A time To Die - Dont Be A Hero Book 2

Nightmare

  Her eyes strained to see. It was pitch black. She pulled at the restraints to no avail. Her bare feet ached from the cuts and bruises she had obtained while attempting escape.

Escape. Not something they took lightly to, apparently. Her mouth was gagged and she was strapped to a cold, hard table of some sort. She lay on her back, still wearing the tattered nightgown, but she had no idea where she was or how she'd got there. The last thing she remembered was her message in the night sky and the pain of the Taser, or stun gun. Whatever those horrid things were.

They were pretty much how they kept the captives in line without doing a lot of damage. The things could be set to deliver debilitating and painful shocks, or to knock you out completely, depending upon the situation. Unfortunately, they were mild in comparison to the torture and humiliation the captives had to endure in the name of science. 

They were continuously told how important they were. How special. That the pain they endured was for the greater good. For the future. Of course, they weren't given a choice. Their minds and bodies were no longer their own. They would never go home. Never live normal lives or have families... jobs... fall in love. They would be used until their bodies gave out or their minds snapped. Then they would be disposed of.

She cringed when she thought about the disappearances of other captives. One day someone would be at dinner, or lunch. The next day, they were gone. Sometimes they seemed perfectly fine when they disappeared. Those were the ones she supposed had been subjected to some sort of experimental procedure that must have gone wrong and killed them.

Then there were others who gradually gave out. You could see them deteriorating every day. Then they just didn't show up at meal times one day and you never saw them again.

One girl, she recalls sadly, became increasingly... silly. She began laughing hysterically at dinner one evening. She couldn't stop, even when they came and threatened her. They tased her and took her to her room. She wasn't at breakfast the next morning, but at lunch time, she walked into the dining hall with a blank face. No expression. The laughter was gone. She got her meal and sat down to eat. Suddenly she jumped back up out of her seat and ran, screaming, over to a wall and began clawing and scratching at it. They rushed into the dining hall and pulled her away from the wall. When they turned her around, she began screaming and clawing at her own flesh. Her face. Her chest. Before they could get her under control and out of the room, she had torn her own skin to shreds.

She was never seen again.

Another boy had disappeared when he began whispering to other captives. He would walk up to people and start whispering to them about his plans to make a break for it. He wasn't very sly, though, and they noticed. They heard what he was whispering about and he stopped showing up at meal times. 

A woman, who looked to be in her late forties and claimed to have been brought there when she was a teenager, disappeared after going into convulsions one morning. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the floor. She began convulsing violently and foaming around her mouth. Similar to some epileptic grand maul seizures epilepsy sufferers experienced. They came in and dragged her out by her arms. She was never seen again.

........

The darkness felt suffocating. It didn't help to be gagged, of course, but she felt like the darkness would close in on her and snuff out her last breath. She squirmed harder, pulling at the restraints on her wrists. She twisted and pulled, trying desperately to free at least one of her hands. She wondered how long she had been lying there. How long she would continue to lie there. There was no way for her to calculate the passage of time. Time held no meaning for her. A minute could pass that felt like an hour. An hour go by and feel like a day.