Phantom Eye

Chapter 1

Ice cold metal straps, hell fire hot branding iron sizzling on skin. Torture. Anastasia was being tortured awake, again. Sleep was fleeting now, but what was now? Days? Months? Years? How do you know when you can't see the light or the dark in a bunkered underground, pitch black room. Was the room pitch black? Or is it a blindfold?

How does she know? She can't. Ana's screams are muffled by fabric shoved in her mouth. She barely ate, and even that was torture, sometimes they would stuff scalding hot food into her mouth and force it shut, or half-drown her with water. They would talk to each other and laugh as they tested new things on her.

Conversations between the two men were usually fleeting, and they rarely spoke to her other than to taunt her, but today was different, again. "Anastasia," taunted the 'brains of the operation', it seemed he had seen a missing flyer or something about her on the news, so she must've been there for a while, "I'm curious." Dread poured into her. Curiosity was bad, it means trying something new.

"I came back from the lab today with some experimental liquids. How much do you treasure your eyesight?"

Ana tried to scream, she tried to struggle against the restraints, but she was a malnourished child, who had never worked out a day in her life. Suddenly, there was light. Blindfold, her question had been answered, but not in a way she would like. It blinded her, it was bright, in stark contrast to the nothingness she had been experiencing.

Squinting and wincing in pain, attempting to return to the darkness, her right eye was pulled open, to stare right at a tall scrawny man she had never seen before, he wasn't one of the men who took her, but she recognised his voice, was any of the torture actually done by the two men at the start? She was immediately confused to what he was doing, until she saw a needle coming towards her eye.

"Don't move, or this will hurt," the horrifying man chuckled at her expense. The sharp needle broke the surface, making her want to blink but his fingers held her eye open. Immediately, a stinging, burning sensation began in her eye as he injected something into it.

Poison.

Anastasia's thought process was simple, he was going to kill her in the hardest way possible, in the most vile way possible, in a way that would cause her pain until the very end.

She needle left her eye, but soon the blackness clouded over, she couldn't see on the right half of her face, making her panic. "Oh pity, your eye clouded over, I always did think they were the most beautiful shade of blue, but now its grey, oh well," the devil chimed in his tormenting sing-song voice. Ana turned her head to him, and stared at him with her remaining eye. "You are truly the son of Satan," she whispered to him, and the creature had the audacity to blush.

"Oh how kind of you, you are such a delight," he chimed back, as if she had complimented him, instead of insulting him.

A sharp whistling sound came off him as he moved around the room, picking up objects and bringing them to the metal tray beside the bed. "I have a few things I want to try, they shouldn't become visible like the first, so don't move your head because else you'll lose your eye. Completely," he seemed short of breath, as if he was so excited that he couldn't regulate his breathing.

Ana's eye was held open once again, and a slight popping sound echoed around the room as another needle went in. "Now, this one will temporarily colour your eye, but it's fine, don't worry about it. It might bring back your sight, I don't know, I've never tested it, you'll be the first," he announced this as if Ana should feel gracious for the ability to be the first one he tests this on.

The pain is unbearable, 4 injections into her eye, none restoring her sight, one made her want to scratch her eye out, and she willingly would've if her wrists weren't clasped to the metal contraption below her. Bones broken and reset into awkward angles.

The lack of sunlight and vitamins had made her skin a ghostly white, her freckles and spots becoming more and more apparent in contrast. She knew she was no longer the Anastasia she was when she was brought to this place, and she knew that god had abandoned her. What little she believed in him, no longer existed.

"Anastasia!"

The voice.

So familiar.

Yet so unusual.

"Anastasia," the voice was crying now, and she could make out clearly who it was, it was the man who had been experimenting on her all this time, but he sounded different, weird. Like he was dying. "Anastasia, my experiments, they are almost complete, I won't make it for much longer, I must do this one last thing and I will free you."

She could hear dripping, blood dripping. He had been injured somehow. Good. Anastasia could feel no sympathy for him, after all that he had done to her. She felt him grip her arm with all his strength, and a long, wide needle stabbed into her elbow, releasing the most painful liquid into her blood stream, it burned, it ate at her insides, it was tearing her apart.

Who's screaming?

She had separated herself from her body, and felt oddly at peace, although she knew that the screaming was her. Shaking hands forced the key into the cuffs around her neck, wrists, and ankles. She was free, but she couldn't move, she couldn't do anything. Her head was searing in pain, her mind was going blank.

Why?