The Encroacher's Trilogy: Dystopia (COMPLETED)

Chapter 17

Aldo was the first to charge.
He growled with such aggression that drool and saliva spilled over his gum- while Wilma on the other hand just attacked. My first instinct was to support Aldo, but then it came to me that this was his battle that needed to be fought on his own.
Instead, I ran past the two duelling dogs and searched the prison cells for my mother. I felt the bald man attempt to grip my shoulder to stop me, when suddenly he grunted in surprise and let go. I turned to my saviour and found Avery giving him a restraint.
"Go!" I looked the restraint up and down and felt my eyebrow rise.
"My dad's a police officer. He taught me this restraint and I winged it with one arm!"
He gleamed with pride and returned his concentration to the struggling man.

The hallway was narrow and made of a pitch black marble. My first instinct was that I was in the wrong corridor because it was too posh to be a prison- but then I heard the cries of prisoners rattling their doors to be freed.
"Mother?" I cried, trying to ignore the catcalls from the drunken prisoners.
"Mother!" I quickened my pace down the corridor, hoping beyond hope she was only asleep.
"Noah?" I ventured as an alternative- and that's when I heard him scream.
"Noah! Oh god, Noah!" He screamed again, and this time it was louder. He was close.
"Where the hell are you?" I screamed, running out of patience. Another scream was heard, and this time it was right in front of me. I looked up and saw a huge steel door with a small glass-viewing window. It was around 12 feet high and 4 feet wide, with the viewing window half way up the door. There was also a stainless steel border with huge bolt screws. Beneath the door was a normal, human sized keypad (like the pin machines I saw in pictures of supermarkets) next to it, which allowed entry inside the cell. Although the size of the door was overwhelming, that wasn't the thing that bothered me.

It was the thought of why such a big door was trapping such a young person.

***

I climbed the bolts on the door as if I were a child climbing the furniture in the snug room. My hands were clammy with fear and I slipped, grazing my knee on the metal. The prisoners must've been watching me, for when I slipped they laughed. Eventually I made it to the viewing window. When I looked in, I almost fell.
Noah.

He was bound to a chair with wires attached to his head. Every 2 minutes, the wires ignited with a spark and Noah cried out in pain. This was no electric chair. This was a trauma chair.

***

The trauma chair was what the bald man used to threaten me with when I was misbehaving.
He enjoyed talking me through the extreme details of how the wires attached to the head picked out what the victim feared the most and how the chair used these fears against them.
For example, it could have drawn an image of my mother and shown her in terminal pain, or perhaps an image of Noah being tortured for simply being my friend.
These examples were only the mild extremities of what it could do.

Even the bald man himself was too afraid to speak of the worst it could do.

***

Looking through that window, the only thought I could muster was that Noah was given the extreme treatment. This was because he told me his family had to keep a low profile and Ailis told me he was captured. The chair was his punishment.
I pummelled the window with deranged fists; but nothing happened.
I knocked, banged and punched the glass but the most it did was shiver.
I screamed at the top of my lungs.
I had only ever screamed that loud when my mother was taken away from me at the age of 6, and I swore I would keep that anger hidden.

It took me 9 years to control it.

***

With all hope gone, I climbed down the door and fell to the floor in distress.
Noah was inside being tortured, my mother was nowhere to be found, Ailis was on the floor fighting her leg, Avery against the bald man, Aldo against Wilma and I couldn't even get a bloody door open.

I began to cry.

I cried, and cried, and cried, while ignoring the drunken prisoner's' insults and mocking sympathy.
It seemed like I had been there for hours waiting for some miracle to lead me to my mother- when I heard it. The laughter.
It seemed familiar... so familiar I had to wrack my brains to remember.
It was cold... a woman's laugh... heartless... merciless...

The woman in the shackles.

It all came back to me.
The recollection suddenly came back to me."I will find you and kill you! How could you?"
It was the nightmare on the day before my birthday. The nightmare that was coming to life.
I stood up and slyly approached the laughing. It was coming from my left- another hallway of sheer black marble. I tiptoed down the hallway with my fists at the ready. The laughing ceased and a voice emerged.
"Flora, do you have any courtesy for your elders?" The voice turned toward me, and I stopped and stood still in the shadows.
"Do you honestly think you could save Noah?" She laughed her merciless laugh.
"That wretched thing... how can his parents be so powerful yet he has company such as you? Tut, tut. Something is very wrong there isn't it?"
"Who are you?" I said with surprising confidence.
"Who am I? Well, well, well! This is embarrassing is it not? You've figured everything else out but not who I am! I am ashamed Noah has even learnt your name."
"Who are you?" I asked again, this time taking a step forward and out of the shadows.
"I'll leave that one for you to figure out yourself my dear."
"Why are you doing this to my mother?"
"Tut, tut, Valerie she is a nosy one isn't she? You haven't taught her very well...." She tipped her head up and snorted- exactly the way the bald man did.
"Do you know the bald man?" I said rudely,
"The bald man? Why you insolent little- of course I know him. Why, I'm surprised he hasn't told you about me!"
"Why would he?"
"Why would he? Why- would he? Dear, dear, I think you need a time out." She opened the prison door and cuffed me on the neck. She forced me to the ground and bound cold shackles to my wrists. Once finished, she gave me an irksome grin identical to the bald man's and she turned on her heel out of the door.
"Flora..." Mother put a gnarled hand on my arm. Until that door closed she was hidden in the darkness. When she said my name, she leant into the small strip of light coming from outside and I writhed in horror from her face.

Noah wasn't the only one who had been tortured.