8
Zara
Zara was rolled into a ball on the wooden cot, every bone, muscle and cell in her body aching. She had stopped counting the amount of beatings she’d received and with the few brain cells still working properly she wondered why she was even alive and what the Soviets would do to her next. She was exhausted to the core and wished nothing more than to sleep, but the drumming pain in her freezing body combined with the merciless neon light hammering down on her prevented the blissful state of sliding into dreamland.
Whenever she’d finally fall asleep, miraculously the door opened and she was rudely awakened by dreadful shaking or an equally dreadfully bucket of cold water poured over her head. At times she wondered whether a few precious minutes of sleep were worth the brutal rousing
