3. Three
I can feel it from the observation room.
The cold.
Always finding a way to seep through the walls and between the cracks of the steel door. Again, that twisting in my stomach, the shudder trying to fight its way to the surface, my body’s cruel pantomime of a shiver. I shut out the memories threatening to flood in and take over, but images slip past my defenses, flashing through my mind.
My mom. My brother. My dad. All but frozen solid while my joints tightened up in the back seat of our car. The sharpness of my breath, every inhale like glass, every exhale equally painful. The smell of my mom’s coffee either dried up or frozen solid into the fabric of the ceiling below me.
As usual, a Tester instructs me to strip down to my undergarments and within moments I’m just about as bared to the world as I can get, but I’m grateful for the small mercy of being allowed to keep my shoes. They’re not going to help me much, but I can still hope they’ll stave off some of the discomfort.
Trying to soothe myself I pull my hair up, struggling with my stretched out and nearly useless hair tie. A few strands escape, floating around the sides of my head, but I can’t be bothered to reattempt the style, a loose approximation of the tidy bun so many of the female Testers here wear.
“Lovely.” A hand rests on the small of my bare back and my skin burns from the light touch. I don’t need to look. I never need to look. It’s John, the only person here with such proprietary touches.
As a child he never tried anything, not that anyone here would have stopped him. Now that I’m grown, though, his cold distance is punctuated by too familiar glances and touches. Always directly before the Tanks, always with a distinct aura of delight at what I will be put through.
Today, my near nakedness is likely to give the cold that much more access to me, but I know the vulnerability of this moment just heightens his interest.
I let the silence stretch out between us. He knows I heard him, and he knows I can feel him there. He’s made himself the last bit of warmth I’ll get before I step into the Tank. Creating a moment in which my body, my skin, wants to betray me by holding onto him.
His breath slithers across my neck and over my ear, the overly sweet minty scent of it turning my stomach. “I hope you don’t mind, Madeline. I’ve made some changes to your little scenario.”
Externally, I could be mistaken for a statue. Internally, I’m thrashing, recoiling from his touch.
“Shoes.” A Tester says blankly, making it clear to me and everyone else in the room that she sees what is happening, but she isn’t about to do a damn thing about it.
I don’t visibly react to this, but I want to sob. I shouldn’t have maintained that hope that I would get to keep them. Not in a cold Tank.
Never in a cold Tank.
I kick off my sneakers and peel the socks away from my feet, leaving them on the floor outside of the door. I don’t place them neatly. I don’t arrange them to John’s liking as I may have before. I’m in no mood to be more cooperative than I already have been.
A second Tester punches a series of numbers into the pin pad, and the large mechanisms inside the door whir and grind with deafening force. The doors are never quiet, but they’re always louder when they’re sealing in the cold. The warmth of John’s hand slips away from my back at the same time the door swings open, the frigid air blasting my body.
Three steps are all it takes to clear the threshold. Three steps, and I’m immersed in the artificial frozen wasteland they’ve concocted for me. Just like with every other Tank, as soon as I’m fully inside, the door swings shut. Those same heavy mechanisms thudding and clicking into place, sealing me in.
My muscles haven’t had time to bunch up from the frigid air eating away at me, but they go taut nonetheless, working to pull me to the ground to preserve any heat and sanity I might be still holding onto. I step further into the Tank, pushing through the innate desire to curl up, and turn the first corner.
They’re all like this. A huge door, the mechanical click of the locks, and a short walk through a winding corridor to get through to the center where the real test is waiting for me.
Step by halting, freezing step I make my way through the familiar turns. I’m met by a new blast of arctic air with each turn. My breath floats around me in thick bursts of fog, mocking me that my warmth is being stolen even from inside my lungs.
It’s silent in here. Too quiet.
Normally the cold Tanks are unbearably loud. John told me it’s meant to simulate the mental stress of a storm. This time, however, the only sound is my breath that is becoming more stuttered and uneven with each second. The calm air is putting me further on edge and the rage inside of me is building further without the distraction of the artificial storm.
The last turn brings me to the center of the Tank, and I go still. In the center of the massive circular room is a minivan.
Our minivan.
The same one.
The exact car from my nightmares is set a mere thirty feet away from me, the roof still crushed inward, and the windows still shattered from whatever rescue party broke them to haul me and the rest of my family out. This must be the new fun addition John was talking about. This is the torture he was going for, and he wants it quiet enough in here for the recording equipment to pick up my sobs of distress in crystal clear quality.
I won’t give him what he wants. Not today.
Whatever wracking sobs my body needs to release can be done after the Tank. After all this is over. After the freezing and the false death. After I thaw and can once again lay in my bed and pretend to sleep.
The minivan’s doors have been left open, long since thawed enough to slide along the track, now probably frozen back into place. I’m not sure how long it takes to cool such a massive room to this degree - to get it cold enough to support the snow being pumped in through the ceiling vents, as well as the drifts that have been dumped onto the concrete in sloppy, unplanned piles.
The icy snow crunches beneath my feet, sending ripples of freezing pain through the unprotected pads of my toes. If I wait out in the open, I will probably last a week or so before they retrieve me. If I wanted to extend my own torture, extend my shivering misery I could probably do so inside the van. The thought of it alone makes every other Tank look like a walk in the park. I refuse to enter that van and relive any more of that day than John has already forced onto me.
I almost wish I could speed up the Tank, push forward to that blissful silence, that gentle, warm embrace of calm that refuses to keep me. But there’s no out, there’s no way to rush death in here, to hurry into those fleeting visits I’ve come to love.
