2016-08-02 - spike - Trapped 1

Author: spike
Title: Trapped
Date: 02 August 2016

A while ago I complained about some of the stories being incredibly badly written.

You've all seen what I mean, not using quotes, spreading an entire conversation into a single paragraph making it very difficult to follow who's saying what to whom at times, stuff like that.

Someone replied "I don't see you writing anything" or words to that effect (can't find the comment now)

To which my only retort was "I can write, but I just don't think I can come up with anything good for here" or something similar.

Well, I've been writing a book, actually on the second one now, about a schoolboy who finds he can travel across time. Different timelines, just by shifting the way he sees things so he sees a "corridor" of slices of each reality, walking down it means walking to these other places, other could-have-beens, and as I couldn't resist chucking some slavery into the story... It's not erotic slavery, the main character is only fourteen at the start but I figured what the hell. Might be a few ideas in there you'll like.

* * * * *[/align]


Chapter 5

Mike stared at the phone in irritation as it continued to ring until the call cut off. Then he dialled Greg’s mobile.

“Hello Mike, sorry. You know what they’re like.”

Mike sighed. “Where’re they dragging you off to this time?”

“We’re going to see some really interesting wax dummies in period costume with fake piped in smells. Jorvic centre in York. Boring as hell as usual.”

“While if you were here you could see real people in period costume with genuine smells. Typical innit. Ah well, I’ll have to go alone this time then.”

“See you tomorrow. You can take me for a proper look around then.”

“I’ll do that. See ya Greg.”

He nipped downstairs to check where his mum and dad were, went back upstairs, got changed and decided a shift and step in the bedroom to get around being seen by them followed by the full walk once he'd sneaked out. He wanted to see what they got up to at the weekend, was it business as usual, a day of rest and relaxation or the enforced torture of church and bible bashing?

He dug into the pocket and was pleased to find a coffee sachet and scrap of paper.

Once out on the street he dropped his trusty old horseshoe, followed it, picked it up, took an extra step and shifted back. As expected, the road was cobbled, little children were playing in the street, a few families were walking down it in what he presumed was their Sunday best. He looked down at himself.

“Well, not gonna be following them, not dressed in work clothes.”, he muttered to himself

Instead, he walked up the street, onto Park road and up towards the town centre from the other end.

For the rest of the morning he acquainted himself with this version of his home town. As he'd suspected many of the main roads were where he remembered them but a lot of the side streets and passageways differed. He identified the tailor's shops and cobblers he intended to plunder for the completion of his outfit, found the market hall significantly different to the one he knew but in the same place, remembering that the old one had burned down in the 1970s in his world. Unfortunately, everything was closed, not a single sweet shop, newsagents or cafe was open in the whole town and it was clear the concept of the supermarket was alien to this world.

“Looks like they haven't got shot of religion here then, that's one more bad point. Have to come back tomorrow, see what else I can find out once everything's open.”

He headed home, got to his front door, then paused… Wrong world to get into here, there was no way his key would fit. He began drifting. The street remained relatively unchanged for a few seconds and then a sudden transformation occurred and he was on a street with tarmac on the road, proper pavements and doors that changed colours by the second. He paused his drift and tried his key in the lock. It worked so he quickly scrambled upstairs into his room and drifted the rest of the way, stripping out of his costume as he went.

He bundled the shirt and trousers around the horseshoe again and shoved it back under the mattress before getting back into his regular clothes, then as an afterthought decided to nip back into town. Having seen it in a completely different world to his own he wondered where the similarities lay. Obviously the older buildings and streets but he suspected he might see his own town in a completely new light now.

“Just going into town! I'll be back later” he called to anyone within earshot before slamming the door behind him and heading back up Park road.


* * * * *

Barker was just leaving a shop he'd lifted a new hoody from when he spotted Mike walking down Yorkshire street. He ducked around the nearest corner, grabbed his phone from his pocket and started dialling.

“Hyde, get up to town. The freak's here and I want him cornered, get the rest of the gang up here too, he's a slippery little bastard.”

He tailed Mike for over an hour, the freak was just staring up at buildings for some reason. He wasn't paying any attention to the shops themselves but seemed more interested in the floors above the shops. His friends caught up with him about half an hour later and he concocted his plan.

“Everyone take a different street leading to this one. Make sure he sees you so he turns and attempts to get away, get him cornered in that back alley over there. It's a dead end and no-one'll see us beat the shit out of him there.”

With a brief “Yeah boss” from all of them, the hunt began.

