The Final Freedom Chapter 1: Prisoner

You wake up. The air is damp, the cement on which you lay is cold. Your throat aches and your head throbs. The room is shrouded in inky darkness.

As you grope about, you feel the rough brick and mortar of one wall. You follow it, palm over palm, moving to the left, trying to find a door, a window, anything with which to orient yourself.

Your hands find the corner, and your foot overturns a pail. You kneel and grope for it. It's metal, empty, and light. You draw it near in hopes of learning something in spite of being blind.

The faint ammonia scent first makes you think of cleaning supplies, but a cloying earthiness, equally muted, causes you to retch.

The pail once contained waste. Human waste.

Your stomach roiling, you place the pail back in the corner, in the black. You continue your exploration, this time shuffling your bare feet lightly above the rough floor, testing your steps as well as your walls.

Another corner. The two walls, two corners. In it, you step on some cloth. Carefully, hesitantly, you lift it. It's a woolen blanket. There's a mustiness to it, and the faint dank of perspiration, but nothing else foul or rancid.

It's a woolen blanket, and it's warm. You pat yourself down, and find yourself dressed in a thin, sleeveless dress. As you do, the chill about you hammers your senses, and the fear and disorientation yield to it.

You are cold.

The blanket over your bare shoulders itches. At first it is no warmer than the floor, the walls. As you continue your snail's-pace search, it does grant you some warmth.

You expect this wall, this third wall, to lead to a corner, to lead to yet one more wall, but it doesn't.

The wall ends when you touch vertical pipes of metal. They're spaced a hand's span width apart. The bars are each slightly thicker than your thumb.

You grab one and pull. They do not bend. They do not yield.

Crouching down, you find them set into the concrete.

Reaching up, you find them to extend past your reach.

Touching each as you brush them, you find a rectangular bar, a pinky's-width gap, and its twin. You run your fingers against them as you crouch, and find the gap bridged on the far side by a cylinder, metal and …

It's a hinge. It's a hinge, those are bars, and you're in a cell.

"Help! Somebody! Help me! Please!" The words escape before you realize. Your thoughts are overwhelmed with the possible consequences of your cry. Animals, knives, all manner of weapons and devices of torment.

Your stomach is empty. You find that in a most painful way, as your body folds upon itself and cramped heaving seizes you.

Nothing is expelled.

You listen. In the distance, you hear a scrabbling. It's faint. You dismiss the doubt it is an illusion, a manifestation of your panic and blind hope. You listen to it, and your heart sinks when you only hear silence.

There it is!

You hear it again, slightly louder. It's rhythmic, it's slow, and it's hesitant. Most importantly, it's approaching.

In your head, two fears wage war each against the other. To call out and risk attracting someone of ill intent, or to call out in hopes of rescue.

"Is somebody there?! Help me! I'm trapped! Can you hear me?" The decision is made.

You listen. Nothing. In the blackness, your eyes see a possible blot of light. It could be from straining to see, it could be from fear. But, it could be real.

"Hello? Do you hear me?" Please? Your voice loses volume as your heart loses hope.

There it is, the scratching, the rustling. Whomever is making those foot falls, they're coming closer.

"I'm over here! I'm trapped. Help!" Emboldened by the noise, you cry out words, but your heart hears them instead as a prayer.

The splash of light appears again, and remains in sight. It bounces jaggedly in time with the footfalls. It's someone with a flashlight!

"Please! Help me!"

The light grows in intensity against perpendicular wall. It is so bright, it almost blinds you. In the dust you can see the cone of dust. As it increases in brightness, it decreases in size.

It is but the width of a dinner plate when you hear the clear footsteps of someone entering the cross-hallway.

"I'm over here! I'm over-" The light sweeps down the wall towards your cage, then dazzles you, interrupting your chant. You throw up your right arm across your eyes, and blots of orange and green fill your vision.

"What are you doing in there?" The speaker is female, and young. Her voice is an alto, yet devoid of maturity's huskiness.

"I… I don't know. I woke up, and … I don't know! Please let me out!" No sooner did the words leave than you realize their folly. She's a girl, just a girl like you. What can she do?

Through the roaring panic and the deafening headache, you try to determine where did that thought come from? I'm just a girl. How did I know that?

"I'll see what I can do." Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact. The light lowers as she approaches.

"I … I don't know where the keys are. I don't know what you can…" You can't bring yourself to finish the sentence.

"Back up." Hers is a voice of command, of responsibility and authority beyond what you can imagine possible for her age.

"What?"

"Back up. Back up and cover your ears. This might get loud."

You nod, then, realizing the futility of such an unseen motion, what with the light painting the lock to the cell door, you back away against the concrete wall.

A roar, no, three roars so close as to initially sound as one, they rip through your ears as you realize too late you didn't cover them as instructed.

Your vision is obscured by a sulfurous haze, and your hearing is equally impeded by a siren's whine.

Through the haze, you see the door swing free, away from your cell.

Through the cacophony, you hear that most welcome voice say, "Let's go. I'm Claes. What's your name?"

That's when you realize you don't know.