I open my eyes to the same sight I've seen since I can remember.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
I try to move but I find that I can't. I then remember yesterday and the lighting.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
My eyes move to stare at the red, sprayed on numbers on my scruffy gown.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
The numbers read: 666. Satan's numbers.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
From down the hall came a horrible, bloodcurdling scream that made my blood go cold.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
The sudden roar of a chainsaw echoed in my ears. The screaming stopped.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
I cry, longing for my mother.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
"Momma." I mutter weakly.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
My cheeks are wet with the constant flow of tears
Click. Click. Click.
The door slowly opens and young men and women in clean white coats walk in to my clean white room. One holds a clipboard and stands in the frame as many others pile in from both sides. I am suddenly yanked to my weak feet and thrust into an iron bar cage on wheels. A woman in a tight black skirt pushed me from the white room into a long white hall. We pass door after white door, wild laughter coming from few, intense sobbing coming from most, but the scariest was the sound of dead silence coming from the rest.
"What did he say exactly?" a man behind the woman pushing me along in the cage asked.
"I dunno, he said be creative. Surprise him." The woman responded.
At the end of the seemly endless hallway was a metal door. Through the metal door I was pushed and cast aside for the moment. The men and women in the white coats murmured over the metal table while I surveyed my surroundings. The room was like the last except bigger and with a metal table in the center under a large, bright lamp. The walls, floor, and metal table was covered in bright red flowers in a pretty bloom. A strange pile about three feet high lurked in the darkest corner. I looked harder and an arm slipped away and fell into the light causing a head to tumble after it. My eyes shot open and I struggled to sit up. I wanted to scream but swallowed it back. The murmurs from the center of the room suddenly stopped and a man wheeled my cage over to the table. Tears flowed down my face like a river and I cried out as a woman removed me from the cage and plopped me on the metal table.
"You got the feline parts?" a surgeon said as he walks over to me on the table.
"Check. We are all set." A woman responded and brought over a container that held frozen cat parts.
I scream and tried to slide off the table but a strong doctor held me down. The doctor attached some wires to me and clicked on a machine. The machine sent electrical currents through my body. I felt dizzy and suddenly the world became dark and I fall unconscious, sad circus music ringing in my ear.
I dreamt myself on a dark beach. The waves lapped at my feet as strange monotone beeps echoes in the sky. A hooded figure suddenly emerges from the ground and a scythe appeared from dust into his boney hand. I turned my head and stared into the shaded hood. The hooded figure suddenly jumps and tries to attack me with it's scythe. I dodge it quickly with cat-like reflexes. My eyes suddenly sting uncontrollably, I scream out in agonizing pain. A hideous sadistic giggle comes from the hood and it came at me again. I tried to hold it back, one weak hand holding back the scythe, trembling. With a sudden burst of strength, I push the hood away which caused the hood to fall. I looked up into the strange dark chocolate eyes of a tall dark haired man. Dark circus music echoed again in the sky with the beat of the monotone beeping.
"I shall call her…Neko." The strange man said with a smile.
Everything went white as the strange man's voice echoed.
My eyes opened slowly. My vision blurred and head spinning. My vision refocused and I found myself surrounded by iron bars. I looked up and spat dirt from my mouth. Above my head was an elegant red and white tent, the sounds of a forest sounding from outside.
Where am I?
A sudden, splitting head ache made me moan and I put my head down back into the dirt.
"Oh, es ist lebendig!" a voice came from behind me.
I painfully turn my head and a little boy with scaly skin and fish gills stares back at me innocently.
I looked at him confused.
"Sprechen Sie? oder nahmen sie, dass von Ihnen?" The little boy said, a small scaly hand gripping and iron bar.
"Wahrscheinlich hat sie nicht Deutsch sprechen." An older but still young voice responded in the cage next to the scaly boy.
"I-I don't understand you…" I whimpered.
"Sie spricht Englisch! Ich erkenne, dass Akzent aus, als wir in England im letzten Sommer!" A brawny sounding teen girl responded loudly in the cage along with the man.
"Die Burnt Man spricht Englisch." The scaly boy mentions.
"Burnt Man!" the loud girl calls to the cage on the left of me.
A boy with long white hair that drops in layers to his mid-back looks over his shoulder in his fetal position. His nose and cheeks were a sinister dark red where he has been burnt. Other portions of his face were rotten and dead. His eyes were milk chocolate and twinkled in anguish.
"Das neue Mädchen spricht Ihre Muttersprache. Erzähle ihr von diesem... wunderbare Zirkus." The loud girl said to the Burnt Man, almost spitting the last two words like if it were vinegar in her mouth.
The Burnt Man's sorrowful chocolate eyes darted to me and he looked me over.
"Do you know where you are?" The Burnt Man asked, his voice showing his English heritage and he pain of belonging to something as evil as this.
"N-no." I whimpered, sitting up and close to tears.
The Burnt Man crawled over the closet he could get to me. I looked at him some more. His bare chest, rising and falling in a slow rhythmic pattern, was covered with putrid skin and was burnt like his face. His black and purple striped trousers were singed and caked with dirt and grime. He looked to be only seventeen. He smiled, showing a parent-like sympathy for my fear and my near-tears complexion.
"You're a part of traveling circus show." The Burnt Man said calmly, as if it didn't bother him at all, but his eyes said otherwise.
I felt tears form in my eyes as the Burnt Man painfully went on, obviously feeling my pain as well.
"Whenever we are not being shown, we are either locked away in here or in a small cage were people can look at us through a small hole." The Burnt Man explained bitterly.
There was more to it than just that, I could sense it in his voice, but I was afraid to ask. The tent flap opened and the same strange man I saw from my dreams entered the tent. He looked around and smiled proudly at all his little performers. He strolls down each aisle of caged deformed humans until he reach my cage. The Burnt Man glares at the chairman as he smiles cruelly at me with a shine in his dark eyes.
"Neko, I see you've wakened. Do you like it? I made it all myself." The chairman said with laughing eyes.
I continue to stare violently at the chairman.
"What? Cat got your tongue?" the chairman laughed sadistically.
I continue to stare, not amused.
"See?" the chairman stuck a hand-held mirror through the bars of the cage.
I looked at the mirror. At first I thought it was a trick, but as I continued to look at the mirror the more I realized what I've gotten myself into. A white bandage was wrapped around the circumference of my skull, my eyes blinking a yellow tinted color, my lip was cleft like a feline, and whiskers jutted out below my nose. Cat ears were sewn on as if a Brownie Girl Scout was just learning how to sew put them on. My long brunette hair was chopped just below my chin and I got a sudden urge to lick myself. I couldn't believe the girl who was staring back at me was really me. I sat there, eyes wide in shock, as the chairman took the mirror away. I looked down at the rest of my body, tears running down my face as I noted that my hands were replaced with cat paws. I felt something on my back and reached down to feel a long, fuzzy cat tail, twitching behind me. The tail was protruding from a hole in the back of the pale white dress that I found myself wearing.
"Why are you doing this?" I plead up to the tall chairman, my voice cracking and popping like a fire.
"Because I CAN." The chairman answered and laughed in my face. The chairman turned and left the tent with an impish smile that made me want to murder him.
But all I could do was cry, and so I did.