Delusional

by Michael Evans

  He cackled, “Any last words?”

  I could feel the hundreds of eyes staring at me, eagerly waiting for me to say something. Their disdainful glares added a heaviness to the air that weighed down my lungs. To them this wasn’t scary at all; it was pure entertainment.

  “Answer me! What are you doing?” I demanded, my voice resonating off the glass walls.

  The man looked at me with a rapacious stare as he rubbed his hands together, “Time to say goodbye…forever.”

  Out of nowhere the lights immediately blacked out and the two wires running down on the side of the chair started to buzz with electricity. My heart started to pulse at a rapid rate, as my breathing became erratic. A crack came from somewhere behind me and the glass wall in front of me became illuminated with light. The image being projected onto the glass was a timer that began with the number ten colored in a translucent, dark shade.

  Suddenly the crowd erupted into a cacophony of bloodthirsty screams of, “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”

  The countdown now was at seven, and the powerful sound waves almost hurt against my skin as I desperately tried to wriggle my way out.

  “Get me out of this hell!” I made one last hopeless plea to anyone out there who actually had a heart, but instead the crowd laughed with pleasure at my cries of anguish.

  There was a flash of red as the countdown ticked down to three. The man gave me one final stare as he laughed. This is it, I thought as my peril became imminent, it’s time for me to die. The number two flashed across the screen and I could feel the electricity slowly building up in the chair as it readied to fry me to death.

  After I was finally electrocuted to death all that was going to be left of me was a singed, lifeless carcass laying in the earth with an empty headstone above my grave. I expanded my lungs and let in one last breath of air, as I prepared to leave this earth forever.

  But then suddenly the countdown timer stopped and all the heat in the chair vanished. In an instant the door burst open and two women rushed in with machine guns blaring causing my heart to just about explode with terror. My hopeful feeling at the horror finally ending was instantly decimated by the shrill of death.

  Almost immediately a bullet found its way into the skull of the man that towered above me and he splattered lifelessly onto the floor. His eyes were open frozen with fear, as a pool of blood engulfed the floor around him.

  What? I thought I was supposed to be the dead one.

  I squirmed around trying to dodge the bullets that rained down on the people surrounding me. The cries of joy quickly turned to ear piercing screams that were uttered from the mouths of the hundreds of spectators. The splintering crack of the glass falling onto the floor was enough to cause a shooting pain in my ears that rivaled that of a thunderbolt hitting a person.

  People began to run and scream in terror as seer pandemonium broke out. The flock of people began to rush out of the exits as people began dropping from the crowd. I gagged at the sight of the trail of blood dripping from the people and onto the floor in monstrous waves. My nightmare quickly turned into a nightmare for everyone else, but I hollered hysterically at the massacre unraveling in front of me.

  My body began to shudder with frustration as my relentless attempts of busting the restraints off my arms failed. I looked up at the two women, that were suited in heavy tactical gear. One had light skin with short, brown bangs, while the other had dark skin with a short messy bun. They madly fired into the crowd with scary precision, mowing down people with every bullet. I winced at the bone chilling countenance in their face and the desperate, mad expression in their eyes.

  I shut my eyes hoping for the life of me that the next round they shot wouldn’t end up in my forehead.

  “Go, go, I will cover you!” The one with bangs commanded. On cue, the darker skinned woman lowered her gun and ran over to my chair.

  “Screw off!” I screamed.

  “We’re not the enemy, don’t worry.” She said in a warm voice looking me right in the eyes. She then whipped out a pocket knife that effortlessly sliced through the metal cuffs, as the other woman still fired her machine gun into the crowd causing the last of the people to recede.

  “We’re all clear! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Yelled the one with bangs. Swiftly the dark-skinned women pulled the cap off my head and grabbed my arm and yanked me up and out of the chair.

  “C’mon, let’s go!” She commanded, and she ushered my frozen body ahead of her, while the other woman ceased fire and began to sprint out the doors.