It was Hyde who made himself obvious to Mike first. He noticed the runt was staring up at another building, looked down, saw him and then briskly walked in the opposite direction. He turned a corner and was out of sight for a second before he re-emerged from the side street and began running away from Hyde again, Griffiiths in hot pursuit. Then he skidded to a halt again and ran directly into their trap. All three of them met their other two friends at the head of the alleyway with Mike at the end staring at a blank brick wall. He turned, a look of sheer terror in his eyes.

Barker started cracking his knuckles as he approached.

“You got away from me on the last day of school. I want to know how. Tell me and I'll only take your wallet. Refuse and we'll all put the boot in, you little freak.”

“I hid in the drainpipe alcove around the corner as you ran out and legged it across the fields once you'd left! Now can I go?”

“Oh, I saw you walking across the fields! I watched the whole thing! I saw you disappear! TELL ME HOW YOU DID IT!”

By now, Barker was almost nose to nose with Mike, Mike shrank into the wall as if he hoped it would somehow absorb him.

Barker drew back his fist and just as he was in mid punch, a millimetre from breaking Mike's nose, there was nothing there but a brick wall. Barker let out a yelp of agony, gripped his hand and sank to his knees as his punch followed through with full force against the brickwork, hearing a couple of squeals and the sound of panicked footfalls behind him.

* * * * *

Mike fell backwards. He had no idea why or how, he just turned and blinded by panic, ran for his life. He didn't know how long he ran before he came to his senses enough to realise he was running through the corridor. Was it the panic? Was it the fear? Was it some kind of self preservation that triggered his ability? He had no idea. All he knew was right now, he wanted to get as far away from Barker as possible, so he continued running until exhaustion forced him to a slow trot.

Eventually he was forced to stop to catch his breath and he finally took the time to survey his surroundings. Where he was, the corridor looked a bit like the alleyway he'd fled from, brick coloured walls, tarmac floor, blue skies. But up ahead things took a dramatic change. The walls became more ragged, the sky a looming darkness and the ground looked much more uneven.

Curiosity got the better of him and once he'd caught his breath, he walked on until he was in the middle of the ragged section before shifting back to normal vision.

The scene that unfurled before him was one of utter devastation. The walls of the alleyway he was in had collapsed revealing the insides of the buildings they were meant to enclose. He scrambled over piles of masonry and brickwork until he was back at the head of the alleyway. Everything was in a similar state, as if bombed into oblivion years ago. Weeds and trees were attempting to grow in the rubble but even they looked sickly. Overhead, the clouds loomed black and threatening. Then he noticed how cold it was. It felt like the middle of January, not August.

Shivering, he zipped up his jacket, pulled up his hood and huddled his arms to himself as he began to explore, determined to find some clue about what happened here.

What shop fronts he recognised were faded and charred as if a massive fire had swept through the whole town, he turned to look at the top end of Yorkshire street to see a broken “C&A” sign and a shop with lots of charred figures inside. He recoiled in shock until he realised the melted and deformed forms were shop mannequins.

“C&A?” He mused to himself. He was sure he'd seen a very old C&A bag in his house but he thought that store had closed back in the '80s. That certainly helped narrow the time of change down at least.

He started noticing a pattern to the damage, most being from some huge blast but the walls facing Manchester were the ones with most of the fire damage. He crawled over another mound of debris, slipped at the top and tumbled down the other side to land nose to ribcage with a skeleton. He yelped in fright and scrambled away from it.

This continued for a while, crawling over rubble and looking into shops until he eventually found a shop that appeared to have escaped the worst of the blast and fire damage. The windows were still gone but the insides seemed mostly to smell of water damage, obviously from the years of rain leaking through the roof. Inside one of the back rooms, still wrapped in a protective cellophane was a stack of newspapers.

He tore at the wrapping and grabbed one from the middle. The paper was a little soggy but the headline was still legible. The date in the banner was 23 Mar 1982.

WORLD WAR 3!
USA and USSR in nuclear standoff. Could this be it?

The rest of the page was pretty illegible. “Shit!” Mike started worrying about radiation. “They did it! They blew it up!”, considering the dire situation, he couldn't help smirking at his little joke. “I'd better dig up the tricorder, check myself for contamination, might need to dump these clothes and have a serious shower when I get back.”

Examining the rest of the pile, most were in a worse condition than the first he'd picked but he managed to glean that the story stoked the fears that a nuclear war was imminent, obviously correct for once. If this was the last newspaper published then he had his exact date or near enough.

