Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
My clothes, bar my dress, had been taken away from me. Thankfully the room wasn’t too cold, so at least I knew they weren’t trying to kill me. They were probably saving my life for a purpose much worse than death, but what they didn’t know was that I would fight them every fucking step of the way to my demise.
When I emptied the jug, it felt like a decade later. I turned it around once it was empty and saw a small post-it note attached to the bottom. It simply said ‘return’, and I took the hint.
I placed the tray and jug back in front of the hatch and watched closely until it opened, and a hand withdrew the tray.
Briefly contemplating attacking the hand, I finally decided against it. I needed to use my makeshift weapon when someone was in the room with me and the door was unlocked. Otherwise, I’d never get out by myself. They’d just keep me in the dark cell until I died of hunger. I knew they would.
I hid the screw in my underwear. I used the bucket a few times, the stench making me want to die of embarrassment. More water came, and I drank it hungrily because my stomach was rumbling. It felt like they were playing a cruel game, never giving me food, but just enough water to keep me going to the bucket. I hated whoever the creator of this sick game was. I vowed to kill them when I got out.
I slept in short bursts of panic, nightmares plaguing my dreams. It was impossible to get comfortable on the cold, hard floor, but I kept trying. My life for however much time had passed turned into a routine. Water, bucket, sleep, and repeat, over and over again.
What felt like days later, they gave me some food. Plain, hard bread that tasted like heaven to my starving stomach.
It felt like I was slowly starting to lose my damn mind. In the darkness, with nothing but the tapping of my foot to create some distraction, my senses were deprived and so was my body. I started to shake, the cold seeping through the floor and through my flimsy dress, making me shake with fear and anticipation as well as the freezing room. It felt like somehow, the heating in the room had changed. It was impossibly cold now. Maybe they’d turned off the heating. Maybe they’d decided I wasn’t worth saving.
Hours later, the temperature went up again.
Up so much I stripped my dress and lay on the cold tile, the floor the only relief in the steaming room. I felt sick, retching water, overwhelmed by the smell of ammonia and the unbearable heat. I sweated it all out, lying there a complete mess, losing touch with reality as a fever rocked my body to sleep.
I woke up because I was freezing, and groaned when I realized what they were doing.
It hadn’t been enough to take away the light. They had to toy with me further.
The hatred grew inside me, bubbling from anger, ready to boil over and drown anyone who dared come close. I touched the screw in my panties, my fingertips touching the ridges and wondering when I’d get the chance to use it. It was tiny, but at least it was something.
Seconds blended into minutes into hours into decades. I was in there a lifetime. My dream of using the screw faded slowly, but surely. Now, I was too weak to even stand on my feet. I’d made a mess, because I was too hot, too frozen, to get up and pee in the bucket. I felt on the brink of death. My fingers tried to grip uselessly at the screw, but my hand fell away, wet from perspiration and too weak to be of any use.
I felt the life draining out of me, slowly, slowly breaking until I started crying. Slow sobs at first, and then full-blown tears.
It was then that the door opened, and a shadowed figure appeared in the doorway.
All my dreams of attacking him fell aside. He laughed at me, and I cried some more.
“Finally breaking,” he said. “What a sight you are.”
I couldn’t discern who it was. The light illuminated his silhouette, but not his face.
My eyes felt heavy, my body felt broken.
“Help me,” I begged him, my voice ragged from days of not speaking.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Freedom, a chance to escape – everything I’d been praying for, and I lay on the ground uselessly, like a broken doll.
“Help me,” I repeated in a whisper, and then my eyes closed for good.
4
Harlow
I woke up in the middle of a fluffy, soft cloud.
My eyes flew open in a rush, scared and fluttering as I drank in my surroundings. The instinct I woke up with was telling me to fight, but the room I was in was saying ‘calm down’.