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SIENA 2
Opening my eyes, I wince at the pain that shoots up my back. Will this constant prodding ever end? “Siena?” I realize now that the whisper of my name is what woke me up. I start to turn my head, only to wince again as the pain intensifies. Shit, what did they do to me this time?
“Yes?” I’m not even sure if my voice was loud enough for Amber to hear me.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
I don’t know what to reply. Am I okay? I don’t even know how long I have been here for, how long they have been running tests on me. Damn ice-cream! If it wasn’t for my sweet tooth, they might never have picked me to kidnap.
“I don’t know.” I wish I knew what they wanted, and why they are doing all these tests on us. I feel like I have been here for months, but one day is pretty much like any other, and they seem to roll together. The good thing is that they should be leaving me alone for a while. I also know from experience that they won’t be giving me anything for the pain.
“What did they do this time?” The question comes from the other side of my glass cell from Liria, and as far as we know, the youngest among all of us. Liria is only eighteen, while I am twenty-six and Amber is twenty-nine.
“Something to… argh,” I whimper as I try to move, and the pain radiates right through me. When the pain starts to alleviate somewhat, I continue, “the pain is on my back, I don’t know what they did.”
“Maybe they did the same to you as they did to Daria. Remember? She had that metal mechanism placed on her spine,” Amber suggests, which has me squeezing my eyes tight. “Maybe try to feel with your hand if you can feel anything.”
There is no way that I am moving my arm, leg, or any other part of me at the moment, as the pain is excruciating. “Not now,” I whisper, taking in a breath to try to calm myself. If my muscles are relaxed, then the pain shouldn’t be so bad.
I hear Amber say something else, but I don’t pay attention as I try to relax my body, my mind wandering as I try to forget the pain and think of anything else but the horror of what I am living in this moment in my life. Just before I was taken, I booked to go to the hairdresser. I wanted a change, complaining constantly that my life was becoming monotonous. We as humans never appreciate what we have. It’s only when we lose it that we realize what we have lost.
I would give anything right now to go back to my empty little flat, my job as a personal assistant to the most demanding man I have ever met, and just live my monotonous life without all this pain and uncertainty of when they will decide to kill us off.
My parents must be worried about me, frantic to know what has happened to their daughter. I phone them every Friday without fail. How many Fridays has it been now without a call from me? I am sure they would have called the cops by now, but it will be to no avail, because one thing I know is that I am no longer in South Africa as they had us transported on a ship.
When I was brought here, there was another girl with me, but she isn’t in here where the rest of us are. Our cells are made of glass and only a couple of feet in width with a metal slab that works as our bed and toilet at the opposite side of the door.
At the beginning, going to the toilet with all the other women being able to watch me was a problem, but as time passed, we got used to it. Once every five days we are taken one at a time to shower, but otherwise, our entertainment is sitting in this glass cage looking at each other. There is nothing for us to do, no exercise to have except if we pace our cells, which are only a couple of feet each way.
There are eighteen women here at the moment, and some of them were already here when I came. There are others that came after me, but one thing we all know is that when they come for us, we might never come back. There have been at least three that haven’t made it back, three that we are certain that they have died while they do their experiments on us.
It’s clear that they don’t expect us to ever leave here, as most of the men that bring us food don’t wear face coverings. I have also noticed that they call us by numbers instead of names. At first, I used to scream and bitch as someone came into view, but as time passed, I realized that they didn’t pay us any attention.
When I was first kidnapped, I was scared, because being diabetic I was certain that once they found out they would either kill me or let me go. Instead, they kept me, and I sometimes wished for death instead of what they do to me. I thought that they were trafficking me into the sex trade, but I think this is much worse. These men and women are heartless. They do all these tests on us, without any type of anaesthetic, without any type of pain killers.
At the beginning they stopped giving me insulin until I nearly died, but then they started to inject me again. Why? Why would they want to keep me alive when they can just pick up other women somewhere?
“Siena!”
My name being called brings me back to the present—to the excruciating pain.
“Let me sleep.”
“Sorry, I’m just worried about you,” Amber says. She has told me about her life, about how they found her in a woman’s shelter. She has had a bad time of it. It’s unfair that when she finally thought that she was safe, these assholes kidnap her and make her suffer some more. I slowly start to turn my head; every inch of movement is like a knife stabbing into my back, but after what feels like hours, I am looking at Amber through the glass that separates our cells.
Her shoulder length, honey coloured hair is falling around her face, covering her pixie expression, and the scar that she has across her jaw and cheek. Her big blue eyes focused on me, a worried expression on her face. “It’s going to be okay. Just hang in there. Don’t give up, it’s going to be okay.” I don’t know if she is trying to convince me or herself.
“I’m so tired of these constant tests,” Liria murmurs.
“The best you can do is relax between what they do to you, try to heal, regain your strength, and hope that soon someone will come looking for us,” Anabelle says. She is one of the women that has been here the longest. Sometimes at night I hear her moan in pain, but she never shows her weakness to any of us.
“I would love to know before I die, what they are trying to accomplish with all these experiments they do on us?” Amber questions in a quiet voice, and I am sure it is something that every one of us would like to know. This is like being in prison but worse, at least in prison you get to go out into a courtyard—get to enjoy the weather.
In here, we don’t know if it’s raining or sunshine, and they give us the same food every day. I feel a tear slip down my cheek. I always think I have exhausted all my tears, but they manage to wring more out of me. I wish my gift hadn’t deserted me now. Ever since I was born, I could charge anything with electricity. While other people are scared of getting electrocuted, current does nothing to me. When my parents found out about my gift, they took me for various tests, nothing like the ones being done on us now. They told me at the time that I am like an electric conductor. I would gladly electrocute every person that has hurt us, every person that hasn’t done anything to help us when they knew what we are going through.
Now when I most need my gift, it has gone away. It has left me, like my life will eventually leave me too if I stay here much longer. All I know is that I can’t take much more of these experiments, I can’t take much more pain.
My back feels like I have a bar of metal entwined in my spine. Even if we ever got out of here, how would we be able to live in the real world? I’m sure that our bodies won’t survive for very long after everything we have gone through here. At least I have met some really great women, because even though most of the time we are all in pain, we support each other through the horrors that we are living.
