The Red Room

𝕆ℕ𝔼

We followed Madame all the way to the dance hall. When we entered we split into two rows of three. I was in the middle back. "Nachat' dva." Begin number two.

Number two was fairly easy. It started with a sous-sus, then Combré forwards and up and backwards, Waltz turns, shift to second position, demi plié, grande plié, back to sous-sus relevé, and finally hold in a pirouette. We had to hold the pirouette until Madame said to stop. That could be all day. If you don't know what a pirouette is, look it up and you will see.

We moved as one body, everyone exactly in sync with the borderline creepy ballet music. We all stopped in the pirouette. I focused all of my thoughts on it. Head in the exact right position, shoulders down, butt down, feet as turned out as they can possibly be, stomach sucked in, chest forward, arms in first position, slightly below parallel to my chest, and eyes trained where the ceiling meets the wall, unmoving, showing nothing of the strain I was feeling.

My body screamed for me to let it rest, but if I did so I too would be pulled out by two women in brown or gutted by Madame's death stick.

She paced around us, giving the occasional stab in the back or shoulder to correct posture. She was a lion, waiting for her prey to make a mistake so she could have her for dinner. She loved when we messed up, the sound of our tortured screams was music to her ears. But it wasn't only music, it was her favorite song, and she would play it over and over and over again.

She strutted around the little room, studying us. Waiting for the littlest of mistakes, one movement of the eyes, one tiny flinch when she straightened our posture. The girl exactly in front of me cried out and collapsed onto the ground, sobbing. "You're a monster!" She yelled.

Madame stood right in front of the pathetic girl on the polished floor. She kicked her hard in the face. "Pirkhodit'!" Come! Two women in brown burst through the doors and dragged the girl away as she screamed in agony. Moments later a new girl walked properly into the room and took her place, presuming the pirouette position like everyone else. I resisted a smile. When Madame gets her prey, everything is easier for the rest of us. The ones at the top always benefited from the weak ones falling.

"You will not speak unless spoken to. That girl was weak and will be executed. There is no place for weaklings as long as I am in charge, which will be the rest of your pathetic lives." She said all of this while pacing around us. The lion had gotten her meal early, it would be an easy day, but I didn't dare relax.

She had us hold the position for only another hour then shouted, "Vniz! Nachnite uprazhneniye tri!" Down! Commence exercise three!

We immediately came down with a fifth position plié and went into the sit-up position. After doing 301 exactly in sync with one another, we spread our legs and rolled through to a second position push up and did 301. My whole body ached from head to toe, but if I stopped I knew that pain wouldn't cease. If I stopped the true torture would begin.

The women in brown would drag me away. They would take me to the room of torture and stick a surgery needle in my eye, or tape live snakes to my body, or sew me into a bag of wasps, snapping turtles and weasels. The more you screamed the more they tortured, everyone learns that the hard way. If all that didn't kill me they would allow me to return, and I would never step out of line again.

Once we finished the agonizing exercise, we stood at attention, with our hands at our sides, feet together, and gaze straight forward. "Idti!" Go! We got in our single file line and walked in step to dinner.

No one talked at dinner as usual. We sat in the same spots we always did and ate the same meal we always did. It was very bad tasting but we didn't know any different and we had to eat it or we wouldn't survive. It was a pile of brownish grey muck and a glass of water.

We all wore the same uniforms all the time except at night when they were washed and we wore white night gowns. During the day we had white leotards, black zip-up hoodies with elastic at the bottom of them for the top, and our hair in tight buns. On the bottom we wore grey plain leggings and black tennis shoes, except in ballet class we wore ballet slippers.

The only thing different about all of us is hair color and body shape. There was one thing about me that stood out against everyone else: my hair. I am cursed with strawberry blonde hair. All the other girls have simple brown, black or blonde. I am the only red head. I could be killed for that alone. I would have asked to dye it, but the rules were you didn't speak unless you were spoken to by a superior. So I was stuck with it.

I am skinny and short. 5 foot 4 inches tall. That's pretty short for a seventeen year old, or at least around there it was. Everyone's eyes were the same color brown. If your eyes weren't exactly the right color when you got there, they surgically changed it, you had to be awake during the whole process as well and it was excruciatingly painful, but it was the first test. If you passed out during the procedure they would kill you immediately. They started doing that more recently, as Madame wanted to find more flaws in her prey. It was easier to see the flicker of an eye during an exercise if they were all the same.

I was sitting there like normal, nothing unusual in the air when suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder. I risked looking behind me. I had an internal mini heart attack when I saw a woman in brown standing there. "Prikhodit'." Come. She started walking away and I quickly stood from my seat and followed, in step, behind her.

What would happen to me? I hadn't thought I had done anything wrong. Maybe I had accidentally smiled when that girl was taken away. I was certain they would take me to be tortured, but we passed right by the torture room. We walked down a long hallway and there was a single door at the end. The word "Madame" was printed in bold letters on its wood.

We were going to Madame's office.