Divided

You

You are sitting in a chair, hands bound behind you. You're aware of everything, from the beads of sweat running down your face to the blood coursing through your veins, aided by a rapidly beating heart. You are aware of the twelve men next to you, aware of one of them praying quietly beside you, aware of your captors staring impassively at you like Judgment Day has come and they're about to cast you into fire.

Above all things, you're aware of the instinct in every living organism: to fight for life, to struggle and claw for it and hold on with every fiber of your being, because you're dangling off the cliff. You're right above the abyss. You can't let go, you won't let go. You'll fight with everything you have and even if they push you to the brink, you will say nothing.

You stare at them, take in the weapons and the straight-backed postures. They're young but already well-versed in this, unperturbed by the hatred in your eyes-- used to it, even. If one of them decided to shoot you right now, you're sure the others would look straight ahead, as still and unblinking as now. But as much as you're at their mercy, they're at yours too-- they need you and what you know. It's not a comforting thought but it does guarantee that they can't hurt you to the point where you can't respond. Getting secrets from an unconscious person is difficult.

A man walks into the room and even your captors grow still. He looks at each of your compatriots, the same way a cobra pins its prey with its gaze before it strikes. Your enemy nods to the man three chairs away, and your captors untie him. They take him away. You don't know how long he is gone, but when he returns, you let out a small, strangled cry. Bruises are starting to form in a sickening spectrum of colors all over his body, dried blood is crusted around his nose and mouth, and he cannot walk without help. He looks broken but the defiance in his eyes is clear: he didn't talk.

You see the pain he's in. You know it's only the beginning.

Well, here's the first part of this short story. I'm going to warn you now: I tried to tone down the violence without taking away from the story; this was originally written for English and I don't think my teacher wanted to read the equivalent of a script for a slasher movie. However, this story is violent.

I'm not going to ask you to vote. That's not really why I posted this. So if you want to, hey, great. But I'm not looking to win awards or anything. I just want feedback. Say anything you like- I won't be offended, and I need constructive criticism.