  Instantly, it seemed we were all out the door hurtling forward at top speed down the hallway. The echo of our feet hammering against the floor reverberated down the hallway as angry screams echoed from behind us. We made a right as the darker skinned woman trailed behind me and the woman with bangs ran in front.

  “Up there!” The girl with bangs yelled pointing towards a sign that I could vaguely decipher read: fire escape tunnel.

  Adrenaline replaced all my fear as I began to hit the next gear. I was running so fast that I barely had enough time to process the images around me.

  “6 O’clock!” The woman behind me shouted and we all looked back at the group of about a dozen guards running down the hallway. They all resembled huge boulders since they were so bulky, and their heavy footsteps echoed off the pavement.

  Suddenly in an eruption of chaos they all began firing their guns while running down the hallway. Both women raised their guns and blindly fired back to counter them, but it did no use. A high-pitched ring squealed in my ears from the deafening salvo of the bullets being sprayed in our direction.

  We neared closer and closer to the exit, but it was only a matter of time before one of the bullets managed to fatally connect with one of us.

  “Attention all occupants of Area 51,” a female voice sounded over the intercom, “We will be entering a total lockdown. Everyone follow code red lockdown procedure. I repeat beginning initiation of a total lockdown, no one will be coming in or out of Area 51.”

  Almost immediately after she stopped talking a low grumble sounded from up ahead and a slab of gray cement started to lower from the entrance to the fire escape tunnel. Still sprinting the two women exchanged a terrified glance, their eyes were filled with horror and their mouths were gaping.

  “We’re gonna have to slide under,” the woman in front of me shouted.

  I confidently nodded in return, but on the inside, I was scared out of my mind. What if we slide too late and the cement comes down on us? How do you even slide in the first place?

  My heart pulsed so loud I could almost hear it over the gun fire being shot at us in rapid succession. Time seemed to go by in slow motion. The concrete wall that would lead to a new life appeared to slowly descend toward the ground. With every lightning quick step, I took I could feel the bitterly cold, hard floor pound against my aching bare feet. The wind from the dozens of bullets whizzing by me penetrated against my skin, causing an unnerving sensation to trickle down my spine and drill the fear into my brain.

  I willed my legs forward ever-faster, as we neared closer and closer to escape. The cement was now just a mere two feet off the ground and with every millisecond that passed by, we became closer and closer to either living or dying.

  Now just a few strides away the woman suddenly threw her legs out in front of her. She gracefully hit the ground and slid right under the wall and onto the other side, eventually landing on her feet and back into a run in one smooth, beautiful motion. It looked so reckless but so clean at the same time, and before I could even catch my breath it was my turn.

  Without hesitation, I thrusted my legs forward mid-sprint to replicate what the woman in front of me did. I closed my eyes as my back slammed against the hard ground. To my surprise my body glided over the slick floor and under the thick concrete. In the nick of time, my head narrowly slid under the wall, coming within inches of the metal nails at its edges from piercing my skull. I felt the nails graze by my long, thick ha
ir, almost catching it, as they slammed against the ground with a final bang.

  The sound echoed down the long, dark tunnel, its power resonating like a fist smashing down. I swooped up onto my feet ending the smooth sliding motion and instantly propelling my legs forward into a sprint.

  “I’m not gonna make it!” The dark-skinned woman cried out firing her gun into the stampeding herd of people, but her voice was nothing more than a muffled scream.

  It was impossible to see her body from the other side of the concrete slab, but I didn’t need to see anything to know that the low thud against the floor signaled her body lifelessly collapsing after being torn apart by dozens of bullets. Her last petrifying scream rung in my ears, traumatizing me. It was a sound like no other, and that one spine tingling, head-jerking, nightmare infusing shout sounded all too familiar.

  It was the sound of death.

  “No!” I cried out tears streaming down my face as the sounds of the bullets bouncing off the concrete slab combined into one amalgamation of hell.

  “C’mon let’s go.” The only woman still alive demanded, tugging on my arms to get me to turn away, but I stood still in shock.

