Caged

Chapter 2

Cage opened his eyes but all he saw was the inky black of the dark room. He couldn't be certain how long he'd been here, the days had blended into endless moments of light and dark. It could have been a week or maybe months. The minutes stretched to hours, and those into days. The light flicked on and he groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Wakey, wakey, my boy!" the voice crooned from wherever it was hidden away.

"Go the fuck away and leave me alone," he yelled at the voice. He remained prone on his little mattress on the floor. He didn't bother sitting up or reaching for the tray of food he knew sat nearby. He had no idea where the tray appeared from or how it got here without waking him but it was there each time the lights came on. Thanks to the metal tray he now knew his hair was a sandy blond color, his eyes were a deep gray, and he was somewhere in his teens, but that was all he knew. It was difficult to realize you couldn't recognize your reflection staring back at you.

In the days he'd been here, he'd done all he could to find a way to escape his prison short of trying to climb to the ceiling far above. He'd tried to pull bricks from the walls, dig through the floor, and search for a hidden door. All of it led to nothing. He was no closer to freedom than he'd been that first day the voice spoke to him.

He flung an arm over his eyes and remained where he was. There was no point in continuing the search, he figured there was no way out and all of this was simply a game to that bodiless voice.

"That is in poor spirits, Cage. Don't you want your freedom?"

"I doubt there is even the remote possibility of freedom anywhere in this hellhole," he muttered.

The voice made a tasking sound. "That's plain mean. I wouldn't lie, there is a way out. Don't you want to get home and see your family again? Your friends at school? Maybe your girlfriend?"

He sat up quickly when he heard those taunting words. "Keep away from them! Do you hear me, you freak? Stay the hell away from all of them!" He jumped to his feet and looked around the room as if he could suddenly put a face to that voice.

Laughter echoed through the room. It bounced from stone wall to stone wall before it finally dissipated. "You see, my dear boy, I can find ways to motivate you. You're wasting time. I suggest you get moving." The last was said in a dead calm voice with none of his attempt at a teasing, light tone.

Cage sat for a moment waiting to see if the voice had anything more to say but it remained silent. He cursed and rose to begin his search for the day. "Where to start today?" he muttered and moved over to the wall. "I need to be smarter than this bastard." He ran a hand over the wall. On the first day, he had the impression the tower was stone, but upon closer inspection, he found brick beneath some of the paint. "All right, so why paint the walls and do such a shitty job of it?"

He studied the sloppy paint job. Maybe he'd done it in a hurry and couldn't do it properly. "Or maybe he wanted it dark in here like his rotten soul." A hysterical little laugh slipped out and he stifled it quickly.

He cleared his throat and gave his head a shake. This place was getting to him. "Concentrate," he told himself. Why choose black paint? To disguise things perhaps. "Something could be out of place since most of the tower is stone. Maybe he bricked up a door."

He cast a gaze around the room, searching for something that stood out but he saw nothing. He bent and picked up a shard of stone from the ground and scratched at the painted brick. It was solid and the mortar between the bricks didn't crumble. He moved further down the wall and scratched at one of the stones. Bits chipped away but it was only surface damage, not enough to provide him with an escape route. "Unless that creep bastard decides to provide me with a pick ax."

The rock clattered against the wall when he tossed it aside. He took a step back from the wall and propped his hands on his hips as he turned to look around the room. "Come on, think smarter than the asshole who put you here." Right, so what exactly did thinking smarter entail? "Think, Cage, think!" he muttered as he paced around the room.

Okay, how do you place someone in a room without any doors or windows? "That sounds like the beginning of a really bad test question." He shook his head and looked up. "Trap door in the ceiling?" he asked himself. He couldn't see to the top of the tower, the bastard had made certain the lights hung lower, closer to where he was at the bottom. Looking up meant looking directly into the lights. It was difficult to see past them. He'd tried to climb the walls already with no luck. He would likely need climbing equipment to get to the top. When he'd attempted it before his arms had given out before he got very far.

"Okay, other options." He turned back to the walls and his brows drew together. Perhaps his earlier thought had merit. The jerk could have shoved him into the room and bricked up the doorway. That meant there was a door somewhere in the room or there had been at one time. And if the brickwork was recent, perhaps the mortar joints hadn't fully set and he could break through. "At least that's what I'm hoping for."

He searched around the floor for a sharper shard of stone and used it to make a mark on the wall. "Right, this is where I start the search." It was time he started being smart about this. He began a more methodical search for a way out, moving along the wall and making a mark every few feet. When the lights went out, he scratched what he hoped was an arrow into the wall to indicate which direction he had been moving in. He turned and went back to the mattress, ate what was on the tray, and went to sleep.

He knew when the light went on again tomorrow he would begin again. It would be endless, every day, until he found a way out or he died in this hellhole.

"And I'll do it because if I lose hope I might as well let go and die right now."