Dark.
It is expected to be this way in the middle of the night, but this darkness was different, and I knew why. I just couldn't get myself to fully comprehend the situation I was in, even though common sense was screaming into my ears to stop, turn around, and hide under my bed, but… I just couldn't.
My feet moved on my own inside the corridor we weren't allowed into, but that didn't matter now. The wood was cold against my feet, and the gentle tapping against it was the only thing you could hear. Not even the wind was blowing outside.
The corridor was as dark as the night itself, and I could barely see a few meters up ahead with the full moon's light.
Up ahead was the door.
I remember clearly everything that had happened before and how I had landed in this position: being in this darkness, heading to the one place where everyone I had cared for, all the ones that I had truly loved, had been killed.
It all started with that tradition. Or at least we thought it was a tradition.
We gathered by the grounds around the orphanage, which was our home. The men in coats watched as we played the "game". We were so oblivious what it really meant, and we played with so much glee…
The chosen one was blindfolded and sat on the ground, while the rest of us held hands and surrounded our friend, which was eager to play the game. Then we started going in circles, round and round singing:
Circle you~
Circle you~
Who is the one
Behind you~?
As soon as we sang the last line, we involuntarily stopped making any noise. We quietly stopped in our tracks, and waited for the center to answer:
Who is behind him?
If he answered correctly, the person behind him had to take his spot in the center of the circle, and continue playing. We played a total of 44 rounds, and then we went back inside. The loser was taken somewhere else for a "'consolation' prize", as the white coats referred to.
The loser of that demoniac game was never seen again.
We played once a week, always on Thursdays, always at 4:44 p.m. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before. If I had known 4 was the number that represented death… Maybe things wouldn't be as horrible as they are now.
After a few weeks, we started to get suspicious. Where were our friends?
Why didn't they come back after they went for their prizes?
We where absolutely determined to find out.
So two others and I where selected by the rest of the children, to follow the loser of the game and the lab coat , and discover what was actually going on. So we followed them inside the edifice from the playgrounds. We walked and walked, and continued following silently behind. We didn't know until it was too late that we had wondered into the forbidden zone.
This area of the orphanage was strictly off limits because the coats had said that they wouldn't allow our filthy hands on matters that we couldn't comprehend. So if children weren't allowed here, why was the lab coat taking our friend there? We would find out soon the reason of the orphanage's actual existence.
The purpose of our presence in this damned butchering site.
Now, in present time, as my hands inched silently towards the door, the feeling of utter dread began to become more noticeable to my battered body.
I felt…scared.
I knew exactly what had happened to everyone, but I just couldn't state it as if it were reality. It all felt like a dream… no. It felt like a nightmare. Not just an ordinary nightmare; it was one in which you couldn't do anything except face the one thing you fear the most, trembling with fear. But unlike a normal nightmare,
I couldn't wake up. I couldn't escape from this by simply waking up in the middle of my bed, and asking for comfort from my bunkmate.
This was real.
As soon as I was a few inches away from the door, the shocking truth of these words crashed unceremoniously into me. Images of the recent events flooded my mind: The white coats staring at us with full curiosity, my friends being dragged away into this very same room I was facing in the actual moment. And blood.
That was the one thing that I remembered the most.
Blood.
How it was spread around the very same rooms most of the kids had been living for their entire lives; How it trickled down the white paint of the orphanage walls; How it flooded from them, like a river. Endless and foreboding, while they where surrounded in their own puddles of red.
My body moved by its own accord, as my hand slowly took the doorknob. But as soon as I laid my palm onto the cold metal, I felt something hot. In fear it was something, something…. Poisonous, I slowly took my hand away from the knob, and turned my palm hesitantly towards my face for further analysis.
My blood ran cold as the sight of my hand covered in this queer liquid stained my hand, and dripped in little drops by my fingertips towards the floor. It was darker than my hand, and it was icky, and as I took a good look at the door, I saw patches of the same liquid staining the wood. But the one thing that truly caught my attention, was the source of the blood. It didn't come from me… it came from him.
Laying by the corner, drenched with blood, laid a man.
"He's Dead.", I whispered silently to myself.
By his once-white coat, I found out he was a scientist, also known as lab coats or white coats to the smaller orphanage children.
The ones responsible for constructing the orphanage, with THAT, were them.
These scientists where the cause of all the misery of my deceased friends, but guess their plan backfired terribly by the looks of it.
I started feeling strange…
It was a feeling of… dizziness? It got worse at the sights of so much cruelty, and the gruesome remains where less than pleasant.
Everything started to become unfocused, and, before I knew it, I was on the floor.
My vision was swimming and I could do nothing as I was swallowed up by the darkness.
Ta-DA! :D So, what do you think?