The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

71| Gone

previously: jenlisa went to somi's pre-funeral, matt punched lisa. lisa was acting unusual, jennie went to rkive to talk with jinyoung.

tw: graphic (-ish) descriptions of violence

When Lisa woke up from her nightmare, there was a buzz in between her ears that she couldn't get rid of, no matter whether she pressed on her temple or covered her ears. It was like TV static, faint but still irritating. Or like the buzzing hum of a hive of angry bees, on the verge of exploding.

Her phone read 8:00 but Jennie's mattress and the covers were untouched. If Jennie had come back, Lisa was sure she would have been roused from her fitful sleep for sure.

Where was her sister?

Lisa covered her eyes and flopped back on the mattress. The nightmare had been less a bad dream and more a memory, sharp and hauntingly vivid.

After so many years, she had dreamed of Bambam again. He had called out to her as the cage at the far end of the dingy room rattled violently, threatening to blow apart. Baying hounds mad with hunger paced within, fighting to escape the close confines. They snapped and barked and howled, but Lisa could only hear the terror escalating in Bambam's voice.

"P'Pran, what do we do? What do we do?!"

He had called her by name, something they were expressly forbidden to do.

"I'll protect you, just stay behind me! Remember, you're strong!"

But Bambam's fear got the better of him. Even though they'd been taught to never show weakness, he fell to his knees crying. The sight almost made her kneel and throw her arms over him. The laser gaze of their master standing above them, observing them, stopped her.

"Please, we're sorry!" Bambam wept, reaching towards the blinding lights overhead where the silhouettes and labcoats silently surveyed them from the safety of their balconies. "We won't ever run again. Please!"

"Release the hounds," came the stonyreply. 

Bambam screamed.

Lisa shook her head violently to block out the blood drenched aftermath that coloured her whole world red. But she couldn't block out the cruel voice that had her in its vicious icy grip, more than a decade later.

"Well done 327. Your next assignment will go ahead as planned in 1400 hours. Do not disappoint me again."

"Yes Ringmaster,"  she said numbly, like the coward she was. The disappointment in question had been an attempted breakout from the facility, which failed abysmally. She and Bambam had been the only ones left standing from the disparate band of children that had tried to escape.

The doors at the back opened and the guards came to take her back to her cell, boots squelching in the bloody pools, bones crunching underfoot. The walls that had been smeared with old blood now were splattered with fresh splashes of guts, brains and fluids. The scent of death no longer made her gag.

One of Bambam's eyeballs floated by her feet. Nearby, a carcass of a hound lay ripped in two, its ribs sticking out like a fan, its heart still pumping grotesquely. Her hands were still raining blood when they took her away in chains, but she didn't fight them, not anymore. 

She had lost everything.

Heart thudding, Lisa drew a shuddering breath. Her eyes snapped open as she roused herself from her reminiscing. She shouldn't be reliving the memory and further sinking into the hellhole of her past at the facility. She needed to get up and get to punching, pronto.