Treated

Chapter 1

Thirteen pairs of beady eyes were all locked on me as I entered the room.   A bony wrist motioned me over to the last seat, the one at the head of the table, and I slumped down into the seat.  The fourteen of us sat in silence.  If I had superpowers, I'd like to be invisible now.   This was probably the most awkward moment of my life, my life of misery.

         I'd spent all (well almost all) of my fourteen years kidnapped.  It happened when I was a baby, too small and innocent to understand anything going on in the damp warehouse that became my home.  A dark skinned man had me, and many other children of all ages chained to a moldy wall on the far side of the building, where it was pitch black, and smelled of blood.  Once every few days he’d splash a bucket of water in our direction, or inject us with something that made you feel week and delirious.  It was probably drugs, but I was never too sure.  Plus, I was too weak to even to think about that possibility.   If you were able to come up with enough strength to fight back, you’d end up being whacked with a mace of some sort.  You would think that in 2050 people would have more sophisticated weapons. 

    The only reason why they didn’t kill me or any other children was that we were used as poker chips.  Almost every day for twenty years groups of men would come in and bet one which one of us would die first.  And on the twentieth “anniversary” of the place, they decided to try something new.  If you died, the winning bidder could keep your carcass.  I had reached my breaking point, so I slowly pretended like my health was deteriorating, and a few days later someone bet on me.  It was my only hope of getting out of there alive- I had to play dead.  With a loud thud, I did my best to slowly faint, and flicker my eyes shut.

“Bruce, it’s dead!”  A deep voice echoed though the warehouse.

    That was when the first gunshot sounded.  With all of the energy left in me, I let out the loudest scream I could.  A  S.W.A.T team beat down a door, and the light illuminated the warehouse.  I tried to run, but only fell, and suffered a concussion because the chains were still attached. 

    When I woke up I was in a hospital surrounded by crying people who I later learned were my family.  It turned out that the warehouse had been under investigation of being the home of a makeshift dog-fighting arena. The man who “bet” on me was actually an undercover police officer who wanted to investigate the building so he could come up with the best plan to send in the S.W.A.T. team.  Once the S.W.A.T. team came in, they airlifted all of the children to the hospital, and were able to make contact with their families.  Most of the children died shortly after being brought to the hospital of infection, or malnutrition. After I made a full recovery, I was flown back to Florida with my old family, where I was the subject of the local news for three weeks.

“Hope, sweetie are you okay? You’ve been daydreaming for quite a while. We thought it was best not to interrupt you, b-because w-wwe know you’ve be-been though s-so mu-“ My mother’s voice slowly trailed off, and she burst into tears, and so did I.  She ran into another room and I trailed behind her.

    Through the tears I told her the story of my life.