Chapter 13 - The Torture Chamber

I was thrown into a room where my children were huddled in a corner, crying silently. When they saw me, they ran over and hugged me tight, and I hugged them back. Their voices were like Todd's - rough and like they needed to cough - I guess mine was like that as well. I couldn't hear myself how they could hear me.

"Mama!" Harper called, throwing herself at me. Toby hugged me quickly and then stepped back, looking around the room for something else.

"Where's Dad?" He asked, now staring at the massive iron door expectantly.

"He's in the other room," I replied, trying to keep everybody hopeful. "The Mayor is still talking to him."

Then I took the room in properly. It was large and gloomy, with planks of dark wood criss-crossing across the ceiling. There were small lights above us, fitted into the wood, which made them look so much darker than they actually were. The ceiling was very high above us. There was no furniture, apart from a couple of potato bags with something inside them on the other side of the room in a corner. I did not know or wish to know what was inside of them, but I had a pretty good goddamn clue.

After about half an hour in the room, I noticed a speaker. I only noticed it because the Mayor's voice came booming out of it - "I won't keep you for much longer. In exactly two minutes thirty seconds, two of my henchmen are going to come in through the metal door that you all came in through, and take you to the Torture Chamber. Thank you for your patience."

Gus wailed. "Shh, baby," I whispered into his ear, cradling him. "We're all going to be okay." He gave little choked sobs. Harper and Toby huddled around us, and we stayed like that until the Mayor's men came in to transport us to the Chamber.

The first thing that I heard was churning. Loud, fast churning, getting ever louder the closer we got. Just as we got to the doors, they said, "Children, you are coming with us. You," they pointed at me, "will meet your fate inside." I knew there was no point complaining, but I did anyway.

"Please - just let them stay with me," I begged, falling to the floor. "Please..." the men dragged them away from me down the corridor, and I was left there on the floor. I could hear their wails far away from me, and so I just laid with my head in my hands, weeping until the doors opened and I saw the terror that awaited me.

There were cogs everywhere, stained with blood. The floor was dirty and bumpy - I tripped over lumps of mud about five times - and I couldn't see anybody there...until I wondered who was working all of the cogs and machines.

Spackle.

Of course. Spackle. How had the Mayor got them?

I didn't have time to think about that. I walked forward into the room and the doors slammed shut behind me, making me jump. Then I saw it - Todd tied up to a post right of the opposite side of the room. Immediately I saw this not as a torture chamber but as a challenge - a test - for me to get him back.

And the children - were they there was well? I couldn't hear them at all - but then again, they could be tied up like Todd, with their mouths bound shut.

He noticed me. He screamed and writhed in his binds, but it was no use...he couldn't get out until I got to him. I held a finger to my lips to quieten him, and he slumped in his ropes to the bottom of the floating cell.

I stepped forward and my boot squelched into a puddle of mud. I gritted my teeth and carried on. The Spackle didn't notice me, maybe they were told to ignore anybody who came in? I didn't know, but even so I kept staring at them - almost challenging them - as I kept moving slowly forward. One of the Mayor's henchmen's boots was stuck in a cog, I noticed - and then black. Nothing but black. What was going on? I didn't know - but I do now. I had a potato sack over my head, just like one of the sacks I had seen in the room before. I was picked up while I struggled to get out, and was dumped on something hard. Metal. I was on a cog, one of the massive cogs that led down to who knows what below. One of the cogs that I knew would leave me somewhere else, barely alive, so that they could torture me more.

The pain was excruciating. Worse than ever before. My whole body was twisted but there was a rope over the sack, positioned so that it would fit perfectly into my mouth so my screams were muffled. I hated them. Everybody, everything. I hated every person in the world at that moment, even the ones that I love, because without them I wouldn't be in that situation, I wouldn't be in so much pain that I wanted to punch the life out of the Mayor and his henchmen and the Spackle and everyone else - even though without them I wouldn't know love, and my life would be worthless.