His Little Ballerina- B. Barnes

Chapter 4: Valeriya

Some of them want to abuse you... Some of them want to get used by you.

~Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Emily Browning cover

The woman lead me through what I called the Asylum and into a small room with a metal table at the center. Cabinets stocked with who knows what lined two of the walls. A tray of instruments was right next to the table.

"Lie down." The woman demanded.

I obeyed, mostly out of fear. I didn't know what was happening, and I didn't think I wanted to.

"Are you gonna kill me?" I asked, my voice quivering. The disturbing atmosphere was creeping the hell out of me.

"That depends," she replied, "on whether or not you have the will to survive."

Don't cry Val. Don't cry. You'll get out of here.

But not even my own thoughts could comfort me. I was terrified beyond reason. Tears threatened me once again, but I did my best to simultaneously fight them back along with the urge to get up and run.

I was snapped from my thoughts when the door opened and revealed Madame B. She walked right up to me and placed her cold hand on my arm.

She pursed her lips into a sinister smile.

"Tell me what's going on." I demanded.

Madame B's smile widened. "If I told you, you wouldn't like it." She began to strap me onto the table.

"I don't care." I snapped. This got a laugh out of my teacher.

"Fine," she began and leaned down close to my ear to whisper, "we're going to rip you apart, piece by piece and sew you back together to create the perfect asset. There will be no escaping your fate." She reveled in her victory.

So this is where the girls went.

They were tortured and torn apart. Madame B. saw the immense fear in my eyes and laughed.

She laughed like it was normal to scare girls.

I swore on my life in that moment that the second I got out of there, I would walk right up to Madame B. and rip out her vocal chords, shove them back down her throat, and gouge her eyes out so that she would finally feel pain.

"I'll leave you to it." My teacher said before leaving me alone.

Her heels clicked on the filthy floor, and when the irritating sound stopped, the nameless woman began her task.

She quickly filled a vial with a strangely colored liquid and then mixed it with some chemical that had a ton of writing on the bottle, which I couldn't make out.

I swallowed what saliva hadn't dried up in my mouth.

This is it Val. It's gonna be okay... you're better than her...

Once again, I didn't feel any more confident I would make it out of this.

The woman walked up to me with a syringe in her hand.

"Wait," I began, "before you kill me, can you at least tell me your name?" I asked,trying to stall and gain more time. The woman hesitated, and I couldn't see her facial expression since her face was shielded by the mask.

"Tamara. And you?"

"Valeriya."

"That's pretty." She replied. "You do realize I have no choice, right?" She added. The pain of the needle penetrating my skin made me shift a little.

"I'm sorry." Was all I could say, I mean, what else was there to say?

"It'll be over soon, I promise. They don't need me to do much. She's just trying to scare you." Tamara continued, politely changing the subject.

"Well it worked." Talking to her made me relax a little. She injected something else into my body. The pain was amplified, and I clenched my fists. Tamara tapped the, saying, "Relax, or you'll make it worse."

I forced myself to relax, but the pain was still there.

The more that was injected into my veins, the more excruciatingly painful it became.

Tamara constantly told me to relax, but it was hard. On the sixth injection, I screamed.

My vision blurred and all I saw where shadows standing around me. Their figures reached out to me, and I reached back. I wasn't reaching far enough, and they began screaming my name.

"Valeriya! Valeriya! We need you!" They cried.

I was so close to grasping one of their disoriented hands, but something snapped, and the shadows lunged forward, engulfing me in a darkness.

............

"Valeriya?" A soft voice whispered.

My eyes struggled to open, and I found myself back in the sanctuary of the cell. A face loomed over me that wasn't of a shadow's, but of a man's.

"You're alive..." the soldier whispered.

"Of course I am," I groaned, "why wouldn't I be?"

"They dropped your body off in here. You looked like a corpse, and you weren't breathing." He continued, helping me sit up.

I wiped a few heads of sweat from my forehead. "How long was I...?"

The soldier sighed. "Two days."

My jaw dropped. "Wait seriously?"

The soldier sat back on his knees. "Do you really think I'd lie to you after they almost killed you? You're lucky that doctor stopped and recorded that you went through it all."

"How do you know what they do to the girls?"

"Because then they make me break them."

The silence I had grown used to returned, but this time it was aggravating. I lied back down and noticed the sudden throbbing in my head.

"Valeriya? Are you okay?" The soldier asked, his blue eyes full of concern.

"I'm fine." I lied.

He rolled his eyes and crawled over to me, feeling my forehead. "Well, at least you're not sick..." he muttered.

"I said I was fine," I shoved him away, "now just drop it, please."

The soldier sat back and looked at the door. I glanced at it and heard the familiar clicking of heels. "Oh you have got to be kidding me."

The soldier glared at me, warning me not to speak. I instantly pursed my lips into a thin line, praying that Madame B. didn't want to torture me again. To my disappointment, she opened my door.

"Glad to see you're awake, Valeriya." She looked me dead in the eye. She knew that Tamara had stopped early. She knew, and someone was going to pay the price.

After practically staring into my soul for an eternity, she turned her gaze to the soldier. "Soldat, come with me." She barked. "I'll be back for you later, Miss Villanova."

The soldier stood up, and followed my devil of a teacher like an obedient dog.

Once the door was shut, I curled up into a ball and accepted the peace and quiet. I wondered how long the soldier had been in here, watching me. Did he get dragged away like this yesterday? Was this regular for him?

Or maybe I got him in trouble. Maybe this was my fault.

I didn't want to see his fate. I didn't want to be responsible for anymore death.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option.