Dog Fights

Chapter 30; Hero

Being locked in a cage is a lot more terrifying than I ever could have ever imagined, especially with hungry supernaturals reaching in and trying to grab my sweaty shirt.

Something I noticed about being down here is usually when people are put in pressured situations they're retrieved before they can slip into a panic, but here in the darkness, no one cares. The crying blends in with the screaming, and the screaming blends in with the banging of metal bars, and the hyperventilation is shrouded under the sound of self injury.

That sounds like it should be obvious, but it's not something I noticed until I got too exhausted by pounding and shaking the bars upon arrival.

Although I tend to cry easy, I don't scream anymore; I'm too scared the others will notice me more than they already do. I don't want any more of them screaming and threatening me with bloody murder. But I can't blame them, though- they're hungry.

From what I can understand, the full moon is tonight. It's day time now and I can see the sunlight through the window on the top of the stone wall, but still the night seems so far away. I haven't eaten since being taken by Orgon, but one of his men gave me a plastic water bottle to last me through the last two nights.

We're stacked like boxes against the wall. I don't know where we are or what building we're in, but I know it's the basement of some tucked away warehouse thing outside the city. The only fresh air for the twenty-some of us is from that window that I've been staring at, as well as the light of the room, since the bulb hanging from the ceiling was shattered not long ago. I learned that the hard way when Orgon dragged me in, stripped me of my jacket, shoes, and belt, and I stepped in the glass. It took me an hour to pick it out of my right heel alone.

Luckily the cages were designed as animal kennels, so the right and left walls are sheets of dented metal instead of see through. I'm in the middle box from the floor, so sometimes as I'm pressed against the back wall I see a desperate hand reach from above or below the openings and try to snag anything it can. At one point crimson started dripping from the cage above mine and running down my bars; I stopped getting close.

I'm not separated from the supernaturals like the rest of the humans tend to be, so the howling and hissing buries a migraine behind my eyes every half hour. Why was I put here? If I'm going to be used like the rest of the humans- why am I having to torture the hungry creatures with my presence alone? I'm sure the blood matted on my feet drove the vampires around me into hysteria when I first entered.

Orgon never told me what he was going to use me for. I assume bait or a meal for a supernatural at this point, but he said I was going to walk away from it alive, just like the rest of them, at the end of the night. It's just one night. Working under Orgon for one night.

As long as we all come out of this alive, I don't care what happens to me. Just one night.

Just tonight.

-:*:-

I stepped in the dirty glass again when a man came to retrieve me.

I don't think I've stopped trembling since the time I got here, whether it be from exhaustion or fear, I don't know. Probably both. What I do know is that that man wasn't very happy when my knees buckled from being tucked under me for so long and I fell in the middle of the floor. My jeans stopped the glass and blood from digging into my legs.

Even if I try to ask where he's taking me, I wouldn't be able to get it out. My voice is so quiet and gravelly that it's no longer audible over the cries of caged creatures behind me.

He drags me out of the room and down a concrete hallway, and I'm forced to leave spotty red foot prints trailing behind me. I stumble around two corners and down a few stairs, glancing into every door or window along the way. This place is abandoned, left to rot by the city and hopefully be forgotten. I have a feeling it was shut down suddenly, because there's still posters up about wearing hardhats on the work floor. I'm in a factory.