FLOOD

The Plan

Whatever it was that they gave me took hours to wear off. After Cain had shut me back inside the plastic cage I ended up curled on the floor, knees to my chest, arms wrapped around my knees. Staring at the wall I tried to memorize how I’d seen him open the door, where the hinges were. They had disappeared now, I couldn’t even see a seam in the plastic. He hadn’t said anything after he’d set me down on the floor, just turned and slammed the door shut. I’d listened to the echo of his footsteps grow quieter and fade into silence. The lights clicked off, plunging me into darkness.

Something kept rising up in my throat to choke me, screams that wanted to slip out. The silence surrounded me so completely I felt like it might crush me.

            The feeling in my legs slowly returned, I couldn’t sleep until it did. Even if I’d managed to sleep, the sensations of pins and needles shooting through my thighs would have woken me up. The tingling numbness slowly turned to pain, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek until I tasted the coppery tang of blood in my mouth.

            It felt like both legs had fallen asleep and the blood was rushing back into them. Anger spiked, sending a throb of pain through the back of my head. Half mad with the pain I reached out and slammed my palm flat against the Plexiglas, a growl tearing out of my throat.

            It was stupid, since it only hurt my hand, but it soothed something deep inside, something that needed to get out. I slammed my fist into the plastic again and howled my anger at nothing. At everything. At this place, whatever it was. At the darkness that threatened to drown me. At the cold-faced nurse who had stuck a needle in my arm, and at Cain. Cain, who shuffled around and smirked like all of this was no big deal and talked about me like I wasn’t a person, but a lab rat. Some kind of experiment.

            I screamed at him, mostly, because he was the only person who kept coming back. He was the only person that talked to me. And he was the face of this place. He was my captor. I screamed until my throat was raw and sore and then I continued screaming.

            Finally, when the pain had died down and the feeling had returned to my legs, and I had screamed myself completely hoarse, I stopped. The silence rang in my ears, and then a noise in the darkness made me jerk upright. There was a sharp click, like a door had swung shut.

            Someone had heard me screaming. Someone had stayed behind in the darkness and listened to me. And my money was on Cain.

            It was impossible to tell how many days had passed. Had it been two days, three? I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here, since the hours seemed endless and for all I knew they were turning the lights on and off at random times, just to screw with me. Maybe they were doing experiments on my brain. Just to see how long it would take a Jotun to crack under pressure. Would I last longer than a human? Did we take a longer amount of time to go insane?

            It was the second day, I thought, when they came again.

            Fuzzy figures moved through the room, I could see them through the thick plastic walls of my cage. I didn’t bother yelling at them though. My voice was still hoarse from last night. One of the taller figures approached, a blob of white. Someone in a lab coat, I guessed.

            “Is she ready?” The voice was deep and gravely. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was the voice of the doctor I’d seen on my last visit to the lab. Instinctively I recoiled, backing myself up into the far corner of the cage. I didn’t want that man near me again, didn’t want to wake up on a table wondering what he’d done to me a second time.