There was a hole in the corner that smelled really bad. I think it was supposed to be the toilet. Nothing even resembling a bed was anywhere in the cell.

One light bulb on the ceiling illuminated the room. The light was bright white. It flickered at on intervals. After a while of staring at it I started to think maybe somebody was trying to send me signals.

I don’t know how long I was in the cell. Hours? Days? Every so often they brought me food. It was in these silver bags. It tasted metallically and awful.

Just when I was about to go nuts my cell door opened.

It was two guards. They wore full body armor like the police except theirs was grey. They didn’t have food, one of them was holding a hose. The blast of cold water knocked me back against the wall. Here’s a question, does rust have a smell? Because I could swear my holding cell smells like rust. The walls ceiling and floor were all made of metal, it was all reddish brown.

They turned off the hose. One of them picked up my cold limp, body off the floor. He dragged me along like a ragdoll.

I was strapped into this appliance dolly. It was the thing you put serial killers into in movies. The straps were so tight I could even turn my head.

The guards pushed me down the hallway. As we went down the hallway I noticed the cell doors where the same rusty brown as their interiors.

The hallway was colored a light grassy green with a white strip running across the walls. I thought about the orphanage where I grew up. The walls there were colored a much darker shade of green. I’m not sure what you’d call it, forest? To be honest I’m not sure if I’d rather be back there. I think that says a lot more about the orphanage than this place.

We eventually reached a big metal door that looked like it was built to resist a bomb. The door began to open slowly.

On the other side of the metal door was two other nearly identical looking guards in grey body armor. The guards greeted each other and exchanged dirty jokes.

The other guards exited the metal doors and started down the hall. In between them they were dragging some guy. He was slumped over and completely limp. He was skinny and anemic looking with pale skin and dark black hair. He looked like a ghost.

We went through the metal doors.

“Yo doc,” One of the guards holding me said. “We got a fresh one for ya.”

“Thank you,” I heard a voice say. “Just leave him there for me will you?”

“Okay doc.”

The two guards left my sight. I heard their footsteps getting softer.

“It’s good you came along when you did,” the voice said. “I think I will need a new one. My other test subject is...nearly gone...used up.”

I couldn’t make out the speaker. He was just on my peripheral vision. I heard the rumble of papers underfoot. The floor was covered in papers and stacks of books. Drawers were open and closed. I think I heard him mumble something about a light.

The room was full of machines that didn’t seem to have any desirable purpose. A row of counters on the wall full of vials of boiling chemicals. Shelves full of jars of dead things in vinegar.

He walked across the room to one of the counters. He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lite with one of the fires underneath the chemicals. I got a better look at him. He wore a white lab coat, black gloves and large goggles. His hair was gray and frayed.

Goggles leaned back his head and let out a puff of smoke. He turned towards me.

“I’d offer you a chair but…” he said but just kinda trailed off. “Yes.”

I got a better look at his face. It was old and wrinkled. His eye sockets were sunken and nearly black. It looked like he hadn’t slept since he was my age. Generally speaking he’s the weird old guy you avoid at the supermarket.

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Mad scientist man got uncomfortably close to me. Like he was really violating my personal space. And yes I know that’s a petty thing to complain about again given my circumstances. I have a thing about my person space okay?

Dr. Crazy person blew smoke in my face.

“Are you familiar with evolutionary biology?”

I didn’t know with that was a rhetorical question so I said nothing. He turned away from me.

“People used to have incredible power at their disposal; flying, shapeshifting and mind control.”

I coughed.

“Yeah I was told those stories too,” I said. “They used to read us Grimm's Fairy Tales to us before we went to bed.”

Doc Cray Cray flung his arms in the air. His movements were spastic and violent.

“No! Not stories! I’m talking about evolutionary fact!”

If this was a normal social situation this was the point in the conversation where you’d smile and start to make your way to the door. You know, that part where you realize that the person you're talking to is crazy?

