Sindy
I woke to sunlight.
Bright. Blinding. A square of it stretched across clean sheets and a pillow too soft for a prisoner. For a long moment, I lay still, listening. The quiet was deafening.
Much too quiet.
Time had unraveled on me. My memories were jumbled, slipping over each other like cards shuffled too fast. Had it been hours? A night? More? I remembered being dragged—no, stumbling—back here after they’d cut me down. The room had been dark then. Darker than dark. My adrenaline had been so high, I wasn’t sure any of it was real.
They’d taken off the gag, the blindfold, the cuffs—rough hands, but silent. Not a word. The big one, the one who’d worked the crank that stretched my body until I thought I’d split in half, was the one who unbound me. He didn’t even look at me while he