I have to break my stare on the mangled metal, have to peel my eyes from it before my body gives in and launches itself into that vicious pool of grief and terror.
The snow continues to crunch under my bare feet and the pain of that unrelenting cold grounds me into the present. I’m not that terrified little girl anymore. No matter how frightened I feel I won’t allow myself to show it, won’t allow my body to fully sink into it.
My movement freezes mid-step when the hair rises impossibly further on the back of my neck. Something is wrong. Something is different. The muscles in my stomach clench tightly and I’m trying desperately to figure out what my body could be warning me about. This must be the treat John had promised me, not just the van. I scan the room, trying to find what the source of this new panic is, but I find nothing.
I edge backwards towards the van instinctively, something primal urging me to seek shelter, even in the worst imaginable place.
Something thuds behind me.
I whirl, now only ten feet from the open door. Its space frames a tuft of black fur moving behind one of the seats. I’m begging my body to get away as quietly as possible, to allow a momentary escape, but my feet crunch in the snow, the sound near deafening in the silent, frozen room. My heart plummets down to my stomach when not one, but two massive canine heads snap up, homing their attention directly on me.
Vicious, wet, threatening snarls come from the two dogs now standing directly in the van’s doorway. Their teeth are bared, each sharp point promising pain, and I avert my eyes, the belief coming from somewhere deep inside of me that looking directly at them will make them act more aggressively, but it’s no use.
Who knows how long these dogs, wolves more likely by the size of them, have been here? The cold doesn’t bother them as it does me, but nothing is immune to the drive of hunger.
Slow, measured steps bring them closer and closer, each padded footfall silent on the snow. I crouch slightly as they stalk forward, trying to brace for whatever move they’re about to make.
Run! Hide! Do something! Anything!
My inner voice is no help to me here. I can’t get away, by design. At most I’d get to choose where in this massive room I’d be mauled, maybe extend the panic by bolting into the hallway, only to bang at the sealed door, screaming and crying for help. It”s never worked before, and I know it won”t work now, but the terror still claws at my chest.
My breath is ragged, the sharp, uneven puffs wholly visible to the two predators moving my way. That breath is sharply contrasted by the fog coming from those snarling, drooling mouths. Steady and even. I’ve been identified as their next meal, and they know that they won’t have to fight for it. They know I’ll be an easy catch.
The gray one lunges at me faster than my mind can react, and the other circles around, taking her time while her partner attacks.
I manage to shield my face in time for my right arm to get caught in the shredding grip of the gray one’s jaws.
The world around me slows just enough to experience the searing and crushing pain in my arm before the black wolf launches at my back. Its massive paws knock me forward and shove my arm further into the grip of those brutal jaws. The impact of the ground isn’t softened enough by the iced over snow. My head slams hard into the ground, sending my vision into a stuttering blur, decorated by flashes of light.
I’m being torn apart. My arm is being shaken and pulled, the flesh shredding and rending from my bones. My leg is being pulled in the opposite direction, the jaws of both beasts easily finding purchase and refusing to let go. I can hear the sickening wet tearing sound of my skin and muscles giving against their thrashing. I can feel the heat of my own blood slicking over my skin in thick rivulets, only to cool to near freezing in this artificial tundra. In my periphery I can see piles of snow turning red in pools and arcing slashes.
Am I screaming?
I’m being stretched and torn, my joints threatening to dislocate with every shift, every pull. Their frenzied thrashing gets more violent with each inch of flesh they tear from me. My blood is a thick, slippery coating over my arm and my leg, sliding towards my torso, seeping into my bra and underwear.
The pulling stops for only a moment before I hear the dull click of teeth snapping together. The furry face of the grey wolf is drenched in my blood, the very blood that’s made my skin too slippery for it to grip in its maw. For a stupid, hopeful second, I pray that it will give up.
That it will give up on the gory dinner screaming below it.
The shredding agony returns when its jaws clamp down onto my bicep. I can feel my bones wanting to break, my body wanting to give in and fall apart to appease these beasts. My mind is the only thing that won’t give in.
I’m not strong enough to handle this.
I know I can’t fight them off, can’t kill them before they kill me, but I put everything I have into hitting and kicking at these hellhounds with the two appendages I have left to my disposal.
The cold won’t get me today. It’ll be the shock or the blood loss.
I can’t tell what is happening around me when a massive burst of pressure shoves through me. If I hadn’t been through it before, I would wonder if this is what death was: a sudden pressure followed by ringing ears then an all consuming silence. But I have been here before, and I know that this isn’t death.
This is something else entirely.
An alarm blares from somewhere above me, and slowly the shrill screech of it overtakes the ringing in my ears. The wolves even pause their attack, jarred by the overbearing sound of the alarm. The relief is only momentary before they double down on their efforts, and my scream is drowned out by the sounds pulsing around us.
I don’t know if it’s seconds or minutes that pass with the wolves bearing down on me again, their movements more desperate than before. The grey one stops its attack and I’m expecting it to latch on to me again, latch onto my throat, but it falls to the ground completely still, its face slicked with my blood and a thick trail of its own. The same happens with the black one less than a second later. Both lie heavy and lifeless above me, their mouths still clamped around my useless limbs.
I can’t move, their weight shoves me harder into the icy ground, and I have no idea what is happening. This could just be the next level of the Tank. Do I have to lay in the snow and die now that I’ve been shredded?
A dark, heavy boot steps into my field of vision, and everything goes black.