I didn’t have this option because as I said previously, I’m strapped into a fucking dolly. Also I kinda knew this guy was crazy from the get go, so this didn’t come as too much of a surprise.

“What I’m trying to do here will revolutionize science and fundamentally change what we think about the universe…”

Scientist man was shouting now.

Just as he was going about how they all laughed at him at school but now he would show them all, I decided to speak up again.

"So, where exactly am I?"

He stopped. He grinned widely, it was not a nice grin. Crazy hair walked towards me. He put his hands on my face, it was not a good touch. He tilted back his head and cackled. Stranger danger, somebody call an adult please.

“Such naivete...I think we’re going have some fun.”

I remember being strapped into various machines with wires going into my body. I remember flashing lights and chemical smells. There was a near constant hum in the background, it sounded like an air conditioner.

But mostly I remember the pain. Brief but intense moments of sharp pain broken up by large periods of dull but persistent pain.

I don’t remember specifics, everything just kinda blurs together like a fever dream. I drifted in and out of consciousness. It was like I was trying to wake up but failing. The next thing I know I was being dragged down the hall by two guards, I don’t know if it was the same from before. My clothes were drenched in my own vomit and piss.

I blacked out. I woke up in my cell. My entire body was sour. I dry heaved for a bit, I guess I didn’t have anything left to throw up.

There was a vent on the wall, cold air blew from it. I crawled over to it and but my face in front of the vent. I closed my eyes and pretended it was the breeze. I wasn’t here, I was some place else. I was in any place else.

A voice snapped me out of my flashback.

“Who's there?” I said.

“You can’t let them know that they’ve gotten to you,” the voice said. It seemed to be coming from the vent. The voice was barely audible. It sounded like static formed into words.

“Who are you?”

There was a long pause. Just when I thought that I hallucinated the voice, I heard it answer.

“My name is Vlad.” Another pause, shorter this time. “What’s yours?”

“Ward...you can call me Ward.”

“Hello Ward,” the voice seemed to crackle as it talked. “I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”

I laughed. Wasn’t that a line from some movies? I couldn’t remember. The laughter started a coughing fit.

“You and me both,” I said, spitting up blood.

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I think I blacked out at some point.

So that's how it continued for I don’t know how long. It was probably weeks but it felt like months. Guards would take me to a torture session with Doctor Spaz, then they dump my near dead body back in my cell. While in my cell I’d have a little chat session with Vlad through the vent.

Vlad and I mostly talked about the kinda stuff you talk about when you're not locked up in a secret government blacksite. I think we were both trying to play pretend. I never did learn why he got locked up.

Sleep didn’t provide much rest. I don’t want to be one of those people who tells you about their stupid dreams but I was seeing some pretty weird crap. This wasn’t your garden variety ‘I’m late for work and can only run in place’ or some vague sense of dread and nonsensical imagery. No, this was something different.

At first it was the bats, swarms of them, largest I’ve ever seen and I was in the middle. Sometimes it was the moon, it started to turn red like somebody was bleeding on it. Then there was the ones of this guy dressed in all black sitting on a throne, looking bored, with piercing red eyes. The last one I say thin big ugly mother that was like seven feet tall and had leather skin with tattered wings coming out of his back. I think he smiled at me, with rows of jagged teeth.

I had this feeling that I lot of this was due to whatever the Bad Doctor was doing to me. I wasn't sure how much more of this I could take.

I saw the girl from the Wafflehouse in this...nightmare?

The guards lead me from my cell. They stopped strapping me to the dolly thing because they learned I wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

When we were walking down the hall was when I noticed her. Two other guards were leading her down the hall coming the other direction. She had brown hair and brown eyes. Her face was covered in freckles. She looked a couple of years older than me.

It wasn’t her appearance, it was the way she made me feel. Not romantically, although she was attractive, but there was something wrong with her. Like something about here made the lizard part of my brain freakout. I felt afraid of her for no good reason. So yeah, mixed feelings.