Chapter 14: In a dungeon, of course.
A dark space. A space dark. The worst punishment. Isolation. Deprivation of your
humanity. A chair in the middle of a black void. A dim night light flickered above me, being my sole guiding light. Handcuffed to the legs of a chair. Deafening silence. Annoying silence that left a ringing in my ears. I could scream. I could call out for people, but my words wouldn’t come out. They left my mouth more quiet than a mouse’s whisper. Time didn’t pass here. Time? How long had it been? 30 minutes? 30 hours? 30 days? 30 years? Who knows? After a while, you fall asleep and all time melts into one: Darkness.
And yet, a small star dimly glowed in the corner of my now dormant brain. A small
spark of hope, hoping that someone would come to let me out. But not after long, even that spark died too. No one would help me, no one would let me out. Even the other members of the Society soon faded from my mind, my head going blank. Thoughts slipped away, and I dipped back into sleep. There would be no help here.
When I awoke after what felt like years, the guard said that food was ready. A plate of
meat mush and rotten vegetables. I wondered how long that had sat out, but not hard
enough because the hunger kicked in. Before I had realized how disgusting it was, it was
already gone. I had devoured it. Two hours later, I was hurling in a dark corner. The guards
took the plate back and left me there to suffer. After another indeterminate amount of time, I woke up. I opened my eyes and when I realized my chair was about to fall over. When it finally tipped, I yelped out. Suddenly I realized that the sound had reverberated. Sound!
I hadn’t even heard myself say thank you to the guard before. I managed to wiggle
my way out of the ropes that bound me. It seems that they had been worn out by the chair’s fall. I scurried to the door. It was locked with a key card. I looked around the dark room. Something I hadn’t noticed before was the glint in the corner. It had come from where I had vomited an unknown amount of time ago. I ran over to the clump. Still stinking, I plugged my nose and searched. A panel had turned green. Displayed on the screen was the phrase, “Prerequisites met. Emergency keycard request granted.” And a hole in the wall had opened, revealing the key. It seemed like it had been activated using liquids. How I had not noticed before, I’ll never know. I hurriedly grabbed the keycard and sprinted to the door.
Swiiiip… beep beep beep beep…. beep beeeep. bee-woop! Click!
The door burst open. I ran out and unlocked the doors to the Society’s cells as well. Kris slumped over and asked if it was over. Rose cried in happiness. Ruby stormed out and
said, “Back to work, my friends.” The moment we escaped from the guard exit, we noticed
the windows. It was sunrise. We saw the clock/calendar and noticed something else. We had been down there two days. After making it up to the great hall, we were berated by hundreds of kids, asking where we’d been. And at the head of it all, stuffing microphones and cameras into our face, was the newspaper club. We were famous.
Chapter 15: Practically celebrities, in fact.
After escaping the room, dazed and reacclimating to the light, we were bombarded
and berated with hundreds of kids clamoring to know what had happened. The school’s
newspaper club (wait, we had a newspaper club?) had snapped at least a thousand photos
since we’d made it to the Great Hall. We were covering our eyes and waving people away.
Everyone surely had questions, especially that pesky newspaper club.
“Where did you come from?”
“Why has no one seen you in three days?”
“Why are all 8 of you together? Do you know each other?”
“Comment please for the school newspaper!”
“Can I get your pictures and names please?”
We shook most of the crowd, and by the time we had made it to most of our dorms,
we separated, tired from the experience we had just went through. I fell onto my bed and
grabbed my little radio. I flipped through the channels until I found a good one. Chill jazz
drifted across the room.
Twenty minutes later, the door flew open. Apparently, Winter had helped everyone else back to their rooms. She also sat on her bed without a word. After about 2 hours, Eva walked in with a book titled “Te Amo: The Most Passionate Mythological Lovers!”
It was bright pink and red, with the title encapsulated in a big heart. How boring. She started humming loudly. Without a considerate thought, she spoke so loudly it might as well have been screaming.
“Oooh!! They’re about to kiiiiissss… wanna hear???” She said it like a 12 year old.
You would think teenagers would be more mature than this. She shoved the book in my face to showcase the illustration of the man and woman kissing romantically. I slapped the book away, annoyed that she ruined my rest.
Winter shot her the same, “What the heck!?” look. I pushed her back onto her bed. She sighed and went back to humming.
“Quit it with the humming, Eva!” I’d never heard Winter raise her voice to scold
someone before. She was also clearly upset. Offended, Eva stormed off and exclaimed
loudly that she would be at the library. When I finally dozed off, it was 3pm… and into sleep I sank… peaceful, calm sleep… free… rest…
(to be continued)