Rising Water

Wake up.

This was the first thought in my head. It’s not exactly the sort of thing one thinks upon first waking and the strangeness lured me out of unconsciousness, pulling me from the depths of oblivion up toward the surface. It was bright up there though, and I didn’t want to go. The first thing I saw was a concrete wall awash in dim, bluish fluorescence. There was a deep rumbling sound under my head, and a draft.

My cheek hurt and as I lifted my head, I looked down to see the cold, unforgiving thing I’d been enjoying as a pillow was a black metal grate. I can’t explain why that wasn’t immediately confusing. I think my brain was trying to rationalize it, so I didn’t have a panic attack. Did I get drunk and fall asleep in some alley?

My head hurt a lot now that I was fully conscious. I brought my hand to my scalp quickly to check for blood. Negative. There was a ringing in my ear. It was making me hear things that weren’t real, like a woman calling out to me.

Grunting with effort I sat upright, shifting my back to rest against the freezing dark grey wall to catch my breath from the exertion. The air smelled subterranean, like a cave. And there was a humidity...no that’s not right, a dampness to the environment, like mist. I finally took stock of my surroundings. Where the hell am I?

I didn’t even want to check but I did. My hand brushed over my abdomen and to my relief, I didn’t find any stitches. Okay, so I wasn’t kidnapped and harvested for my organs. So why was I there? There were three walls completely made of concrete. The imposter wall to my right was made of some thick glass.

This is when I heard the smack, so loud I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whipped my head toward the glass wall to see a woman, how I hadn’t noticed her at first, I couldn’t say. She was banging on the wall now with feverish rapidity, her voice barely audible. I quickly scurried over to the glass, my heart pounding. Her eyes were white with terror, her brown hair was greasy and clung to her sharp features.

“What? I can’t understand what you’re saying! Please I can’t hear you!” I yelled as loud as I could.

She buried her face in her hands and shook her head.

“Hey, hey, look at me! It’s okay…we’re okay. Listen, my name is-”

An electric shock jolted through my body. I was on the ground before I even knew how I ended up there. The next time I awoke, the woman was kneeling on her side of the glass, calling out to me. I sat up slowly, stretching out my limbs.

“Girl! Hey, girl! Are you ok?” Her worried voice came through synthetically, like it was being filtered through some sort of grainy speaker.

“What the fuck?” I gasped as a few tendons in my arm began twitching.

“I don’t think you can say anything about yourself, or they’ll hurt you.”

“I don’t understand…who…who’s going to…?” I couldn’t think straight.

“My name is Ellen.” She offered. I waited for her to get zapped.

She shrugged. “They won’t hurt me; I don't know why though so don't ask.”

I took a more careful glance at my companion. She was forty, if she was a day. Her soiled white cotton dress draped over a less than intimidating figure. She had no bruising so far as I could see but was clearly not a fresh captive.

“How long have you been here?”

“I think you should rest a bit...”

I interrupted in frustration. “How long have you been here?”

“A few months…maybe more. I don’t know.”

A few months?

“I’m sorry I scared you before. There just hasn’t been anyone…for so long.”

I couldn’t imagine so I didn’t. I thought of her eyes and the shock she must have felt, that in my own panic I had misconstrued as terror, that she was not alone for the first time in who knew how long.

“Do you know how you got here?” I ventured cautiously as I limped over to the glass barrier between us.

She took a deep breath, “I don’t. I try to, believe me I do, but I always draw a blank. I was sitting at home reading, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I was here.”

“But surely,” I pressed in desperation, “You must have seen someone, I mean how are you eating? Drinking? Do you have any enemies, anyone who would want to do this to you?”

She shook her head in resignation.

“No, there’s no one. The food and water show up through a slot in the door, there.”

She indicated with a bony finger past my shoulder into my cell, and when I followed her gaze, I saw the outline of a door carved out of the concrete, and at the bottom there was a small rectangular outline with no hinges.

“They never open the doors. I never see anyone…but the food still comes. I don’t think it’s drugged, just boring. They don’t have a chef on staff I guess.” She said, almost drily.

I turned to look at her, catching the faintest hint of laughter in her dark eyes. I stood up shakily, my breath ragged, heart rate rising.

“No…no… I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here!” My voice was rising, and I couldn’t stop it.

“Keep your voice down!” She hissed, urgently.

“Let me out!” I felt myself screaming. I began banging on the glass, slamming my body into it.

The woman sighed and stepped away from me and the glass I was assaulting. She went to her far wall, sitting down.

“It won’t break. I’ve tried everything.”

