Room 93 (FIRST DRAFT)

Day 13

The metallic grey ceiling shimmers slightly in the brightening room. I clench my arms and curl up, my body in a fetal position. I haven't been able to sleep all night. Every time I manage to close my eyes I remember the last two deaths. I see them before my eyes as if they were imprinted on my eye lids. I shiver as the memory of their lifeless bodies possesses me. I could be next after Darren. I could be me. Or Eric or Samantha. I could be any of us. It will be one of us.

Samantha didn't sleep either. She sat in the corner with Darren trying to calm him. I'm not sure whether she was doing it for his sake or hers. She could be trying to distract herself. She remembers the deaths too. I can see it in her face as she attempts a casual conversation with Darren.

The others have dotted themselves across the room, making use of the space we can have away from one another. The memories of yesterday surfacing in our minds. After narrowly escaping being crushed we hid in silence in the warehouse. Astra - being the most productive - attempted to open the trap door into the other room but failed. The wall had moved all the way up to the back wall so it was impossible to move it. After that Laya, Eric and Astra fell asleep. Maggie moved over to sit with me but eventually she too drifted off. The silence after that was eerie but I got used to it. Now the noise of people starting to wake is frustrating me and giving me a headache.

I rush over to the pile and search for some stale bread. I nibble slowly at it while the others slowly regain consciousness from their long sleep. My eyes are sore from lack of sleep and crying but I merely rub them before hiding myself with in the pile of bottled water and food. The piece of bread disappears before I have properly registered that I was eating it and I force myself to take another piece of bread. It does nothing to cure the hollowness of my stomach but it relaxes me and takes my mind of Alexia's hung body.

'Maggie,' Samantha whispers across the room. My ears prick up in alert but I remain still within the heap of food. I watch Samantha crawl carefully over to a waking Maggie on her hands and knees.
'What do you want Samantha?' Maggie replies grumpily, evidently not fully awake yet,
'It's the toilet. We have all been peeing in the mini room that is attached to this room since day one. It was fine before but now it stinks, badly. We can't stay here much longer! We are slowly going insane at the sight of one number or one twitch. The smell of our unwashed bodies was bad enough, but this? This is sickening!' Samantha frowns and almost shouts in her fit of rage.
'You know there's nothing we can do Samantha. Astra tried to leave yesterday but it's too hard, we can't force the wall to move back, it is staying there for as long as it is kept there by whoever put us in here.' Maggie sighs. Her words hiss between her clenched teeth.
'Or whatever,' I hear Samantha mutter quietly under her breath as she crawls back to Darren, who is sobbing into his grey shirt.

Samantha is right. The smells of 'the toilet' - if you can call it that - is overwhelming us. It is almost three times as stuffy down hear and the stench of unwashed kids, sweat from our narrow escape and the toilet is choking us. My body craves clean fresh air more than ever now. We need a bathroom with a working bath and flushing toilet.

Carefully, I stumble back to the corner furthest away from the toilet and curl up once more. I can feel the strain of my muscles as I compress my body into a small fetal position and fix my gaze on the wall. My eyes flutter shut and I slowly feel myself falling into empty space, with nothing their to stop me from losing my failing grip on reality.

***

Fire crackles in the back ground and singing drifts in from the open window. I watch the naked flames dancing in the fire place. They curl round the logs and spread gently over each one devouring it. It shimmers wonderful colours and I shift closer, reaching a cold hand out before it so it may warm me with its burning breath.

The singing from the neighbours house stops abruptly as the clock on the mantle piece chime twelve o'clock.
'Happy birthday, me.' I mutter to myself. The sound of fireworks bang in the distance and I stand up slowly and hook my elbow over the window sill. When I stand on my tippy toes I can see all the way out across the front yard to the other houses. To the houses where the mummy's and daddy's and children sing.

The snow spirals across the window, pillowing on the front yard grass and forming small layers of white on the window ledges.

Mummy isn't home yet but she will be soon so I close my diary that is laid beside the fire. I pull the arm chair across the room and in front of the fire. It makes the floor boards creak and whine as the weight shifts from plank to plank. I hop on top of it and peer over the top of the marble piece so I am looking at a tall China vase filled with month old, dead tulips I bought for her. I stow the pencil in a china vase and sigh at the state of the dead flowers. The other children ask me how to write all the time at school. They don't understand why I am so good at writing. I don't even understand anymore. I guess I just taught myself at home.

I drag the huge pale green arm chair across the room and back beside the couch so mummy will never notice. Mummy will be mad if she sees I am still up, even if it is New Years Eve (or now New Year's Day). Making sure the floor boards don't creak I dash up stairs and stumble into bed. Pulling the covers around my body, I listen carefully for the sound of mummy coming home. I listen for what feels like hours before I hear the tell tale jingle of keys and violent swearing from downstairs.

'Elizabeth!' She shouts in a sing song voice. I remain silent and fake sleep, 'Lizzy,' she pauses, 'I'm coming to get you!!!!!' This normally made me squeal with laughter but something about her voice made me think that she wasn't going to tickle me when she caught me. I stay still, laying in the darkness, as I listen to her ever nearing footsteps as she ascends the creaky stairs towards my room. My heart throbs in my chest and adrenaline pumps through me as I wait like a sitting duck. The door squeals open and the footsteps cease as she sees me lying in bed. I cannot see her as I have my back turned to her in my bed and my eyes squeezed shut but I can still imagine the evil on her face as she sees me. I feel her cold hand grabs my ankle and I kick it off. She cackles and pulls harder. I scream and pull at her arm.
'Mummy! Stop!' I scream at her but she just grin wider,
'You've been being a naughty little girl! You're just as pathetic and worthless as your father! Writing all the time won't make you rich, that was a lesson your page tic excuse for a father had to learn and now it appears you do to!' She drags me out my room and I manage to swing one leg free. I kick her arms and legs and anything I can till she releases me with an agonising yelp. I notice her nose is bleeding and I realise I must've kicked her in the face. She stumbles back and I dash to the stairs. My foot slips on a large glass wine bottle that was left at the top of the stairs carelessly by mummy. I fall forwards into the darkness dread embracing me. My head comes into contact first. It hits the corner of the blunt wooden stair case. My head throbs as I topple down each part of my bruising and breaking each time it comes into contact with the stairs. Gravity works against me as my weight pulls me down, cracking my legs with a dull painful hit. My head reaches the foot of the long staircase first. I hear mummy's shouts fading into the back ground as I finally, mercifully fall unconscious.

***

I sit up, panting and sobbing. I feel for my head where I hit it in the dream. There is no sign of a lump or a break. Tears clean my dirty face as the salty water dribbles down pathetically. It felt so real, as if I was really there. It reminded me of when I dreamt about us before the room. The stillness and the memory of the pain still fills my mind.

I look around the room and crease my eye brows in confusion. I could have sworn I had fallen asleep in the warehouse but now I was somewhere else. A glass floored room looking down into another dark room that I recognised as the room we were usually in. Room 93.

Eric and Astra stir beside me, their blinking eyes examining the new location. Quickly taking in the situation, Astra rises and rushes over to a snoring Maggie and Laya. I follow her with my eyes and notice Samantha who seems to have been awake for a long time. She is pacing back and forth across the room muttering. I draw my gaze the the ground and stare for a few seconds at the pulsing darkness below. Something was below the glass in there. The glass looked lighter than normal glass, probably tainted white so it was only visible as glass from this room, not the other room. I stare more ferociously into the darkness until my eyes focus on the moving figure. The person. Darren.