If there was a radiation risk, it would be prudent to get home now, but he couldn't resist checking out further down the town. He continued his scrambles and exploration for a while longer when he walked around a corner and ran almost headlong into a group of soldiers. He recoiled in shock and began to turn. One of the soldiers shouted something unintelligible. Just as he had his back turned and was about to leg it, his body stiffened. Pain lanced through every inch of his being, he collapsed curling into the foetal position. The last thing he saw was three soldiers standing over him. Before he blacked out he noted that they all looked Chinese, then, darkness engulfed him.

* * * * *

His head pounded, every inch of his body ached. Even his bones ached. He groaned and opened his eyes.

It was pitch dark, he was lying on something. He felt a blanket over him but the pitch blackness hid everything else about his surroundings. Slowly, ever so slowly, he regained his senses. The aches and pains began to subside as he woke up.

He groaned again “Where am I?”

He heard a few clanks of metal on metal, a few creaks. Someone was snoring in the distance.

As his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, a dim light illuminated the scene from a barred window opposite. There was a bunk bed opposite, next to it was a ring on the floor. A chain snaked up under the bed covers.

“Where the hell AM I?”

“Zhe daodi shi ta zai zuo shenme?!”

“Wha?”

“Guanshangle nanhaile!”

“Ting zai jinzhi shetou shuohua, fouze women duhuizoayang”

Voices were whispering with what sounded like urgency from their tone.

“I don't understand! Who are you?”

Suddenly, a creaking above him indicated someone was moving in what must be a top bunk, there was a rattle of chains as a figure dropped down beside him, clamped a hand around his mouth and whispered very quietly in his ear.

“Listen lad, if you don't stop talking in English we're all going to suffer for it, nod if you understand.”

Mike nodded.

The hand slowly removed itself from his mouth, something felt odd about it.

“The masters don't permit us to speak English! They demand we speak only in the official language, that's Chinese. As if you didn't know that already.”

“I...” Mike lowered his voice “I don't know any Chinese… How the hell did this happen?”

The voice took on a worried tone. “This is prison camp 13. Cong shuimo zhen district. Where are you from boy, that the language spoken by the entire planet is unknown to you? I saw you being dragged in and stripped, I've never seen clothes like that before.”

Mike considered his words carefully. He couldn't tell the truth could he? But if the whole world was ruled by the Chinese in this reality how could he lie? There was no-where convincing he could claim to have come FROM. His mind was in a whir.

“Tell me boy! NOW!” the voice whispered urgently.

Mike sighed. “Can we just say the universe is a lot more complicated than most people think? I'm not from here. I'm from a place where the cold war ended, there was no World War Three, the USSR collapsed, east and west germany reunified, even russia got some kind of democracy. Heck, even though China's still a communist dictatorship, even they've started to embrace a bit of capitalism”

“You're talking nonsense boy”

“OK… Look, I'll try again. Time isn't a straight line. It's more like a tree. It branches into an extra plane of what could have beens. I'm not from here! I'm from a different branch on that tree. The terrifying thing is I don't know why I AM still here! When they zapped me with whatever it was and I lost consciousness, I should have drifted back to my world!”

“You're not helping yourself boy”

“I'm telling you the truth, and my name is Mike.”

The figure shifted uncomfortably, reached down, pulled aside the blanket and grabbed Mike's right ankle. With a shock he realised he had a metal shackles attached to both his ankles.

“From now on the only name you will respond to is Yi-erwusiyisan”. Say it!”

“Yee erwustysan? That does that mean?”

“Say it again, that is your name now until the day you die, Yi-erwusiyisan”

“yee wusisan”

“NO! Yi-erwusiyisan, Yi-erwusiyisan!”

“Yi-erwusiyisan. What the hell does it mean though?”

“That is the slave number embossed onto your shackle, that is all you are now, as are we, slaves, you do what you're told, you eat when they tell you, you sleep when they tell you, you work when they tell you, you even shit and piss when they tell you. if you disobey they will punish you and you do NOT want to be punished, trust me. 1 2 5 4 1 3 is the only identity you are permitted here. So get used to it.”

“How can I obey commands I don't understand?”

“IF you’re telling the truth about not being able to understand or speak Chinese, we'll have to spend a portion of our sleep time teaching you. Until then, boy, expect a world of pain. I'll try to explain to them that you're a simpleton, that you can't talk, maybe as a result of the tasering. Whatever you do, boy, do NOT speak any English within earshot of the guards or anyone else not in this cell! As we're in the same bunk, our chains will be attached for the work crew, so just follow my lead until you can manage on your own. And if you DO get punished, expect us to be VERY unhappy with you because when one in a cell gets punished, the whole cell suffers the same fate! Oh, and if it turns out you’re lying, don’t expect to survive the week!”