“I haven’t.” I snapped, slamming my shoulder against the glass again.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

I went to the far wall and took a running start at the glass. Just as I reached it, a red glow cast over the room accompanied by a loud, angry buzzer. I startled and stopped dead in my tracks.

“What is that?” I demanded nervously.

The woman looked toward the lights and explained calmly, “A warning. The colors mean things, but I haven’t figured out all of them, or how many there are. Green means food is coming. Blue is neutral. That’s where you want to be.” She seemed embarrassed to know the rules. To have to live by them at all and be at the mercy of these lights and their whims. I felt my anger rising.

I scanned the room quickly, letting my eyes trail upwards until I saw it. High up on the wall, tucked into an inconspicuous corner, was a little black dome. There you are.

“They’re watching us.” I whispered to myself. I said it again, louder and toward the other room.

She only nodded. “Always.”

“But what do they want?”

“If they tell you, let me know.”

I couldn’t take her apathy anymore and slapped the glass. “How can you just sit there?!”

She got up in an instant. “Do you have any idea what it is like to wake up in a room alone and fester in your own filth for weeks before they even give you so much as a fucking bar of soap? To have to beg for scraps of bread like a dog and wander around doing nothing for months? I laid down on cold concrete day after day watching that bed in there lay empty, taunting me. It was sick. You don’t think I tried everything? Don’t you dare sit there and judge me!”

“Ellen…” My breath felt short.

Her brow furrowed in confusion at my widening eyes. “What?”

I swallowed and pointed behind her. She slowly turned and our eyes met at the same spot on her floor, where water had begun to trickle out from the black grate on her floor.

She gasped. “What? What is that? What is that?”

She backed up against the glass. “Oh my god...No, no, no! What did I do?!”

My mouth hung open in shock. I wanted to speak but the words wouldn’t come.

She rushed sobbing to tug at the door handle that wouldn’t budge. She slammed her hands against the metal.

“Help! Somebody! Please! HELP ME!” The rising water began to lap at her feet as it submerged her room another few inches.

She froze. “Oh my god!”

I snapped out of my horrified paralysis. “Ellen! Hey! Look at me it’s gonna be okay!”

She rounded on me in furious terror, tears streaking her face. “Don’t fucking lie to me!”

We were helpless. The water rose past her ankles, her waist, and finally she was desperately trying to keep herself afloat. She sputtered and coughed as water snuck into her lungs. My fists were bloody from slamming against the glass, but it made no difference. Her kicking legs fluttered helplessly as the water reached her neck.

“I-I don’t think I can do this much longer. The water is going over my head.” She called out weakly.

I shook my head vehemently. “NO! We can figure this out! Don’t give up! There has to be something- “

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No…I'm sorry...I-I'm so tired.” With that she exhaled and slipped under.

I slapped my hand against the glass. “No! Stop!”

I could only watch as her room was turned into a grotesque aquarium, it’s only occupant a pale, lifeless corpse shimmering in caustic beams of light.

I slumped against the glass, sobbing violently.

She was the first.

It could have been months, days, weeks, I didn’t know. The only thing I knew was that they were always replaced.

It didn’t matter who was on the other side of the glass. Male, female, young, old. The water still came, slow and cruel through that grate. Eventually I stopped looking. I would curl up on my sleep pad facing the wall while I listened to their hands thumping against the glass as their muffled, panicked cries and angry shouting tore through me. I’m sorry.

The human mind can only take so much. Everyone has their breaking point. Mine was the sound of that tank. Draining slowly down the grate over and over again.

I bolted out of bed, stared directly into the camera on the high wall and screamed.

“ENOUGH! I’ll do it! I’ll do anything you want! Please... I can’t take this anymore.”

No sooner had the words left my mouth than the light turned green and a buzzing noise indicated the door was unlocked. I turned slowly as a tall man in a suit with silver-streaked black hair stepped into my cell. He twirled a fountain pen between his fingers lazily.

"You?!"

“It’s been a long time Ivy. You certainly made yourself scarce. Ready to come back to work?”

I shook with repressed rage. “Just give me the goddamn book.”

He procured a small leatherbound black book and held it out. Snatching it from him, I gave the list of marks a once-over. So many names...

I narrowed my eyes in defeat. “And the money?”

He nodded. “Twenty thousand is being wired to your account as we speak.”

I gestured wildly around me. “And this? He did all of this because I wanted to live my own goddamn life?”

He gave me a quizzical look. “You still want one? Even after all this time? Fascinating.”

As he turned away, he swiped a droplet of water racing down the side of the tank and hummed in curiosity. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it was like? Getting to watch?”

“Drop dead.”

He grinned and kept walking, though he did call over his shoulder, “Keep us informed Ivy, I don’t think he’ll be so forgiving next time.”

Neither would I.