"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad
Violet forced herself to eat the dry chicken and peas provided to her by her captor. Her stomach had been turning all night, making it impossible to sleep, and her eyelids were tugging heavily over her eyes. The knot in her arm from where her kidnapper jammed the needle into her flesh stared back at her, mocking her with the memory of the sickly sweet concoction that had her peacefully nodding in and out of consciousness in the trunk of a car. Of all the things that motherfucker could have used...
The sweat pouring from her skin and pooling in puddles around her on the floor confirmed her suspicions about what had been used to knock her into a state of compliance. She knew exactly what the detox from that needle would look like—fever, uncontrollable sweating, insomnia, diarrhea. Her rage manifested as a pit of acid in her stomach and she felt absolutely carnal at the knowledge that her body was about to betray her. A growl escaped from the back of her throat and she had to bite her own hand to satisfy her brute desire to tear flesh from bone. A single drop of blood ran down the side of her thumb and joined her sweat on the floor.
The sound of the exterior cage walls being raised jolted her to the present and reminded her that she had a lot more at stake than withdrawal symptoms. Sure, she was about to be sick, but the paramount issue was that she had been kidnapped.
"Warriors! Step forward to your cages, please!" That god-awful shriek of a voice hurdled its way through the room, tearing into Violet's eardrums. She forced her cramping muscles to stretch as she stood, gritting her teeth as she approached the front of her cage.
From here, she could see everything. The sheer size of the room they were kept in was overwhelming. Her best guess was that they were in an abandoned warehouse, or maybe an old, refitted basketball gym. All eight cages were arranged in a circle around the center of the room, creating an arena. A set of stairs led down from a balcony level directly to the top of the circle. At the top of the stairs sat a wooden chair, and behind the chair, a singular door: their one and only way out of the room. Violet also noticed all of the chains atop their soundproof coverings connected to one larger chained controlled by a pulley system next to the door. How convenient.
"What the FUCK do you want from us!?" A bald young woman screamed at the top of her lungs, collapsing in sobs. Many of the other women were crying, too, but they seemed to be better at holding their composure.
"Please," a young African-American woman in the cell on Violet's left pleaded, tiredly leaning her head against the bars of her cage, "let us go."
Violet looked around at the other women. The first time her captor had shown them to her, they were still passed out from the drugs; now each of them stood at the front of their cages, assessing their mutual situation. Some of the women, like the bald girl, were already falling apart. Others, Violet noticed, were unwavering in their determination to survive.
By far the most levelheaded in the room was a short but very muscular Chinese woman who stood at the front of her cage across from Violet, feet shoulder width apart, arms crossed. She eyed the other women like a lioness on the hunt.
"I am pleased to announce that there is, in fact, a way for you all to make it out of here alive! It will just require some strength."
The Chinese woman tilted her head up at him. "Tell us what we have to do."
"Ah, so eager to push through!" Their kidnapper responded happily. "And that is exactly why I gave you the name Priscus."
She narrowed her eyes. "Tell. Us."
"These are the conditions of your enslavement," their captor descended the stairs, dragging a long black baton behind him. Or was it a her? Violet couldn't tell. He was an average height, somewhere between 5'8 and 5'10, and was an average build. He wore long black plants and a long-sleeve black turtleneck with black leather gloves and a full black ski mask to match. Whoever it was, they were truly unremarkable.
As he walked past the girls' cages, he ran his baton across the metal poles, causing the bald girl to sob even harder at the loud sound of clattering metal. "Every other day, starting at sunrise, you will fight each other, one after another after another. If one of you successfully beats every single other competitor consecutively, you get to make a choice-"
"I'm not laying a hand on any of these women," A caramel skinned girl with long, dark dreadlocks stated matter-of-factly, refusing to look at him. She was in the cell to Violet's right.
He stopped in front of her cage and whispered just loud enough for Violet to hear, "Then you will never see outside this room again."
Violet's tumultuous green eyes locked with her neighbor's startling gray eyes and Violet felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She nodded at the woman in respect. After a moment, the woman nodded back.
"What's the choice?" A Latino woman with jet-black hair and matching eyes whispered meekly, hesitant and nervous for the answer. Violet turned her attention from her neighbor to the captor.
She swore she could feel him smirk again. "You can either choose to go back to your cage and fall asleep, where you will be allowed one rest day before we begin the matches all over again. Or," he stood now at the base of the stairs, facing all of them, "you can choose to fight me."
"And what's to stop me from killing you with my bare hands and running out that door up there?" The words seemed to tumble out of Violet's mouth, crude and unsolicited.
The captor let out of a cruel, high-pitched laugh and approached her cell, taking pleasure in her ignorance. "Well, you could do that, I guess. But you will all be pleased to know that the door located above you, which is the the only way out of this room, by the way, is password protected. If you kill me..." he dramatically crossed to the center of the arena and made a sweeping motion, gesturing to all the women, "you will all rot in these cages until you die of starvation."
The Chinese woman spoke again, moving her hands to her hips. An aggressive stance. Violet appreciated the notion. "If we choose to fight you? And we win?"
"If you win, I let you go."
"All of us?" The bald girl looked up hopefully as she spoke.
"No, my silly, silly Spiculus," he giggled, waving his baton at her. "Only the one that beats me gets released."
"And if we lose?" Violet called out again, clutching the bars in her hands. She was ready to rip them apart and fight her way out right then and there.
"Well, there's no real losing, per se. If you fight me, you will either win the fight...or I will kill you."
And suddenly her stomach dropped as she realized how bloody the last days of her life were going to be.