Femme Fatale

Chapter 16

I moved the clothes out of the way and grasped it in my hands. I walked over to a chair placed in front of the doors to the balcony, and flopped down on the plush seat. 

I carefully pulled back the cover as to not rip it anymore than it already is, and was surprised to see messy penmanship filling the pages. I squinted my eyes as started to decipher the first page of scribbly writing:

Day 1

I don't know where I am. I don't remember how I got here. I don't remember anything at all. I woke up in a hospital bed placed in a cold and empty room. Did I get hurt? The only thing in here was a black backpack, with this journal inside. I hid the journal under my pillow before they took the backpack away. Whenever I try and ask the doctors what happened, they just ignore me. I was hoping they would call me by my name, so I would know it, but they just keep referring to me as 002. I tried opening the doors, but they locked me in. What the hell is going on?

Day 4

They finally let me out of the room, and told me that I was going to my bedroom. Did I live here before?  The walls of my room were cement, with six small beds in the corner and a tiny bathroom attached. As soon as I walked into the room, they closed the door and locked me. There were no windows, no paintings, no clocks on the wall...nothing but concrete. I couldn't tell if it was night or day, so I've been keeping track of the time passed by counting seconds until they formed hours. Hopefully I've only been here for four days...

Day 5 

I got a roommate today, they told me to call her 001. She doesn't talk much. We've been locked in the room until they bring us food, which usually isn't that good. Just chicken and vegetables with a glass of water. 

Am I ever going to leave this place?

Day 10 

They took us out of the room and separated us. The hallways were empty, no one here except for me, 001, and a bunch of men and women in lab coats. They threw me in a bright room, and strapped me to a chair. A few doctors came in, and rolled in a cart full of tools. They hooked me up to a heart monitor, and my vitals were displayed on a screen next to me. They tortured me, and recorded the data on a computer. They beat me, electrocuted me, and cut my skin with knives. It felt like I was in that room for hours, begging them to stop, until they finally put a cold blue ointment on my wounds. They unstrapped me, and carried me back into my room, where I just laid there and cried on my bed. It was a long time before 001 came back, carried in my a doctor and placed gently on her bed. I'm assuming she went through the same thing I did, except the marks on her skin were much worse than mine. 

What are they doing to us?

Day 15

We got another roommate today, his name was 003. He was a talkative boy, which annoyed 001, who still kept to herself. 003 said he didn't remember anything before coming here either. Every night they took us out of our room, and separated us. With each day came a new torture technique, today was burning my skin. It was four hours before they put the blue ointment on my skin, and tossed me back into my room. I don't know what kind of medicine they've been putting on me, but it makes my skin heal by the next day. 003 was already in the room when I got back, cuts up his arms and burn marks from being electrocuted, just like the first time they took me to that room. It was 3 more hours until 001 came back. Her skin was almost deformed from the third degree burns she had all over her body. She always came back with worse injuries than me. 

Day 25

When I returned back to my room after another session, I found 003 dead in his bed. I screamed and cried, alerting the doctors outside our door. They walked in and took him away without another word. 001 came back 3 hours later, the doctors carrying her and throwing her onto her bed. I told her 003 was dead, and she just closed her eyes and went to sleep. 

I'm going to die here, aren't I?

I closed the journal and placed it back into my duffle bag, hidden beneath my belongings. My skin was crawling from reading those journal entries. I walked out onto the balcony and lit up a cigarette, deeply inhaling before I let out a breath. I leaned up against the rail of my second story balcony, resting my elbows on the cold metal. 

The moon was reflecting off of the dark ocean in front of me, lighting up the beach as the stars illuminated the sky. A few hundred feet in front of me was Ghost, her back was turned towards me as she was sitting in the sand with her knees pressed to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. She was just staring out into the ocean, as still as a statue as the waves crashed in front of her, lost in the abyss of her own mind. 

What the hell happened to you, Ghost?