  She’s just a human being, no one deserves that. The woman tugged on my arm once more as metal shards began to blast through the concrete wall. I didn’t need any more coercion to begin sprinting forward.

  “The tunnel makes a left turn up there!” She yelled pointing into pitch blackness.

  “Okay!” I shouted back, but I had no idea where I was supposed to turn. We kept running further into the blackness, my vision only vaguely able to make out the silhouette of her in front of me.

  The sound of the bullets echoed off the walls chipping the cement, and with every ping of the guns firing I shivered with fear that it would be echoing off me.

  “Turn now!” She commanded, and I pivoted my feet to the left. There was no way for me to tell if I actually did turn the correct way because all I was surrounded by was total darkness.

  “You can stop running,” she said out of breath.

  “Damn,” I sighed keeling over in pain. I took deep breaths in and out trying to catch my breath as the sweat dripped off me and onto the floor below.

  “The ladder to the surface is just a little ways down, and we don’t have to run this time.” The woman said clicking a button that turned on a light at the head of her gun. She shined it down the hallway revealing the mangled mess it truly was. Mold grew on all the walls and the dry wall was falling off. The long, narrow, decrepit hallway could cave in at any moment. I took a deep breath, letting the thick, musty air, that was almost completely devoid of oxygen, fester in my lungs. The gunfire pounding the wall behind us started to die down as angry yells could be heard echoing down the hallway.

  “Let’s go,” She motioned her hand forward, “We have no time to waste.”

  We set off at a brisk pace, and my breathing started to return to normal. Finally, I had time to process what had just happened and I immediately became aware of all the alarming possibilities. Where is she taking me? I thought a wave of anxiety washing over me. How do I even trust that there is a ladder at the end of the hallway? Just because she saved me from those bad people doesn’t mean that she isn’t a bad person herself. What if she wants to kill me too?

  I shuddered sheer terror running down my spine as I realized how perfect of a setup this was. All she had to do was shoot me and walk away out of the fire escape tunnel. She could just leave my body lying helpless in the cool damp, musty air to die amongst the mold and darkness. And once she leaves no one would ever have to know what she did, my body could just lay there in the darkness unseen, and forgotten.

  My breathing became heavy as the paranoia set in. I frantically looked around at the blackness bracing for the woman to turn around and shoot me at any moment, but the opposite happened.

  “Hey,” she turned around causing me to jump back, “It wouldn’t be right for me to continue without introducing myself, my name is Lauren Pickens. What’s yours?”

  She must’ve have saw the half really confused, half terrified expression I gave her in return because she said, “Don’t be afraid, you’re safe now. I know you’ve been through a lot, but we’re here to help.”

  There was a genuine softness to her tone that enticed me to believe that her words really stood for the truth of her emotions; but there was still the ever-relenting fear poking at my mind, telling me to stay firm and lock all my trust and vulnerability away at all costs.

  I continued following her down the corridor until we finally reached the stairs.

  “You go first so I can catch you if you fall.” Lauren said, she had seemingly, quite quickly, given up in trying to break through the ice wall of fear, terror, and confusion that surrounded my mind. Hesitantly I stepped onto the first rung of the old rusty ladder. She shined the light up the escape ladder revealing the rusty stairs and old cracked stone that went up for hundreds of feet.

  “You can do it.” She said pushing me up.

  I began my ascent up to the surface quickly finding a rhythm of step, move arm, step, move arm until it became subconscious. I felt suffocated in the constricted space, I could barely breathe in the damp, heavy air that weighed down on my lungs.

  “Woah,” I said as my foot slipped on the rusty, cracked ladder.

  “I got you,” Lauren put her hands on my back to brace me just in time. I could feel a weathered toughness to her hands that made me believe that she had done things like this dozens, maybe even hundreds of times.

  I continued climbing up the ladder for what seemed like hours until we finally reached the top. “Just pull the latch and open up the hatch,” Lauren said shining the light directly at it. I reached up to grab it, but then had a second thought, what’s on the surface once I open the hatch? What if it’s all a trap?

