In the cell, apartment, cage next door, a curl sits before the flickering box, transfixed by the images it shows.

Faintly, she remembers other boxes, other screens, ones she chose to look at,

and ones which did not simply play her own memories back at her in an endless, torturous loop.

She recalls that she used to see her friends on those screens,

the ones who lived far away, but who shared a closer kinship with her

than the one she shared with her own family,

or most everyone who lived in this place.

Aslo, she thinks it was called.

But the name feels off, like a half-remembered dream,

like someone else's life.

And on the screen before her, that's what she sees.

A person who looks and sometimes sounds like her, but who dresses

in clothes which do not fit her, speaks words she does not believe, answers to a name that is not hers,

even if she can't remember her own name in this place.

She sees herself standing in front of a mirror,

staring at her reflection through tears,

and wondering why her body does not look the way she wants it to,

the way she feels, the way she's always wanted it to be. She feels that pain

through those images as sharply as she's ever felt it, and she hears her father's voice rumbling

through the TV speakers, saying that she will never be good enough, that she will never be

who she wants to be, that it would be easier to stop pretending and just give in.

But her father never said those words.

...