Peter
I had been running for hours now, and I was exhausted. All it is is me running down a circular track, but I had been doing it for hours. Every time I slowed down, a man reached down with a metal rod and sent an electric shock through me. I've tried to dodge, but he must have it hooked it up to a machine or something because it always gets me.
I rounded another lap, making it the 135th lap I had run. I couldn't take it anymore. I collapsed. I couldn't move, not by my own will. I lay there, panting, chest hurting, heart pounding. I once heard someone in the building say that each person only has a certain number of beats in their heart. If that was true, I was going to die soon. I couldn't breathe. I was suffocating, and I couldn't thrash. My face was pressed against the rubbery, rough ground, and I felt a pole prod my back. Then I felt the shock.
I had only felt minor shocks when I ran, I realize that now. The shock traveled through me, and it must have been a special kind of electricity, because the rubber ground didn't ground me. It was so painful. My back arched, and I heard a scream, a long, bloodcurdling scream that came from my mouth. If I had hair on my arms and head, it would be standing up. My back was arching again. My arms and legs bobbled, and my mouth was bleeding from smacking into the ground too much. Then they finally took the rod off my back.
I slumped against the ground, twitching. My legs and head hurt so, so badly. I couldn't move, the shock had paralyzed me. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't. When I felt someone lift me, I knew I was going back into the cage. I didn't fight it. I felt myself bobbing up and down with the man's steps. Then I felt myself being tossed into my cage. I lay there forever before I could move again. At one point I lost conscious.
I can back to immense heat. I was still sore, and I just lay there. I knew what they were doing. They had made me heat resistant, but only to a point. That meant that they were trying to make that point higher. I used to be 278 degrees Celsius, but now it's 300. It's a terrible feeling; the heat clogs your lungs and melts your skin to whatever you're touching. I have so many burn marks, I lost count. They take forever to heal, and by the time I do heal, there's another to take its place. My skin is too damaged to grow hair, so I have no arm or leg hair, no peach fuzz on my face, no hair on my head. My life consists of fire, and pain.
As the cage heats up, I lick my lips and I'm aware of the fact that it's nearing the 300 degree mark. My lips are starting to sizzle from when I licked and wet them. By now, it had to have passed the 300 mark. My skin started to stick to the bottom of the cage. I crouched so that only a small bit of skin would stick to the cage. My eyes were burning, and my mouth was dry. My lips were cracked; the lip-licking earlier didn't help. I yelled as it got even hotter. I could see the skin of my feet blackening. It takes a long time to become even more restraint. I started to scream. I have been doing that a lot, recently. But they are upping the pain levels. They had done it in the past, sure. But this time, they were way up. This time, I knew I wasn't going to make it.
I screamed as I collapsed onto the bottom of the cage, my skin blistering. Soon I only felt pain, and nothing but. As I faded out, I felt the cage cooling. But it didn't help. I was already walking toward Death, and he was reaching down my throat.
They tried to save me. They worked for many hours, using their high-tech gadgets, inserting tubes and needles. I watched from above, standing next to Death. I heard him chuckle, and he led me away.