Trapped

I was trapped. The place was vaguely beautiful, almost like a high-end hotel, but the feeling of claustrophobia never left me. Everyone there that wasn’t a victim had a smile etched on their faces that did not seem natural. They looked evil. But the smile was their own, not cut into their face or forced there.

I didn’t know how I got to that place, but when I woke up in the double bed I knew it was not my choice.

Every night we were fed the same thing – it looked like chicken, and there were no vegetables or bread or anything else. Just a slab of chicken. I kept telling them I was vegan and could not eat it but they told me that was all there was. They were not sincere and a glint in their eyes told me of the malice behind. There was a threat in their words but I did not eat; nobody did. Every night I went to bed hungry.

They didn’t hurt me, but I felt in pain.

I kept crying, telling them I wanted to go home. I missed my family and felt lonely. But they would not let me go. I was confined only to the dining hall and my room. We were all led from our rooms to mealtime but I never saw the route. I just walked – I must have been blindfolded.

A boy and a girl became close to me and I to them, and we devised a plan. We met in the hall between breakfast and dinner – we didn’t get lunch, only chicken at breakfast and chicken at dinner. It was bright and lined with pictures of beige nothingness. And from there we ran, past the vases of red flowers and the beige nothingness, and out of the heavy oak doors that had never opened before.

The air was thick and the sun was bright. We were in a port that reminded me of Italy, but this was not Italy. We stole a boat though we did not know how to sail, and made it as far as the mouth of the bay, ready to take to the ocean. It was that day we realised the locals were not on our side. They all had the same smiles and said no words.

I was locked in my room and only allowed out on one occasion, accompanied by a grinning worker. It was night time and they took me to the back yard, a single torch falling on a patch of floor that will always be etched in my mind. The boy who had tried to escape with me, set face up in the concrete so I could see his front, spread like DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man, limbs splayed and naked. His face looked peaceful but it was a false sleep – the creases of previous terror were still marked in his features.

It was at that point I began to scream and cry at them, held back by a grinning monster, threatening to kill myself if they did not let me and my remaining friend go. So they hid everything that could be remotely dangerous and left me with nothing but an air mattress, no bedding to speak of. I was not given cutlery at mealtimes and seated far from everyone else.

One night a famous singer turned up – she was magic, literally. She bragged about how she could dry her hair with the snap of her fingers ad beamed the whole time she was there. It was a normal smile but I still felt unease around her. I was tasked to be a handmaiden of sorts for her and was led to her room with her, a room filled with silver and gold and precious stones all set into one fluid place.

She removed her painful dress with a flick of her wrist; it was a black wrap around from the breast downwards, held together by three circular blades that dug deep into her back. When she removed them there were no marks and there was no blood. She slept in shorts and nothing else.

I had to stay in her room all night, awake, in the pitch black. Never have I felt so afraid, asleep or awake. The only light of the room was a glint from the moon. Suddenly she began to rise, laid across the bed on her back with no covers, and a black shadow opened the door beside the bed, directly opposite me. I was pinned to the corner next to the main door, unable to move or speak from fear as it slunk towards me.

The next thing I know I was in my room. My remaining friend and I decided to run, run in any direction as long as it was away from this place.

In our shorts and vest – we weren’t allowed to wear anything else – we tore through the lifeless town that was littered with bones and scrap metal and junk and dead eyed, grinning people, heading towards a barrier which we silently agreed we would jump. We didn’t look back. But at the gate we were stopped and sent back, and I cried as I begged them not to hurt her.
I knew she would end up the same way as our friend.

As we were led away I stopped to tie my shoe and grabbed a pair of scissors, which I slipped beneath my foot inside my shoe. They were in the only thing in the town that was clean and new looking. I felt the blades cut at the sole of my foot as we walked and tried to mask my limp and my smile at the feeling.

I asked for a bath that night and took the scissors with me. Crying but smiling at the same time, happy I would finally be free but sad that I would never see my loved ones again and that they would never know what happened, I used the blade to end it. The pain was unbearable and I watched as the water turned redder by the minute.

Then I died.