First part of a short story.

Yes. You heard me right. I'm actually writing a short story. Not a short story turned novel. But an actual short story.

Hope you enjoy it. It's very dark, moody and depressing.

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“Get in there. And don’t complain or you’ll go without food.”

She was thrown roughly into the cell, its iron door slamming sharply and the dead bolt on the other side slipping into place. The man’s footsteps echoed down the hall until the opening and closing of another door, showing that he was no longer there.

She let herself breathe in harshly, fresh tears tracking down her cheeks. Day in and day out, she was subjected to this torture. Hours upon hours of experimental injections, medical tests, physical trials… and the pain. The pain if the men failed to receive the results they wanted. The pain they subjected her to if she collapsed from exhaustion, took sick, performed inadequately… that terrifying pain kept her sane, but only just barely.

She pushed herself up and stood on both feet, taking in the usual sparse, worse-than-minimalist quarters she had lived in since they had taken her. A stainless steel bucket in the corner served as her toilet, forcing her to endure the scent as it festered until the bucket could not hold any more. That took about a week. Her eyes fell upon the inch-thin cushion that served as her “mattress”, the grimy foam pillow crusted with tears, the threadbare sheet she had used the whole time she was there. The cinderblock walls of the facility got dreadfully cold in the winter, but this was all she had. A single window up near the top, maybe half the size of a sheet of paper let in a sparse amount of light and the barest amount of fresh air.

Her eyes fell upon the wall that the door was set into. On the reverse side of the hinges, hidden by the door as it opened, several hundreds of small lines lay. Dozens of sets of four vertical lines with a single diagonal line through them, each completed set marking off every five days she had spent here. Hundreds of those lines covered that wall.

The grating of iron on iron, the squeaking of rusty hinges stole her attention back to the door. A gloved hand slid a small tray through a cutout in the iron door, a flap large enough for her three daily “meals” to go through, yet far too small for her to escape from. The tray contained her usual: a single piece of stale bread, two glasses of water and five large pills. Inside those pills were the remaining daily nutrients that the bread did not give her, optimized so that she would appear to be in perfect health, yet would not expend the same cost for food as the other humans in the facility.

She moved herself over to the tray, picking it up and seating it upon her pillow. She took the pills first, using as little water as possible and ending up with a cup and a half. She took the stale bread and broke it into various pieces, dipping them in the water to soften it up. She ate the bread slowly, trying to savor what little solid food she received each day and the bland, yet existent flavor it held. But all too soon she had finished it, and so she sipped on the water slowly, trying to make that last as long as possible, but eventually the cup ran dry as well. She put the tray on the floor, knowing the flap was only one way and that the scientists would take it in the morning.

Looking up through the window, her eyes fell upon the full moon, its complete image barely captured by the minute portcullis. It enraptured her, that lone white sphere hovering full in the sky, its milky rays falling to the world beholden to it. Was it as lonely as she? Did it long for company as she did? Somebody, anybody to talk to?

She sighed and lay down on the bed, her head falling down onto the pillow and messy blond locks splaying around her. She drew the sheet over herself and cast one more glance at the wall. There were currently seven hundred and twenty nine lines on the wall.

Tomorrow would be two years to the day since she had been abducted and brought here.

Tomorrow was her seventeenth birthday.

* * * * *
“Wake up, honey! It’s your big day!”

Bleary eyes opened to the world, and her hand came up to push her blond hair back from in front of her face. The clock on her bedside table read 9:47, and below the time, Saturday. She let a soft smile cover her face. Today was her fifteenth birthday, and she would be seeing all of her friends.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, and she was wearing the blouse she had just bought the other day, a pair of jeans and a cute pair of flats. She looked at herself in the mirror, nodding in approval before she went down the stairs to the kitchen, careful not to trip over her dog. As she arrived in the kitchen, she saw her mother working over the stove, cooking up pancakes for the family.

“Dear, would you mind going outside and grabbing the paper really fast?”

She nodded, smiled and went out the front door, looking down the driveway to where the paper was. But as soon as she bent down to pick up the paper, something rustled the bush behind her, and a heavy, strong hand placed a wet cloth over her mouth while another pulled her back. She tried to scream out, she really did. But the more she tried, the more tired she became. As consciousness escaped her, she couldn’t help but notice the cloth smelled and tasted funny, almost like it had been soaked in something…

She awoke with a start.

The morning sun streamed into her cell in a tiny beam, shining off of the dark iron door and directly into her eyes. She pulled herself out of the bed and lifted up the mattress, revealing a tiny fragment of iron. She took the fragment in hand and went over to the wall, making a slash through the last set of four lines on the wall.

Seven hundred and thirty days.

Two years.

And yet still she remained here.

She laid back down onto her bed, curled up in the fetal position, shivering and praying that somebody would come and help her.

That somebody would come and save her.