White Torture

"You are about to be subjected to White Torture for your crimes. You will be deprived of your freedom for the rest of your life. Value this time before your sentence begins, as soon you will be wishing you could remember it.”

Once those callous and hollow words echo away, the journey begins. Scraping against the ground, beaten, tired, you see your upcoming fate. A bunker hatch pries open, its mouth eagerly awaiting your arrival as it screeches in rusty delight. The inside of it is fit with an unlit light leaving the chasm beneath it dim and unknown. It gets closer and closer, bigger and bigger. It keeps grinning at you, watching you. Firm hands grasp you, rigidly refusing to allow even a moments respite. Stale air wafts up from its maw, a malignant sigh of impatience as it waits for insertion. You try to break free, try to escape. You can’t.

You are halfway in now. There has to be something, anything to stop this, to slow this down, but the more you struggle, the more pain you receive and eventually the shocking jolts become too much to endure. Numb and defeated, your sight is plunged into the murky mouth. After a moment of falling, you slam into the merciless floor, feeling a final tinge of sizzling agony resound through you. The journey is finished. Looking up, the light from the room above dwindles in time with the shrieking hatch’s howls. It’s over, your over. Darkness envelopes the world.

Breath hitches and lurches in and out giving no comfort. Hazy, hostile shapes curl around the room, bringing with them hints of untold horrors that lurk inside shut sockets. They stretch and saunter in the shadows, lingering in obscurity to toy with their newfound prey. Long have they waited for this moment, for the time when their captor could no longer banish them with the opening of the eyes. Nothing, not even twisting into the smallest heap possible soothes the mind. It continues to churn out terrible things in the void, like a fevered artist dipping a gnarled pen into bottomless swathes of ink. Skin rises in the cold, vacant abyss, making shivers rack the body to and fro. No air. It’s hard to breathe. Can’t take anymore. Need out. Out! Out! Out! Out out out out out out, out…out…out…

Inescapable. Blinding. How long has it been? Ten? Two? One? Even less? Will each moment be dragged on for eternity or will the time fly past faster and faster? Which is worse? Light, oh how much light is missed. The absence of is, wrong…this is not right, it’s not right. No one should live like this, no one can live like this…

Light, light! Finally light! Tears well and stream and fall, spattering on the ground with barely a sound. You look around, the momentary fluttering of joy dissipates as it is replaced with unwelcome clarity. The room, no, the cell, is spherical, circular. The walls and floor are made of the same material, something white, hard and uncomfortable. There is a small hole in the middle of the cell, too small to even stick a hand through it. Is it a toilet? Probably…gross.

There is no furniture, no tools, no rope, not even angles for that matter. And it’s quiet. Really quiet. So quiet in fact that any movement made is loud, disturbingly loud. Swallowing becomes repulsive after a while, but you can’t help but be hungry. How long has it been since you’ve eaten? You don’t remember.

What to do to pass the time…you trace the walls for imperfections, finding nothing, you whisper to yourself, sometimes songs to pass the time, sometimes just random ramblings, you look around and its all the same, all accept the hole. It is not easy to look at. It’s unnerving somehow, like it’s silently screaming that it’s dangerous. But there is not much else to do. In fact, it seems to draw vision towards it, towards the one imperfection in the cold white room. You stare at it.

Like a spider or snake ready to strike it stares back, warning you to stay away. So, you do, but it isn’t easy. The cell slopes into it, as if it is a drain in a sink. You shiver knowing that the only way to sleep is on the hole itself. How long can one stay awake? Not long enough. You look away trying to find something else to gaze at.

Food! Food comes from the hole it seems. When you weren’t looking, a white plate with rice on it showed up. What was weird was that it didn’t even make a sound when it came in. Strange. It’s bland, surprisingly bland even for unseasoned white rice. But you eat it anyway. Once the last grain of rice leaves the plate, the plate sinks silently down, bringing the hole back. Monotony follows this, and time fades as you stare at the hole again.

Your eyes droop. The light is aggravating, the ground is hard, the hole is creepy, the cell is too cold, and because of that it is damn near impossible to sleep. It doesn’t help that the food, which is soggy and watery, especially at the bottom of the plate, comes sporadically too. You know it does. After all there is sometimes when you are hungry and thirsty and nothing comes for a very, very long time, and then other times when you are almost full and completely sick of eating white rice and another plate shows up, just to spite you. You tried to save some to make a more stable eating schedule, but it just rolls back onto the plate eventually because of the shape of the cell. Using the toilet is almost as uncomfortable as sleeping. You don’t pee very often, and your excrement is difficult to release. On a more palatable subject, you try to keep yourself occupied by whispering to yourself, but the words are getting harder to remember. How did that song go again? What was that word? It’s…no…gah! You lost it.

The light is pain, the floor is pain, the food is plain, and it’s hard to keep sane. You swear you saw something move in your cell, but when you turn to look at it, there’s nothing. Are those footsteps? No, they can’t be…they can’t be. There haven’t been any footsteps yet, why would there be any now? Could it mean salvation, escape? No, they are too quiet, too…ah, what is that word again…? Never mind. They just don’t seem to be in a rush is all. Maybe the guards are just doing this to torment the prisoners. That must be it.

Keratin grows and when it falls away it takes with it memories and thoughts. What do people sound like? What do people look like? What is that noise? Stop ringing, stop the ringing! Stop it! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! STOP! Stop…stop…stop, make it stop just make it stop please please please please please…

Blood trickles down into the hole. So that’s what red looks like. It’s nice, it’s less nice when it starts to turn darker and stink.

There is less and less, but it keeps growing more and more. Need out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out…

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