The Truth Will Set You Free

[A Former User]

The stack of letters lay, scattered, on what had been the hospital desk of Mathilde Comtois.

They, all of them, had been ordered to deliver them to her.

No one had known exactly what their contents were; no one asked. The State Elder was an important woman; of course she would receive them in great numbers.

It was only now that they questioned; now that the very worst had happened.

Had they not noticed her nightly sobbing worsening and worsening, the letters tightly held in her hands?

Had they not noticed her sudden outbursts, her accusations, her shouts, as she threw or ripped them up?

Had they not noticed her pale. emotionless face every morning; her increasing apathy toward life as a whole?

When she had ever so calmly tried to swallow an entire bottle of morphine, had they suspected anything?

It was their fault, entirely, what had happened.

And now the letters were being carted away. By whom, they did not know. Perhaps the government, perhaps some business with a sense of charity.

And yet the directors, the directors whom they so trusted, who they themselves put into power, who derived all their legitimacy from them; they told them not to worry. That the State Elder had been troubled, that it was inevitable that she would do such a thing.

Was it them, perhaps, who had orchestrated all of this? Were they secret saboteurs, working, perhaps for Inquista?

No one knew a thing; no one trusted any.

Every word, every movement was carefully monitored.

Even those who remained always in the background; the caretakers perhaps most of all; they were regarded and regarded others.

Even simply an hour later, this was the situation at the hospital where Mathilde Comtois had thrown herself to death.

The nurse who had been there; she was under the most suspicion. She had been shaken; she had been sent home, for what she had seen, according to the directors; what she had seen had been horrifying.

Some of them supposed that she was dead, killed by capitalist spies.

The less excitable members of the staff pondered the nurse's position herself in the death. Was she the one sending the letters that had driven the State Elder to do what she had done? Did she have full knowledge of what was going to happen, purposely standing by as Her Excellency threw herself out the window.

What exactly had happened, no one would ever know. Yet everyone would want to now, and everyone would remain a slave to that desire until the truth, the unobtainable truth of what had happened to Mathilde Comtois, was revealed.