Panic Room

The last thing she remembered was a sweet sickly smell. After that... nothing. her head throbbed painfully as she tried to stand up, and her throat felt like the Sahara desert. She kept stumbling, as the room was dark. Eventually, her eyes grew accustomed to the blackness. She felt her whole body sag. She was completely alone. There was nothing apart from her in that room. Fear started building up inside her as she realised that there was no way to escape. The door was locked, and there were no windows she could climb through.

The girl missed human contact. If she had nothing to focus on for any longer, she was sure that she would start to go insane.

When the door opened, instead of her running to it in hopes of making it through it, the girl fled to the far corner of the room, cowering away from the light that burned through her eyes. In the doorway, stood a man. With every step that he took towards her, the girl shrank deeper and deeper into her body, so by the time that he was merely centimetres away, she was curled up tightly in a ball.

“Be prepared.”

The door slammed shut. The girl was confused with what he had said. What did it mean? Why did he say it? So many questions ran through her head, but she knew that there would be no answer to any of them.

She woke to the sound of gushing. Her eyes pinged open, and a startled expression overcame her face. She got up and curiously walked over to where the sound was coming from. The liquid seemed to have been coming through the crack in the door. Was it water? She dipped her index finger into the unknown substance, and brought it up to her nose. She sniffed. Definitely not water. Reeling back from the liquid, a sick feeling began to rise up within her. It was blood.

Her breaths became more rapid and shallower. Her heart was hammering against her chest. The blood rushed towards her. It wouldn’t stop. More and more was coming, and soon it started to flow around her ankles. Nausea built up and up as the blood reached her chest. She was now swimming in it. Sure she was going to drown in it, she cried for help, but none came. She struggled to keep her head above the blood, and as she began to sink down, she couldn’t believe that it would end so soon. But then it stopped. It was as if a plug had been pulled. By the time it had all gone, you wouldn’t even have known that it had even happened.

She crumbled to her knees. Tears flowed from her eyes, and she felt shaken. Why was this happening to her? She was thankful it had stopped. But it hadn’t stopped for long.

THUD. Her head whipped round to where she thought she heard the sound. Scrambling around, she let out a little shriek. She had put her hand on a needle. All the breath escaped from her. ​A needle.

As more and more made their way into the room, it was becoming impossible to dodge them. They were pricking at her body, each one going deeper in than the one before. To begin with, they had no liquid in them, but the more painful ones did. They were drugging her, but they didn’t make the process quick enough. She could feel the syringe being pushed into her body, and the drug making its way into her blood. She cried out one last time before the exhaustion won, and she crumpled to the floor.

Circus music. Stupid, stupid circus music. For her, when circus music was near, terror wasn’t far away either.

A tap on her shoulder. A breath on her neck. She spun around and screamed. Lights were blinking on and off. She could see the menacing eyes, the painted white skin. The creepy grin that was permanently fixed. The insane laugh was all she needed to hear to feel that fear that somehow felt different. It sent a shiver down her spine. This fear paralysed her, turning her into a statue. Clowns appeared out of thin air. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. The tensity of her body, the clenched fists, the dizziness were too much for her. The creatures advanced towards her, trapping her in a corner. She closed her eyes, willing them to disappear. When she opened them, they were gone.

The relief brought her body down to the floor. She didn’t have the strength to stand. The tears came once again, and they stopped when it felt like she had cried all the water out of her body. She just wanted everything to stop.

Her eyes opened. She was in a different room. It was bigger than the last one, but still quite small, holding only a hospital bed, a bedside table, and a wardrobe. Confused, she rubbed her throbbing head, and wandered over to the window. There was nothing much to see except a narrow road leading to a farm. The knock on her door went unnoticed. A nurse with a notebook came in, and asked for her to sit down on the bed. The girl silently obeyed her, too tired to ask any questions.

Days like that one crawled by, and with every passing hour, she felt more broken. Her hair hung limply and greasily just past her shoulders, and her face was paler than a ghost’s. Her appetite lessoned until she began only eating once a day, and even then it was a small amount forced down her throat to keep her alive. Sometimes she slept all day, others she would stare out of her window, hopelessly. On one particular day, she just lay on top of her duvet, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t move when the nurse brought in two other women, nor when she heard them say that she was ready.

Once the women had left, the nurse made the girl stand up and told her to go downstairs. The girl reached the bottom and stared at the nearby door that led to the outside world. Her hand

grabbed the doorknob and opened the door. The gravel hurt her feet as she stood outside barefoot. She walked towards the farm, not looking back once at the house that had been her home for the past couple of weeks. Knocking on the wooden door to the main farmhouse, for the first time in what felt like forever, she wished that she would get help. The door opened and the girl shrieked. The house had let out a load of blood that was gushing towards her. She stumbled backwards and ran away as quickly as she could from the house.

She had nowhere to go. She had no place in mind, just away from the blood. As she passed people in the street, she had no idea why they weren’t running from the blood as well. She knew she couldn’t run for any longer. Exhaustion was eating away at her, and her entire body ached. She fell and waited for the time she would wake in yet another different place.

Dr Jason had a new case. This one he was familiar with. Cases like these were very popular over the past three years. He sighed and opened the door to the new girl’s room.

Her top teeth found her bottom lip. Brows furrowed and eyes moving skittishly around the room made you see the worry in her mind. The way she held herself, hunched forwards, afraid to let herself be comfortable, and left leg bouncing up and down rapidly, gave off warning signals in your head. But you would never do anything. Her hands never knew where to place themselves. It made you want to grab them and force them to be still, but you knew you could never do that. It was clear how broken she was. Self-isolation was the first major action she made. You could tell by the way she always flinched when someone went near her. She was a stranger to human contact. But that had happened ages ago. Now you could see how she barely even knew herself anymore. How little she cared about herself. The bags under her eyes were more like suitcases, and they had been for a while. There was a distance in her eyes, along with tiredness and loneliness. If she heard her name, then she would look up frantically, desperate to know if she was being talked about. Or maybe she wanted to be talked ​to​ instead. Did she want help? You couldn’t know. It was rare when a sound escaped her. You would be so surprised when no one helped her. Wasn’t it obvious that she needed it? But then you never dared to talk to her. Were you too scared to? Were you too scared that she would fly off the deep end? Were you too scared that she might have been crazy? Or could you just not be bothered? Because let me tell you something. She was far more terrified of you, than you were of her.