Squonk

When she had first been thrown in the room, the fire had appeared an ominous and dangerous presence, and she hid from it in the opposite side of the room. Soon though, she could stand the chilling corner no longer and stumbled on weak legs towards the life the fire offered. The furnace grew seamlessly out of one of the otherwise barren walls. The flames it housed were perpetual; not a day went by that the fire did not burn bright and hot, heating the room to sometimes intense temperatures. But even now, when the flames happened to be at their hottest, the concrete floor of the room turned the toes of her feet blue and numb, despite her best efforts to warm them.

But it was a cruel existence. She endured long nights of hunger that quickly turned to starvation and desperate thirst. Her weak body began to eat itself from the inside out; her muscles disappeared and soon she lost even the strength to hold her body upright and keep her naked feet from touching the frigid ground.

It had been long since she had first been imprisoned in the room, she knew, though her sense of passing time had long faded away. None of her thoughts were coherent now, and she felt only the incessant hunger and thirst and all other human needs she had been deprived of. She slept when she wished, but despite the longer periods of time unconscious, it felt to her that she had still been imprisoned for ages. And she did not die, though she had neither food nor drink.

She knew death was inevitable, and gradually the drawn out waiting became more than she could bear. But she could do nothing, for fear kept her lying motionless before the fire, her eyes watching the demonic flames and creating slight hallucinations that danced before her, coming ever closer and increasing in intensity until she had to shut her eyes for fear that they might touch her. Yet she wished that they might, for she lacked the courage and strength to take her own life and end the suffering.

Her body lay outstretched before the great fireplace; eyes tired and shut, lips cracked and cheeks bruised. Folded over the emaciated chest, the arms and hands were limp and the ragged fingernails clawed into the simple fabric that embraced the skeletal figure. After observing her apparent physical state through a hidden window, the man unlocked the solitary door to the room and entered, his footsteps falling heavily on the concrete floor. She had been sleeping, but her body jerked in an unnatural fashion at the sound, shocked and upset. Her head fell back onto the concrete floor as soon as it had risen, for the muscles in her neck had become too feeble to hold up her head. Dots of light that often appeared before her eyes when staring into the fire now appeared behind her closed lids. She did not notice as the man strode across the room to where she lay.

He stood over her, and when she opened her eyes again and looked directly at her captor, he kicked her. The blow fell on her already frail ribs, which immediately snapped. She cringed, and he stuck her again, this time his foot landing right on her hand, effectively crushing it. This time she cried out hoarsely, and the cry was animal-like and screechy, reaching all corners of the room and bouncing off the blank walls to return to her ears many times over.

The man ignored her screams and whimpers, and left the room without glancing back to see the damage he had caused. It was all part of his experiment, this manipulation of the human body. All of the suffering was justified, for it was in the good interest of his patients. The man crossed the threshold from the experimental wing into the hospital main.

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 10:53 PM