  I took a deep breath and opened the hatch. Immediately a blast of warm, dry air hit me, accompanied by the blinding rays of light.

  “There they are!” A man yelled out pointing at me. Scared I scrambled back down the ladder and into the darkness. The mind-numbing paranoia, took over, causing my body to succumb to the anxiety.

  “No, go up.” Lauren said gently pushing me upward. There was a sympathetic look in her glassy, brown eyes. But before I could move I heard the shuffle of feet pounding against dirt.

  “C’mon,” the man said his silhouette appearing over the hole, “This is not time for frolicking!”

  Disorientated I put a hand over my eyes to shield myself from the light, I couldn’t even see who was talking to me. But then a hand grabbed onto my wrist and pulled me up onto the steaming-hot, coarse dirt. My thin translucent gown blew in the wind and my hair gleamed elegantly in the light. He quickly ushered me over to a rather large white vehicle with windows all around. The propellers at the top spun madly kicking up dirt in a whirlwind around us.

  In a rush, the three of us hopped on to the sleek white floor of the vehicle and the door automatically slammed shut behind us.

  Shocked, and bewildered I stared out the window as we jolted upward unto the air. We had a bird’s eye view of a compound that had massive gray buildings, and a huge wall surrounding it. But besides that, there was nothing, but the vast expanse of dirt surrounded by a vast void of emptiness.

  I turned my gaze away from the window and toward the people that I could sense eyeballing me. At the center there was a tall, burly man casually dressed, with gray pushed back hair.

  I gulped, suddenly wanting to scream.

  The man looked at me with an expression of pure joy in his warm, brown eyes. He smiled and said, “Welcome to the White Knights.”

  Chapter 3

  The second I stepped foot in the aircraft I was blindsided by a short, slender girl who had practically tackled me to the ground with her forceful hug. My muscles tensed up, and I didn’t know whether to yell or push her head away that was sobbing with tears.

  “I missed you so much.” There was a heavy emotion to
her voice which signaled that I should have known her but responded with nothing but a panicked stutter.

  “Sit down.” The man with gray hair and a beard commanded in a voice just loud enough to get the caramel-skinned girl with silky, black hair to listen immediately.

  My eyeballs darted suspiciously around the aircraft. My hand trembled ever so slightly as I sat down in the leather seat behind me.

  What are these people going to do to me? A wave of fear trickled down my spine. Where are they taking me?

  I could feel the pairs of eyeballs silently gazing at me as the quiet lull of the propellers droned on. There was no noise besides the low whispers that the people in the craft shared. There were several people seated on metal seats that lined the edge of the interior of the aircraft, but I could still feel the tear-filled, heartbroken eyes of that one girl staring at me. At the front, there was a holograph projected onto the glass that showed our fuel levels, altitude, and speed.

  My heart beat grew faster as I gazed at all the white, fluffy clouds beneath us. It looked like we were just flying away into nothingness. None of it made sense.

  “Hello Natalie,” the tall, rough looking man from before looked me in my eyes as he said it. He had a well-groomed, but scruffy gray beard and a luscious mane of thick hair that was tied into a man bun. His warm brown eyes were inviting, but his intimidating build warned not to get too close.

  Who is he talking to? Natalie? Is that my name? “H-hey,” I said in a squeamish voice. The thumping of my heart was probably louder than the barely audible squeak I uttered.

  “Don’t be scared,” He walked over and held out a hand. I balked at the look of wild astonishment in his eyes, but calm expression on his face, “We are here to help. We’re all in this fight together.”

  I shied nervously away from his hand. What is he talking about? “What do you mean?” I demanded my voice suddenly growing in volume, “What fight? What is happening?”

  “Natalie,” He smiled, a look of pure excitement in his eyes, “it’s happening. The American people are revolting. The second Civil War is here. You did it! You shut down the mind control program, it worked!”