"Prove
it!" he roared, his nose just inches from her face. "Prove it to me!”
His spittle flew to splatter her cheeks. The wet saliva slowly crept down her face to
collect under her chin. She desperately tugged her tightly bound arms, unable to free
herself to hide her face. Her mouth convulsed as she tried to contain her tears.
"How?" she whispered, hardly able to form the word. "I don't know how I
can."
He whipped his head around and walked slowly away. Each step echoed hollowly in the nearly
empty cellar. He spun suddenly to face her, his shoes rasping on the dirty concrete floor.
"I know you,” he whispered. Pointing an accusatory finger, “You’re
just a machine wrapped in the skin of a perfectly formed teen.” His hand clenched
into a fist. “Until you prove to me otherwise…” He smashed his fist into
his other hand. The sickeningly sharp smack reverberated off the empty walls. He moved
toward her slowly, his fist clenched at his sides.
She tried to flinch away from the approaching
madman, but was unable to move anything save her head. Her arms and legs were tied tightly
to the chair. "I believe in God!" she yelled. "A machine can't do
that!" She searched her shocked and tired mind, fervently trying to think of
something he would believe. “I love my parents and my brother!" She said, her
voice breaking as she tried not to cry. "A machine can't love!"
He roared with frustration, shaking his fists above his head. “You’re programmed
to say that!” He dropped his hands and glared down on her. “I’m smarter
then you think I am. I can see through your clever ploys and excuses. I’ve heard it
all from your kind more times then you can imagine.” His fist suddenly shot down,
smashing into her face. A grimace crept over his face as she screamed in pain. He grabbed
the wheeled chair and flung it away toward the opposite wall.
Her knees cracked as they hit the wall and blood
began to flow freely down her legs. The tears she had been trying to hold back had sprung
out when he had hit her. They mingled with the blood that stained her face and caressed
her sore cheeks. She hung her head as she cried and whimpered. "Please stop,"
she whispered. "Can't you see that I am alive? I'm bleeding, machines don't
bleed."
"Shut
up!" he screamed, grabbing the back of the chair once again. "You shut up until
you can prove to me that you are alive!" He whipped the chair around and shoved it
hard toward the workbench on the other side of the cellar.
She screamed as she flew toward the bench. She lowered her head and tried to prepare for
the blow. A grunt escaped as her head and wounded knees crashed into the shelves under the
bench. She tried to catch her breath, not knowing what was coming next, but wanting to be
ready for it. She gave another short scream as she was pulled backwards quickly. The chair
was spun hard, not stopping for a full minute. When it finally stopped she was facing the
other side of the room, watching her captor ascend the stairs.
She released her held breath gratefully. Again,
she tried to pull her arms up, tried to lean forward, or even tug her legs out from under
the chair. As before, it was useless. He had tied the knots very tight and even had
intertwined the rope to connect her arms, legs and chest with the same rope. Each time she
tried to tug her arms up, the rope would tighten around her legs and her chest. Her head
rolled down to rest on her chest as she finally allowed herself to relax.
She didn't have the strength to look around the cellar anymore. She had done so too many
times. It felt so hopeless. Nothing in her twelve years could ever have prepared her for
this nightmare. She had been in this room for at least a week trying to convince a madman
that she was alive. She was cold, hungry, and terrified. At least the man had enough good
sense to feed her. Although, she wasn’t sure stuffing a tube down a person’s
throat could be called feeding. She winced just thinking about the procedure, praying to
God that she wouldn’t have to go through that again.
She was sure that he wouldn’t be back for at
least a few hours. The first time he had left, she had screamed herself hoarse to no
avail. She had gone over every second of her imprisonment in the trunk of the man's car in
her mind after that. She searched her memory for some familiar sound that could give her a
clue as to where she was now. Again, it was futile. The car had been a newer car, and well
insulated. Before he took her out of the car, he had placed a smelly rag over
her mouth and nose. She couldn’t remember anything after that. The next thing she
remembered was waking up in this accursed basement, tied up like a rag doll. She let her
entire body relax as she thought about her plight. As she did, she felt one of her
sneakers move just a tiny bit. She froze for a moment, not even daring to breathe. Slowly,
she tried to move that foot. Abruptly, the foot slipped free of the rope and fell to the
floor. Her heart raced with sudden elation. Desperately, she renewed her struggle to
escape. The ropes eased a little bit, but not enough for much more movement. New tears
leaked down her face as she cried with relief.
She flexed her free foot, trying to relive the cramps that now racked her body. She pushed
her toe against the floor quickly. The sneaker simply slid along the dirty floor. She
screamed with frustration. I am so close! She
thought to herself. She tried again, this time slowly and steadily.
