Escapism

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Several moments before

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Several moments before...





Time didn't exist. Minutes morphed into hours. Hours felt like days. Every breath felt harder than the one before it, the air in the endless blankness of the four-walled prison seeming to have thinned out to nothing.

Taehyung awoke that day to the bright lights beaming overhead as he had the day before, and the day before that. And the day before that one as well. Sweat and tears pricked at his eyes and pores as he peeled his eyes open, only to let them fall closed again.

His head ached and his stomach turned from hunger and dehydration. His throat felt as if sandpaper had been dragged over it continuously as he slept.

It wasn't as if he were deprived. He'd eaten that night before. He was being fed regularly and given plenty of water. But it was never enough. It was as if every morsel and every drop of sustenance that went down his esophagus fell into someone else's stomach. Because Taehyung retained none of it, always being left empty and unfulfilled. Even his taste buds seemed to have fallen completely numb, the joy and comfort of flavor stripped completely from his senses.

His heartbeat felt heavy and labored in his chest, rattling against the bones of his ribs that were becoming more and more pronounced on his shirtless frame. His skin and hair had completely lost its luster, laying dull and limp against his skeleton. To make matters even worse, the thorned rash had spread quite a lot. In only a matter of days, the black branches traveled north and south. Starting at his cheekbone and just below his right eye, down his throat, and over his chest, extending down his torso and stopping at his waist. Accompanying the throbbing and peculiar mark were angry red scratches marring his pale skin, almost bleeding because of the endless clawing.

On top of his physical deterioration, his mental state was on the decline as well.

Whether his eyes were open or closed...

Whether he was awake or asleep...

The voices never stopped.

So needless to say...

Taehyung was dying, slowly, from the inside out.

He continued to lay on the floor for several minutes, focusing on the rhythm of his jagged breathing until a speck of dust enters his airway and causes him to cough.

"Oh, you're awake......." a deeply sinister voice pulls Taehyung from his fatigued meditation, forcing him to peel his eyes open again. Of course, he saw nothing but the white room and the large rectangle of black that was the tinted two-way mirror. Just as he's about to close his eyes, he hears the voice speak to him again.

Well...taunting him was more like it.

"Come ooooooon, get up...You've slept enough."

"Up! Up! Up! Get up!"

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