FlashFictionFriday or NaNoWriMo…

Ahh, November the month where thousands of writers, authors, and other people with pencil and paper strive to put a minimum of fifty thousand words down in hopes that someday it will be a book.  Yeah – so in between revising, editing, etc. I’m trying to write a book in November.  Instead of the usual FlashFiction I thought I’d torture you with a bit of the manuscript completely unedited.

This story idea started with a prompt from a writer friend/colleague Jon C. Cook so it’s his fault that I’m writing scifi!

Three times per week.  Three times per week they would come and feed her.  There was water everyday if you could call it that.  Brown in color it had a slight sulfuric smell and a bitter aftertaste.

The cell Rene now sat in was devoid of natural light, almond colored cement walls and ancient floor tiles that had been cleaned so frequently the pattern was worn off.  The thin grout lines were the only differentiation in the tiles.

Rene was slowly going insane, fighting it, fighting the panic but she was afraid she was losing the battle.

If only she hadn’t yelled.  If only she hadn’t agreed to come.  If only she hadn’t gotten sick.  If only she hadn’t survived.  If only…

Eight times twelve is ninety-six, she repeated in her mind.  Ninety-six square feet is enough for one human being to live in.  The cot only took up twelve square feet.  She had eighty-four square feet to live in.  It was enough.  Except it wasn’t.  Even as she counted the squares again to assure herself the walls weren’t closing in, it didn’t help.

She threw her body against the door and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Let me out, you bastards!  You can’t keep me here.  I want to go home!”

Her pleas were ignored but that didn’t stop her from throwing her cot against the door.  This small cell had been her prison for nine days.  She did math, soothing her brain into focusing on something other than the confining space. Nine days equaled two hundred and sixteen hours, divided by eighty-four square feet.  For every foot of space she had lived almost two and a half hours.

She attempted to find other math problems to do, anything to keep her mind off of the walls in a tepid cream color that mocked her.  The light, at least, didn’t flicker or hum but it wasn’t enough.  It wasn’t sunlight, not real sunlight.  She needed sunlight, more than that she needed air.

“If you don’t let me out I’ll kill myself!”  She screamed as she grabbed the cot and began to try and break it in earnest.  If she could get the legs to break off she might have something sharp enough to slit her neck.  Wrists would take too long to bleed out and she couldn’t handle being enclosed in this tomb any longer.

She didn’t notice the door open, all of her attention was focused on bending the leg away from the base.  Strong hands came around her and then her shoulder stung with a prick.  The light was gone now.  Her eyes closed, she could only feel her body being moved.

“Outside, please.” She tried to speak but her body didn’t cooperate.

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