Cipher Code {complete}

Chapter Eighteen: The Fiancé •EDITED•

Midnight
October, Year 483
Unknown Location
North

Dawn had never wanted to spend her night tied to a metal table and reeking of what was probably an ancient form of gasoline, but here she was anyway, living the northern dream.

Her back ached and her nose itched, her charming cellmates were rats and cockroaches, and she had just witnessed the murder of a rat by a mutated roach.

It was the sweet life, the best room her father could afford, the stench of a rotting something—or someone—caressed the air with the tenderness of a jack hammer. And the soft high pitched squeaks of her companions were a symphony straight from the lips of the goddess of song.

The lights in the room were a steady shine of fading yellow—sometimes orange—on her face and Dawn could feel them burn as though the heated filaments were licking at her skin, limbs tortured by an invisible tongue of bewitching flame. She imagined the scalding metal slurping in delight as it tasted the reddened iron of her tortured flesh, but that was just the disposal system working away to dislodge the severed arm stuck in the drain, just beyond where her sight could reach.

She heard the nauseating crunch of shredded bone and really hoped that wasn't her arm. She hadn't been able to feel it for a while.

Distracting herself from the sickening thought, she forced her drunken mind to turn her gaze away from the scene and towards the gate—cell door? Whatever it was.

It kept her trapped, locked inside this room of misery for an indefinite amount of time—not that she could go anywhere when she couldn't distinctly feel anything below her neck. Peeping through the holes in the bars, she noticed the stern faced guards patrolling the outside of the room.

I'm so dangerous. Dawn giggled and looked away. Stupid guards, they should just let me go.

"Do you know who I am?" She wanted to shout—probably for the hundredth time—but her voice came out as a weak croak which caused a tinge of pink to filter through her cheeks.

Well, that was embarrassing.

She wheezed when she tried to fake a cough.

Dawn was feeling a tad sarcastic and somewhat confused, she blamed it on her spinning mind and whatever drug had been flushed into her veins to keep her asleep—or awake. She couldn't feel her face—or anything at all—and the feeling reminded her of the time when had to get a tooth removed.

Good old Dr Mark. She relished the memory of the evil doctor who all kids feared, the dentist, and the chair that everyone dreaded, that chair.

At the thought, a laugh bubbled up her throat, it was quiet and strangled. The sound brought the squeaking rats to silence and the scurrying roaches to a stop. Dawn assumed that they were in awe of her majesty.

"Thank you, thank you." She wished she could bow but unfortunately she was still stuck on the godforsaken table, she could have sworn that she saw the corpse of the murdered rat smile. She beamed back for a moment then frowned.

"I should really get out of here, I'm losing my mind—again!"

The realization hit her like a truck full of epiphanies. Once again she began to struggle and once again only her head was able to move. She had lost count of how many times this process had been repeated, a never ending cycle of remembering and forgetting and screaming.