In chapter three, the two characters take a shower.

In chapter four, they share 19 lines of dialogue on five subjects.  So, you know, not exactly anything deep or informative.  Then we find out their names are Adam and Juliette. 

The fuck book?  Seriously, what the fuck?  What is this?  Why has nothing happened yet?  Why are you so boring?  Why are you so bad at making me care?  Because I’m serious, I DO NOT CARE about anything, because YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN ME A REASON TO.  I know nothing about the world, nothing about the characters, and they’re not doing anything interesting enough to make me care about what they’re going to next.  Probably sit around and pick their noses while saying “That’s a window.”  “Yep.”  “Sure is cold here.”  “More like freezing.”  “Want to bone?”  “Don’t touch me.”

BECAUSE THAT’S AS GOOD AS THE DIALOGUE GETS HERE.

In fact, yeah, I’m going to give you every line of dialogue with the poetry-cum-narration taken out.

“The screams never stop in this place, do they?”

“No,”

“Are you okay?”

“You’re not insane.”

“I thought everyone in here was insane,” he continues. “I thought they’d locked me up with a psycho.”

“Funny. So did I.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

 “Can I sit next to you?”

“No.”

“You must be freezing.”

“No.” A strong sigh. “I’m actually burning up.”

“Are you sick?” “Do you feel dizzy? Do your joints hurt?”

“What’s your name?”

“You might be sick,”

“I’m not sick. I’m just hot. I don’t usually sleep with my clothes on.”

“I was a jerk yesterday. I treated you like crap and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Okay.”

“So why won’t you tell me your name?”

“Juliette,” I whisper. “My name is Juliette.”

Isn’t that just a thrilling bit of conversation spread out over an entire chapter?  My god, the whole thing so stilted that I feel like there should be someone in a black sweater and beret playing the bongos after every beat.

Okay, but.  Let’s catch you up on some of the things I’ve been able to glean from the random mutterings of our – let’s face it – cookoo narrator.  (I’m not sure what flavor of insane she is, or if it’s a real flavor, but there’s no way this though process belongs to a mentally hale person.)  So, we’ve got a dystopia with an environmental disaster flavor.  We’ve got a totalitarian regime.  This is all taking place in a “mental asylum” that is basically a torture-house, where they give the kids minimum food and no human contact.  In order to take a shower, they have to walk down a hallway in the dark, with no direction, shower, and walk back to their cell, all with the lights off for no god damn reason.  Also, there’s random screams to be heard, presumably of kids being a more traditional type of tortured.  Juliette here has some power associated with touch, her parents haven’t touched her since she was a baby, and she was singled out and isolated even before being taken to this asylum. 

Frankly, this whole thing reminds me of the shit-fuck insane “prison” from Witch and Wizard by James Patterson.  If you haven’t read Witch and Wizard yet, set up a camera first, because I’m pretty sure the expressions of shock and befuddlement will be gold.

Now, it’s hard to tell what sort of shit-fuckery this is, because we know SO VERY LITTLE about ANY-FUCKING-THING AT ALL, but.  What sense does it make to do this?  Okay, if you want to take your crazy people and throw them in a place to keep them out of the way, that’s happened before.  Giving them very little food can make sense if there’s a dystopian-caused shortage, fine.  Screaming?  Well, if they’re experimenting on kids that they assume are expendable, I’d buy that, but we just don’t know yet.

But the shower thing?  Why?  What is the point of just opening a door and making them stumble around in the dark?  If you’re going to give your prisoners daily showers, why can’t you give them lights and guard pointing down the hall and saying “it’s that way”?  This feels like it’s there just to fuck with them, just for the sake of it, and that’s a terrible reason to include something.

I can take an evil government/asylum.  I’m not contesting that.  But “they’re evil” is not a catch-all excuse for all the fuckery that you want to include.  Stuff still has to make sense.  There are plenty of things that are perfectly evil and make sense.  Why would the people running the evil prison go out of their way just to be evil?  They wouldn’t.  The food, the lack of care, that can be excused as taking shortcuts because there’s no oversight.  But they’ve got to go out their way to make taking a shower this level of cackling evil, and there is NO REASON AT ALL TO DO IT. 

Fuck, and we’ve still got 46 chapters of this horror show to go.