Rebirth

*Trigger warning: Kidnap*

When my brain registered the deafening silence that finally filled the house, I couldn’t decide if I should be relieved now that the screaming has ceased, or completely devastated for what it really meant.

But I knew it was only a matter of time after that.

Sure enough, a while later I could hear him descending the stairs, drawing closer and closer, passing my locked door and shoving the one next to mine open. A whimper and a faint tired noise were heard –an instinctual response or a final act of resistance –before he finally went up, steps heavier now that he was carrying another weight.

If his unusual lack of patience is anything to go by, I’d say that this one lasted three, maybe four days more than the previous one. Not that it changes anything, really.

Locked here for as long as I have been, I was supposed to be used to it by now, all of it, but I’m not.

It still wrecks me every time he brings a new one, all the times I’m forced to sit here and listen to their panicked voices unable to help them in any possible way.

Their first days here are always the worst. It’s when the screaming is the loudest and the most hopeful. They’d kick the metal door; add more scratches to the many that already cover the walls of that dark choking room; they’d cry for their lives, for their luck –or lack of it actually, they’d beg for help, for trades to give away anything, anything to let them out. Some are louder, others are fiercer, but as time goes by, they all seem to realize that, with no source of energy, they might as well preserve what’s left of theirs for when they really need it –If they ever need it. They’d never do.

Prayers would sometimes find their way to my room through the cracks in the walls, small and desperate calls to whoever they believe in to save them; prayers I knew for sure would not be answered but I could never let them know. Hope is everything they’re left with the second they step into this house, and I would never take it away from them, even if I could, even when I believed that the sooner they gave up, the easier.

I lie on the cold floor and stay very still, listening carefully to any sign that would only prove what I already know: another failed experiment and a new target. Then after what seems to be an hour later, I hear his angry footsteps as he moves from one room to the other, slamming the doors.

I sit up and lean against the wall behind me, knocking the small empty metal bowl on my way, the sound echoing loudly around the unlit room.

I imagine him now adding another name to a long list he keeps pinned above his desk, or writing on his notebook how close to succeeding he was but not quite yet, already making plans to catch his next prey. Someone he will kidnap and lock in the room next to mine until they scream the life out of their bodies, someone who will become his lab rat for as long as their brains allow.

No one ever comes down again, whatever terrible things he does to them; no one seems to open their eyes after it. That’s why he was so shocked when I did, even when I wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for –whatever that was –I woke up, and they didn’t.

A blinding light, a splitting headache and a pair of obsidian eyes, so hollow and cold they still hunt me in my sleep; that’s what I remember waking up to and that’s my very first memory. Everything before it, including my name, who I was, and how I got there, was a blank space my brain was unwilling to fill for me no matter how hard I tried.

I could tell from the way he looked at me during all those tests he had me going through after I woke up, that I wasn’t what he was expecting. I couldn’t talk for starters, and besides the fact that I didn’t remember anything, whatever ability he seemed to think I now possessed wasn’t there. I was a shell of a human being to say the least, of whoever I once was, but I was different, special even. I was an answer to a question he didn’t ask but an answer nonetheless, he knew and that alone, I believe, deemed me valuable enough to keep.

He brought me down here several days later. He said it was temporary, that he was so close to getting the answers he was looking for and then he would let me out, but other than the few times he remembered my existence and brought me food, my door never opened again.

I had so much time to wrap my head around the whole thing. I wondered about the life I had before all this, whether or not I had people searching for me, waiting for me to come back, but at some point, I had to convince myself –if only to ease some of the pain –that whatever I had was long gone and even if I had it back, it wouldn’t be the same now that I was...this. It stopped hurting as much as it used to, but then there were the screams and the new victims…a constant reminder of what I probably went through and still can’t remember.

After the second victim, I started having weird dreams. They were glimpses of events, images, scenes that came and went like the flickers of a swaying light bulb, and it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t the past they belonged to. They were things from the future.

I saw myself sitting here through all his failed experiments, including the one that will cost him his life. I saw the first bits of light washing my pale skin and bony figure, the first breath of fresh air burning its way down my lungs as I walked out of this house, I saw strange figures, gawking, asking me questions I wouldn’t answer and I saw the emptiness that lies after it.

With nowhere to go and no one to go back to, the future I saw was as empty and lonely as my present and maybe for the first time after I woke, I hated him, truly hated him, for keeping me alive.

The picture isn’t full yet, there are so many empty pieces waiting to be filled. I still don’t know if I’ll always be like this, if there will ever be a day I’ll be less broken or less empty, if I’ll ever stop being hunted by their screams during the day and his eyes at night, but just like the others, hope is all I’m left with. And if I had absolutely no reason to go back out there, I’ll still wait, if only to see any color other than black or feel anything other than pain.