if she influenced other women on her way here?”
A malicious smile carved itself on the older scientist’s face.
“Then we simply start over. We’ve wiped them out once. We can do it again.”