It was a very slow process. The chair refused to
move in a straight line, wanting to inch left or right each time. She was not too
concerned with that. The workbench stretched to cover most of one wall. She knew that she
would be able to pull her way toward the knife no matter where she eventually landed.
The light coming through the slits near the ceiling grew darker and darker as she
struggled. She listened intently as she moved; terrified that she may hear the unseen door
open. She didn’t even want to think what he might do if he saw that she had succeeded
in moving herself.
By the time she reached the bench, it was almost completely dark. She yelled ecstatically
when she finally reached the bench. The chair had skirted her target a bit, but she knew
that she would be able to reach it. Her arms were tied nearer to her elbow, so she had
enough wrist movement to grasp the nearest shelf. She stopped to rest for a moment. The
trek across the room had been a tense one and she was very tired.
Slowly, she pulled herself toward the roll of
tape. The light was darker now, so it was more difficult then ever to distinguish the tape
from the other shadows. She focused all of her strength in her struggle to move.
It was better then she thought. It was a small key-chain razor knife. She remembered her
father using a knife like this to slice through a rug in the living room, back when her
life made sense. The plan she had been contemplating was suddenly becoming real to her.
Just to make sure, she tried to reach her bonds with the knife. As she had feared, the
knife was not long enough to reach the rope around her arm.
She didn't know if she could do it. She knew that she would never be able to prove to the
lunatic that held her that she was not a human machine. She knew that she would eventually
die in this filthy basement without ever walking free again.
She lowered her head as she thought, her eyes
searching the darkness for an answer. She finally resigned herself to what she knew she
must do. She carefully turned the knife around so the point pressed against her wrist. She
knew what she had to do.
She held the point of the knife against her wrist and pushed the release with her thumb as
hard as she could. The point slid through her skin much easier then she had expected. Her
whole arm warmed with exquisite pain. She almost lost her grip as her hand spasmed with
the tremendous pain.
Her blood spattered on the dirty floor and leaked down her arm and leg. Her initial punch
did not puncture the vein she had wanted to cut, so now she had to attempt to maneuver the
blade around to make the slice she had been hoping for.
Before finding her vein, she pushed herself away from the bench as hard as she could. She
turned the chair as far as she could to face the door. She couldn’t see the door, but
she was pretty sure what direction it was in.
She bent her wrist back as far as she could to continue in her exertion. Her arm
had become almost numb by now from the pain. She could barely feel the blade as it rested
inside her arm. When she twisted the blade, a renewed jolt of pain raced up her strained
arm.
She gave one strong push and felt the knife stubbornly slice through the obstruction. It
was the vein. She felt the tight string move through her arm as it bent away from the
knife before it snapped open.
A flood of warm blood gushed from the open wound, splattering forcefully on the floor
beneath her. It hit her legs, making her flinch from the uncomfortable feeling of warm
blood. It cooled quickly and started to dry, pulling the small hairs of her leg together.
The rhythm of her heart was betrayed by the
regular pump of blood from her arm. Slowly, her arm became cold and numb. The feeling
groped up her arm as time when on. She slumped her head forward, giving up any fight she
had left in her. She silently and fervently hoped that her torturer would not return for a
while. She didn't want to offer him any hope of reviving her.
Her shoulders and arms began to cramp from the cold. She felt as if she were wrapped in a
cold blanket of ice. She began to shiver violently before becoming still again.
He came to the door of his little hideaway quietly. He was sure that he would be able to
get the little runt to admit that she was a machine. He could tell by her perfectly blonde
hair and her perfectly formed limbs that she could never have spawned her so called
parents. They thought they were so smart with their little creation. So proud were they,
that they even had put on the charade of spawning another child. He knew that the new
little one was a real human. The infant was so ugly, with the knobby, oversized head and
the ungainly limbs.
He was so caught up in his thoughts, that at
first, he didn't process what his eyes were showing him. His mouth dropped open as his
mind began to inform him what the eyes were recording. He saw the brat with her head
slumped forward. The restraints strained, as they were the only things that held her in
the chair. There was a dark pool of blood surrounding her in a wide circle on the floor, a
drop still hanging from her right arm. It had begun to congeal and was forming a skin over
the top.
A slow smile crept over his face. It had done the nasty thing that he had expected it to
do. Only a machine would have forfeited its existence to get out of an uncomfortable
situation. He skirted the sticky mess to get to his worktable. He knew it was time to do
the disassembly. He was sure that he would find the mechanism that drove the brat in this
one. The others had been too well hidden, but he knew that after disassembly, this one
would reveal its secrets.
He drew on his gloves and his surgeon's gown and turned to his work. He loved this part.
copyright 2002 cindy mouchon