Deck of Cards

Day 10- Ava

Seven of clubs-left alone for 6-7 hours

Ava's POV

It would be easy to go insane in the cell, to go completely mad. But plotting and resenting gave me other things to focus on other than being in the situation. I knew whatever they threw at me wouldn't do any harm. I didn't even really care about the cards but I knew I had to turn them over to stay alive. I needed to stay alive. It was the seven of clubs, my father really hadn't thought the whole 'involving me in the game' thing through. The whole concept of the seven was all about the fear of the unknown. I already knew what was happening.

The guard would come and read out the card but not say anything, the girl would then be placed in a sack and left for x amount of hours- it was supposed to make them think that they had been left somewhere and nobody was coming back. However, there was no escape so the girl couldn't get out, leaving her to think that she would die a long, painfully slow death. But the fact that I knew this did not stop me shaking slightly when my guard came to the door, the knowledge I had wouldn't suffice for all the mental tricks they would play.

I didn't even notice where we were going till we passed the front door, if only I could just run to it and sprint out I thought to myself as I was pushed forward. We were going out to the back garden, one of them anyway. There were five, I never knew why until now. One for each girl. Before being led out, I was blindfolded and gagged. It was uncomfortable but manageable. I felt the familiar grass on my bare feet as we stepped out, nostalgia swept over me like a raincloud. The long blades of grass were slightly wet and caressed my toes, tickling them ever so slightly. The more we walked, the more pressure I felt inside. Why was I so nervous?

I felt the coarse material of the bag under my feet and my guard's strong arms pushing me down into a squat position. Instead I knelt down, knowing that it would be more comfortable. Slowly, I felt claustrophobia take control of me as the bag was pulled up and tightened at the top. Faintly, I could hear my guard mutter 'goodbye' before he walked away. Trying to remain calm, I told myself that it would only be six to seven hours before they came back however they would probably be horrible and wait a bit longer so nobody could count the seconds. All I could see was darkness and that terrified me, I had never liked the dark. I didn't find it comforting.

I suppose if I was less panicked, I could have began plotting my escape but I knew that I couldn't even string together a sentence let alone a master plan. I felt like everything was crushing down on me. I knew there were holes for air in the bag but I felt like there was a short supply of oxygen, like I couldn't take too much.

I wouldn't start thrashing about- it would only cause entertainment for them. But about thirty minutes in, I decided that kneeling hurt too much so I rocked back and forth till I toppled over into a laying position; it lessened the overwhelming feelings but not much. I knew they would be laughing from the comfort of the garden steps.

When I was younger I used to laugh at this activity, it was one of the only ones I would see because it was in my window's view. I used to call them dancing bags, I had no real concept of who was inside or the hell they were going through. As an older girl, I used to get annoyed by them; I would always murmur things like 'lie down and wait' or 'stop shouting and conserve your energy'. I never thought that I would be the subject of that ridicule. I was a dancing bag.

I would have cried if I wasn't trying so hard to be strong, to show defiance. I wanted to show my father that he couldn't break me, that I knew more than him. My father would be beaten, I would be sure of it. He seemed to be forgetting that we shared the same DNA, evil masterminds ran in the family. He was really stupid with his choices, he should have known better. Why use a girl who would destroy it all?

All this thought of home made my brain think of the other girls in the other gardens, they must have been petrified. Home must have been a constant on their minds. I tried to recall some of the names that my father had been talking about, but by the age of fifteen I had given up caring about the game really. A Jemma maybe and a Susan? He picked the girls very selectively, only choosing ones that he knew would be fun to watch slowly die. At the start it was random, in dad's early days. He would take any random five girls. Later on he only chose runaways. It was very different in the early days.

In the early days, he said he kept them all in the same cell, but he realised soon that they were giving each other the strength to survive and he feared mutiny. He was the only one playing the game at first, just him down in the basement with five girls but soon more men joined. By the time I was born, there were one hundred members of my father's society although only twenty enforcers. On my 15th birthday there were three hundred elite members, one hundred were enforcers at the mansion and the rest would watch via Skype. The hundred enforcers weren't really needed but dad liked to have more just in case. He had been speaking of cranking it up to ten girls. I shuddered at the thought of more girls having to face the horrors. In that bag on that day I vowed that no more girls would be taken by his iron grasp.

Iron isn't indestructible.