Shortstories collection

9 - Balance of life

Living a quiet life in a small and peaceful village was all I asked for. I had a beautiful wife and a cute child. I was working the soil, sawing and harvesting as the seasons passed by. It was a simple life but I was happy. Who wouldn't be when they had lucked out at each important of their life?

But each lucky encounter has a price.

The balance never stays unbalance or it will break.

My son just turned 11 when it happened. A man, or was it a woman?, cloaked in black arrived in the village. Peace had been there for so long we had forgotten to be wary of strangers. We offered a roof for the night to cloaked traveller and they repaid us by setting fire to the entire village.

In the depth of the night, their men had come and they captured us all. I tried to fight them off, to protect my family but... What can a humble farmer do against people who've trained for years to make their sword a deadly weapon? My hoe never stood a chance. All it earned me was a hard hit on the head, making me black out.

When I opened my eyes, everything was dark. Though, the whispers of familiar voices told me I wasn't alone: the villagers were there with me, and my family was among them. My eyes eventually became accustomed to darkness and I could embrace my wife and my son while apologizing for not being able to protect them. For the first time in years, I shed tears of sorrow and anger.

Pressed on against the other, we were imprisoned behind bars. On the other side, it was too dark to see what there was. Though, I quickly learned there was a laboratory in which human experiments were conducted.

And we were the test subjects.

Lost in the darkness, the flow of time is messed up. It's difficult to say how much time has passed since we were locked in here, in the putrid smell of dejections. I only know we've been given 537 times food to eat. It only consisted in hard bread and water, sometimes a bit of meat or a soup but nothing extraordinary.

Regularly the lights came to life. It only meant a new moment in hell for us. The cloaked stranger always came when lights were on. One prisoner among us or among the other rooms was taken away by their men. The unlucky victim was laid down on a wooden table.

The first, you watch and you see them being strapped on table before our captor come and begin their experiment. Then you look away and you try to fight of the cries. And, finally, you never look again and pray not to be the next, nor you, nor your family.

They began with the elders. Most of them never returned. Those who did didn't last long, refusing to eat and drink, letting themselves go. Fortunately enough, their corpses weren't left there to decay but were taken away. They were examined before being thrown away somewhere else.

The women were the next, along with their babies if they had young children. No baby returned. I couldn't protect my wife when her turn had come. So I embraced my son tightly and we cried, our eyes closed as I tried to block his ears.

She returned to us. Partially. She was never the same again. Her hair had fallen end her face was ashen. One of her eyes was injected with blood and she was trembling, unable to speak due to the mental shock. She didn't want to be seen by us and just cried as she tried to turn away. It didn't matter for I held her tightly and kissed her neck to calm her until she felt confident enough I wouldn't run away seeing her like this.

I thought it would be okay for her after this. How wrong I was...

Day after day, I saw her becoming weaker and weaker. She was always sleepy but never hungry. Slowly she stopped crying as if she had no more tears to shed. My heart broke seeing her in such a state and I had to stop my tears from falling down each time I looked at her suffering. I didn't know what they did to her but they seemed to have sucked away her energy, her ability to move. It was strange but I couldn't understand how she would have fallen in such a disastrous state else.