Inevitable Agony

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

Hopelessly, they held fast to that rule. There was only one door, one way out, but the screams were on the other side. It was a game, one of torment, and they knew that, so they cowered away from the door.

They had known they were trapped within the first seconds of being thrown into that room, the only rule to ensure their survival being to stay away from their only escape. One of them had started for the door, insisting that it was all a ploy, but then the screaming started. Screaming and the sound of something else, something horrible. Gnawing and salivating.

What they couldn’t yet know was there was no way to really win, only two ways to die. They were food for this monster, the monster that the researchers tried desperately to keep contained. Their cruel attempt to cover up the catastrophe of their own making. The researchers had mistaken science for religion and played a little too close to God’s domain, and now they damned innocents to be bait, to be food.

No one locked in that adjacent room knew what they were facing, not until the end. Sometimes, the sacrifices would waste away in the side room, starving themselves and withering away. Those ones were smarter. Because the thing in the other room did not care to make death quick.

But most of them couldn’t let themselves starve on the filthy ground. They chose an uncertain death over one they knew would be agony. It was the wrong choice, but one they couldn’t be faulted for. Because those trembling human creatures had no idea what they would meet when they turned that rusting handle. They didn’t know that I was waiting for them.