They Chose Me (Draft 1)

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

                The officials drag someone out of the second helicopter I wasn’t in. I’ve never seen this person before, so it’s not like they were personally trying to torture me. Yet. It’s hard to describe the man from where I’m standing; he could be twenty or fifty. He’s being dragged on his knees and I start to notice the poor state he’s in. Scars travel along his arms, legs, and face with dried blood lining the cuts like sidewalks on a road. My mouth hangs down and it feels like my mind might be somewhere else too. They whack him with the butt of the gun and he struggles not to crumple.

                I run. It’s probably not the best choice, but I cannot watch someone being hurt. It might be a lasting scar of watching my mom and sister’s death- even if I didn’t directly see it. For a ten-year-old’s mind, it was pretty traumatizing. And by pretty traumatizing, I mean very traumatizing. I kick the official in the back that hit the unfortunate man, and not hearing me run behind him, I shock him enough and he falls.

                “Stop!” I yell at them. I don’t know what I’m doing. I won’t be able to do much anyway, since my hands are still handcuffed.

The officials just look at me. Some with sneers, which I want to hit right off their faces. The official from the woods arrogantly smirks. His arrogance frustrates me so much. He takes the bloody wrist of the man and drags him away from the direction they were headed in- which, by the way, was to a little room with a door. I’m assuming a staircase is in there.

                The official keeps dragging him further, past the helicopters, and to the edge. Oh my gosh, he’s not going to do that, he can’t, I think to myself aggravatingly. In a blink, the official makes the man stand on his knees. He doesn’t even have enough energy to do that and he falls to the ground, his forearms supporting. I’m surprised they don’t have any officials around me because they should suspect me to run. Again.

                So I do run towards the two before I see the official push the pitiable man off the ledge. My steps falter and I just stand there. I want to push the official off the ledge, but one thing I’m not is murderer. The official turns around to see me standing there, my body rigid with what feels like every possible tension. He smiles heartlessly, a warped person like melted metal, controllable under the fingertips of workers in a foundry. Rage boils inside of me and I want to free it, but I have no idea what to expect from this imprisonment, so I want to behave. No promises.

                An official that guided me to the helicopters beckons me over. I walk leisurely toward them. They lead me across the rooftop to the small staircase room and another official opens the door to bring me down the stairs. The room I enter has a staircase leading down, of course, and it has plain drab walls and floors with a dank feeling to the room. Once at the bottom of the stairs, there’s another door opening up to two hallways. Some of the officials go down the left one while some bring me down the right. I try to keep track of my surroundings and hallways, but every section of the hallways we go down have more hallways leading off of them. I trail them into an elevator at the end of the hall. The elevator brings us down a few stories only to spit us out again.

                We keep going a little further, past the same scenery that has now occupied my mind. When I go to sleep, if I do, the image in my mind will be these ongoing walls. But then again, I did see someone get pushed off a skyscraper. They stop at a door in front of me and someone takes out keys to unlock the door. That same someone accompanies me into the room. Same monotonous wall and floors. It’s a perfect square with the door we’re entering through in the right corner. On the opposite wall touching the ceiling is a small, thick window where partly cloudy sky watches me.