Forcing my eyelids to part, my vision finally floods with a blurry, dark ceiling.
A throaty, feminine howl reaches my ears. For a brief moment, I hear my own choking screams.
But this issomeone else. Someone whose fate I’ll soon mirror, given the rusty, tattered bars I see in my periphery.
Oh God. Where the hell am I?
I manage to push myself off the grimy floor, my palms stinging at the jagged surface.
Sitting beside me, beyond the bars separating us, is a woman, her clothes ripped.
God. Her pale skin is barely visible. Dried blood peeks out from where the scant clothing doesn’t cover her.
She’s whimpering. Nails digging painfully at the stone wall.
Her glassy eyes stare listlessly at something.
My heart sinks when I follow her gaze, barely feeling the click in my sore neck.
A man is sitting beyond her cell, wearing only a pair of torn jeans. Hands mercilessly shackled above his head to the wall.
I start to shake at what this means.
He’s purposely positioned that he can’tnotsee the woman.
“Delilah.” The name slips from his dry, split lips.
There’s nothing in his eyes. They look dead. Vacant. Like life has been stripped away from them.
Delilah.
She whimpers again at his soft voice. Her face remains blank, frozen with a version of terror I can’t fathom.
I lower my gaze. Like I’m prying at something that’s private.
Beyond them, I see a dozen more women. A few of them with men chained in front of them. Some of the men have twisted themselves at an unnatural angle.
One of them clings to the wall, hiding his eyes and ears under his arms as best he can.
He flinches every so often.
It’s probably his woman who had been screaming earlier. She was talking unintelligibly, but she’s quiet now. It probably destroyed him to hear her like that.
That’s what this place is about. Destruction. A slow, deliberate annihilation of humanity.
I finally shift, moving to the one solid wall so I can rest my aching back.
It’s almost as if a switch flips, and I don’t see them anymore. I see my own fate. Versions of me—fractured, broken, hollow—depending on how long I’d be here.
But I’m alone—
I freeze when I lift my gaze.
Ruin.
He’s here, in front of my cell.
No.No, no, no.
