Lab Rats

This story is kind of a ramble of a dream I once had, its a dystopian-style story meant to make you ponder your own life or existence. The main theme or theory is we are all technically living for the calm moments of life, the times where you feel nothing. Just the little moments like cuddling with a pet or sitting on the beach/in a park where you feel calm.

Every day feels longer than the last, my skin is cold, my heart collapsed, however, It's been this way for as long as I can remember. I do remember a time before this, but it is never good to think about how life once was. a life where there was darkness, the life when we didn't wonder when we'd get to eat or sleep. Eating wasn't always an issue, but sleep was. They'd keep us awake so long most days, never shutting the bright fluorescent lights off. After a while, it was enough to blind you. But you'd never look away, as the bright light reminded me of bright summer days when we'd play in the road with chalk and water guns. However, those days were over. Now, all that had been left was us, 3 men and 3 women in the 9x9 feet room. They'd keep the lights on, constantly, we could never catch a break from them. It felt as though my cornea had been burned to a crisp. Burned like my father's hamburgers that he'd make us when we were kids... I missed those days when the brightness of the sun was warm, rather than overpowering. The room we were in had white walls, and a large iron door on one of the walls. Occasionally, they'd slip food into the room from outside, but other times we had to use other methods to keep ourselves alive. We used to have another woman here, she was rather large so it was quite difficult to take her down but we managed. She was the only person who couldn't stay awake, and when you fall asleep, even if it was just one of us, we all get zapped. We used our bare hands to kill her and then eat her flesh, we were rewarded for this with a whole 24 hours of darkness. The darkness was so silently peaceful, we all slept for all 24 hours, and were woken up by the lights turning back on, like robots we all sat up from our sleep. A big thing in here is never to speak of life before we were lab rats. The woman we all killed, she'd constantly speak of how she missed the grass. And one of the men, Andy, would sob because he missed his daughter. He nearly killed me when I said what everyone was thinking, "You realize, she's probably dead, right?" I still have a scar on my neck from him scratching me. Now, we'd all been awake for 37 hours, id crack my knuckles, occasionally lay down, feeling like I was about to fall asleep but Kansas, one of the women here, would pull me up and slap me. "I ain't getting no buzz cause of you girly, ya hear?" She was older, definitely had brain damage from being shocked here. I leaned on the wall, watching everyone else, 2 of the men played Sticks like they were schoolchildren, Kansas, and the other woman, Meg, sat against the wall like I was. Andy sat crying in the corner. He stood to his feet, receiving looks from everyone in the room, "Let us go!" he sobbed, "We've been here for years! please! have some soul, let us go." his voice was shaky and raspy from dehydration. We had a water fountain but he'd never move from the one spot in the corner. I heard as the lock to the iron door clicked open, I pushed myself far away from it. A man came through the door, well, not much of a man, more like a robot. The robotic man walked stiffly towards Andy, the door closing behind him, he grabbed Andy by the arm, tightly. His grip got tighter and tighter, Andy cried as the bones in his arm crumbled within him. The robot pulled its arm back, tearing Andy's arm off, as it walked outside of the room. He screamed in agonizing pain as blood spurted out of his arm inconsistently, like a broken faucet. One of the men removed his shirt, wrapping his arm with it. Nobody said a word, we all just went back to doing what we were doing as if nothing had happened at all. I stared at the door, then at the corners of the walls, each had a camera in it, a camera that must have a microphone. I wondered where it led to, who was doing this to us, why they were doing it. Maybe, that day when I was kidnapped, I wasn't kidnapped by humans but rather an army of robots. I laid down, staring at the light, pondering this theory. "What if everyone controlling us is a robot, they're like schoolchildren doing a lab experiment," I said blankly, I didn't mean any harm but by even saying anything aloud that was about our situation, I was breaking the rules. I felt the shock go through my body before I fainted. Darkness was the only pro in this lab, losing consciousness for long periods of time, just to relax and not think about whatever the hell was going on here. To just relax and feel completely at ease. To shut out everything else and feel nothing at all is sometimes the only feeling to live for, the only feeling I live for other than hope that one day, I'll be rid of this place.

Word limit hack: (if I add more it ruins the ominous uncertainty)

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