Anna

//Chapter One//

There Anna sat, shivering in the small, confined space. She sobbed silently and prayed to any and every kind of greater being. She looked around her, through her tear filled eyes. There was nothing. Nothing but the metal chair screwed into the ground that she sat on. Anna felt as if she was in a meat locker and was a piece of livestock to be eaten within the week. She asked herself why. Just why. No other words followed. She just wanted to know something. Anything that would bring back some of all her lost sanity.

Somewhere between ten o' clock and midnight, Anna heard an unsettling sound. It was unidentifiable, but she knew for certain, that it was not good. The strange noise came again, but closer this time. Anna gasped as a steady rhythm of the sound echoed in her ears. She was engulfed in the eerie sound, and she didn't like it one bit. Fear washed over her trembling body. She didn't know what was there and she didn't want to find out. She pulled at her knotted hair in fright, strands falling to the ground or into her hand.

She put her palms over her ears and pushed tight, trying to drown out the horrible sound, but it just kept getting louder. Anna felt as though she had gone completely insane. That's what places like this does to people. It makes them go insane. She told herself over and over that it will all be over soon. But after ten minutes of never ending sound, she lost it. She screamed as loud as she could. It was bloodcurdling. The heavy steel door in front of her opened.

No one was on the other side of that door. The hall was pitch black and all there was, was the noise. All of the noise. It was surrounding her. She screamed once again, her voice getting hoarse, but she kept screaming in hope that the noise would stop. But it never ceased. Not even for a moment. Anna fell to the ground, smashing her knees on the hard floor. She removed her hands from her ears and started hitting the floor repeatedly. She felt the pain in her knuckles, but kept slamming them against the cold surface. Still screaming, now for multiple reasons, including pain, she felt her hands lose all feeling. Yet, there was still pain.

She lifted her hands and held them in front of her tear stained face. They were battered and most certainly broken. They were bleeding and throbbing. Anna smiled. The noise had stopped. The lights had returned in the hall and the metal door was closed. She sat back on the chair staring at her mangled hands. She stayed like that for the next hour or so, and then the metal door opened. She looked up alarmed.

The shadow of a man stood in the place of the door. The man wore a fedora and a trench coat, which both of them he took off. The man walked toward her and knelt in front of where she sat. "Anna," He whispered. "What have you done to yourself? Why have you done this?" Tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked into Anna's bloodshot eyes.

"I had to make it stop. It wouldn't go away." Anna said hoarsely, looking at the man in curiosity.

"Make what stop darling?" He asked in a concerned voice. Anna took a shaky breath and looked into his eyes. She gasped to see that they were black. So black that she could see her own frightening reflection.

"Get away from me!" She screamed with whatever voice she had left. She pushed him with her mutilated hands and ran past him out the door. She ran down the never ending hall, the exit getting farther and farther away. Her vision became tunneled, her arms were yanked backwards and she went limp.

Two men in white scrubs held up her feeble body. One of the men had an empty syringe in one of his hands. He had injected her with a strong sedative that acted much like an elephant tranquilizer. The men practically dragged her body into a white, padded room. She was laid down on a white cot with a single white pillow. The men left the room and closed the door.

Anna woke up in excruciating pain. Her hands looked like ground up meat. The men hadn't bothered to bandage nor clean them one bit. She wanted to scream, but no sound came out. She tried saying her own name, and nothing came out. The only thing she could utter was ragged breathing. She remembered the black eyed man, and just thinking about him made her blood run cold. She was petrified that he would come for her again and she didn't even know what he wanted. Anna stood and paced around the small, white, padded room, becoming more paranoid by the second.

She thought back to the god awful pandemonium that had attacked her ears. She wondered if anyone else had heard it. She wondered what it was. She panicked at the thought that no one else had heard it, or rather that it was all in her head. That made her think that maybe the black eyed man was also in her head. That it was all imaginary. Which made her think that maybe she had been drugged or poisoned to make her see these things and bash her hands against the floor. Which made her think that maybe she wasn't drugged but possessed and that's why she didn't stop hitting her hands. Which made her think that maybe she should stop thinking.

Anna decided to focus on her injured hands. She couldn't do much with them, mostly because with every movement, pain followed. Even without movement, pain followed. So she just looked at them and prayed just like she had before it all happened. Anna remembered a prayer from church when she was little that her pastor prayed to try and heal her mother and recited it.

I pray that my discomforts will turn to comforts, my pains to gains, my deprivation to more blessings, my losses to profits, my tear to smiles, my sorrows to pleasures, my illness to wellness, my debts to credits and my dreams to realities. Amen.

And with that Anna laid back down on the cot and closed her swollen eyes and begged for comfort and sleep.