The Price of Power

The Unknown

    Fear. It Filled the room like a thick fog, clinging to the hearts of everyone trapped inside. A dark and heavy question lingered in the air, circulating through everyone's mind. What happened to us? How did we get here? No one seemed to know. At some point, after all the screams had dissipated, people began conversing in hushed, hoarse whispers. The conversations were all filled with the same desperate questions, always left answerless, only feeding the fear.

    "Where are we?"

    "How did we get here?"

    "What's the last thing you remember?"

    "Why are we here?"

    "Why are we strapped to a bed?"

    Occasionally you could here some names being exchanged as well, perhaps as a desperate attempt to find some normalcy in our chaotic situation. One thing remained obvious though, no one knew what was going on. We were all equally left in the dark without the faintest clue to our fate.

    My stomach growled out. How long had we been here? At least half the day has passed by now. I wondered if anyone would eventually come, or if we had just been left there to die. What a horrific death this would be, strapped to a bed to waste away and starve to death.  

    That's when I heard a crack coming from behind the door. It sounded like several locks being turned, then a loud groan as the door slowly swung open.

    All the chatter in the room came to an abrupt stop as everyone strained their necks to look at the doorway. There was a moment of stunned silence as we all took in the sight of the man standing in the door way. He was a bit short with a slight tan, maybe in his mid 20s. His hair lay in messy, dark brown tufts, curling around his face. He wore a doctors jacket and scrubs, but the well-worn fabric and overall disheveled appearance made him look more like a frat boy the morning after a costume party than an actual doctor. 

    His dull grey eyes starred blankly ahead, it didn't even seem as though he was taking notice of all the people strapped down in the room, he just mindlessly shifted from the doorway to making his way to the first bed he could get to. That's when the room once again erupted into an orchestra of shouts. 

    "Let us go!"

    "Where are we?!"

    "What are you going to do to us?"

    "I want to go home!"

    The shouts melded together into a deafening roar, the clanging of handcuffs again ringing out as everyone fought against their restraints in unison. Their efforts were useless in the end. The guy didn't seemed to even notice the noise as he continued on his way. As he reached the first bed, he casually grabbed onto the guard rails and began rolling it out of the room. He barely even spared a glance at the petite asian lady laid out before him, as she fought against her restraints.

    "What do you want from me?" she screeched out.

    He didn't acknowledge her in the least as he pushed her through the double doors, locking them the moment the doors closed behind him. As they were closing, I could see the woman on the bed dissolving into tears, pure fear radiating from her.

    With the doors closed once more, a heavy silence fell over the room. Not only had they seen their captor, but he acted as though he didn't even notice any of them. As if this was just some mundane Thursday in his book, he could of been handling cattle for all the cares he gave.

    "Hey," the guy next to me whispered, Max I think his name was, "where do you think he's taking her?"

    "How should I know?" I said distantly, shock still resonating though me. I couldn't get over just how normal he appeared. He didn't look like any villain she could have imagined, at least any outside of college rape stories. He looked like he could be just another overworked grad student.

    "Do you think he's a real doctor? Could we actually just be in a psych ward or something?" Max continued questioning me. It was clear he was in denial, still holding onto some hope that we've all come to some horrible misunderstanding about the situation. 

    "He was wearing doctor's clothing," another piped in. You could hear the desperation dripping off her fragile voice, trying desperately to hold onto the last strands of hope inside her.

    I scoffed, "Yeah, clothes he probably fished from a dumpster. Did you see how ragged they were? At best I'd say he's some sort of med school drop-out."

    "But why would he take us?" someone else asked weakly. 

    "Does it really matter at this point?" I said coldly, all the pain from these last few weeks suppressing any hope I could of otherwise had, "I'm sure we'll be finding out soon enough."

    And just like that, the room fell back into silence once more. A cold dread had filled the room, cutting into their souls. It seemed my cutting words had stifled their hope as well.

    Some time later, the door creaked open once more. Our captor casually wheeled the bed back into the room. The woman laid out on the was was no longer conscious. Parts of her clothes had been cut or torn in areas, and she had several tubs sticking out of various places. A small tube filled with a murky yellow substance hung over her head, slowly draining down one of the tubes into her stomach.

    Everyone looked on in horror and stunned silence aside from the gasps escaping a couple people's lips. It wasn't until he turned and immediately grabbed the next bed that anyone seemed capable to form even the simplest of words. The guy attached to the new bed, seemingly unable to even fight back by this point, started bellowing out in hysterics as he was dragged out the room, "No! What are you doing?! No, let me go! No, no! What did you do to her? You Monster!"

    His words devolved into screams as he rolled through the doors. After the doors were once again locked, they slowly faded into the distance until he couldn't be heard anymore. As his voice became inaudible, chatter filled the room once again. Everyone wanted to speculate what had become of the first girl, and inversely what was to become of themselves.