Mike heard a few whimpers from around the room as they realised they were going to start suffering more than they already were because of some strange child.

The figure climbed back up onto his own bunk. “Now sleep, boy, you'll need it. Work begins at dawn and continues until they damned well please, and that can often be after midnight depending how happy they're feeling.”

Mike lay back on the cot his mind in turmoil. “How could this be happening? How can I be trapped here? Why haven't I drifted? And now I have to spend the rest of his life as a slave? As nothing but a number embossed onto a shackle? And what about my family? My mum must be tearing her hair out, it has to be after midnight and I was meant to be back home at six.”. He curled up into a ball and wept himself to sleep.

He woke up with a scream in his throat and a hand over his mouth.

“Wake up boy!” the voice whispered, “You were screaming in your sleep.”

Mike opened his eyes blearily and recoiled in horror at the sight before him.

The man holding his hand over his mouth was horribly deformed, the right half of his face was an angry red and he was completely bald. A few scabby sores peeled on the red side and his right eye was a solid milky white. He looked down noting the redness extended down his neck and faded to a slightly less angry pink at the neckline but continued down his chest.

The man noticed and turned his head away as if ashamed. “Sorry, I didn't think, should've given you some warning.” He removed his hand when it was clear Mike had woken up, his hand too was angry red and missing two fingers.

“What happened? Did they do that to you?”

Light was beginning to stream through the bars of the window, illuminating the room.

“Get out of bed boy, the guards will be here in a few minutes, now what is your name?”

“Could you say it again?”

“Yi-erwusiyisan! Repeat it to yourself until it's the only name you know, Yi-erwusiyisan. Now, get up! Stand by your bed and when you hear the guard approaching, stand to attention, arms by your side, head down. And remember, do not speak, no matter what they do to you. Cry, scream, sob by all means, but no begging for mercy. English is forbidden.”

Mike noticed everyone else was now standing by their beds, they were all naked and bald. Several had ugly burns or growths, missing or extra fingers or toes, one even had a withered right arm about half the size of his left one. Each had steel manacles, shackles and collars connected by chains about 2 feet long. Each also had a longer chain connecting their right shackle to a ring on the floor by their bed. He looked down at his wrists, they were free right now, he examined the shackle around his ankle, giving the chain a tug. It was an almost flawless one inch thick metal ring about 4 inches from top to bottom and he could see no join. A sequence of Chinese symbols was etched onto the front of the metal for all to see.

“How is this locked?”

“It's permanent, once it clicks on, the mechanism inside can only be unlocked from the inside. They like reusing their equipment so when a slave dies they remove the feet, head and hands. Those shackles can never come off while you're still alive.”

Mike recoiled and tried to pull on the shackles harder. They didn't budge, seeming completely solid. “Oh FUCK!”

“Think of today as the easiest day of the rest of your life, no work for you today. You'll be taken this morning for“

“ZHUYI!” a loud shout came from outside the door.

The man instantly shut up and stood to attention, as did the rest of the room. He nudged Mike. “Attention, feet together, arms to your sides, head down, NOW!”

Three striplights along the ceiling turned on, the door burst open and six Chinese guards entered. Two guards moved to the back of the room, two to the middle and two to the front. They stopped, turned to face forward and stood to attention.

Then a seventh entered, barking “LIAN TUENHUO!” at the top of his voice.

The guards immediately began disconnecting the chains from the rings on the floor and attaching them to the next slave along. Within five minutes, all nineteen men were chained one to the next by their left shackle.

“YI-ERWUSIYISAN! XIANG QIAN YIBU!”

Mike looked up in confusion recognising his “name”.

“YI-ERWUSIYISAN! XIANG QIAN YIBU!”

The man next to him gave Mike a nudge but he didn't know what to do.

The guard became angry and repeated the command a third time, then shouted something incomprehensible at the two guards at the front who immediately walked up to Mike, disconnected his chain at the shackle, grabbed him by each arm and carried him out of the room.

He heard the lead guard shouting and the man replying in a begging tone. The guard seemed to calm down a little and said a few more things and then Mike heard the rattle of chains as the rest of the room filed out behind him.

The guards carrying him turned right as they left the room and Mike noted another three rooms with identical doors, a set of double doors lay open at the end permitting a freezing chill to blow in. He shivered as they marched outside. They were in the middle of a heavy hailstorm as the guards marched him across the square. Naked, terrified and in serious pain from the battering of the hailstones, Mike closed his eyes and sobbed.

They took him into a larger well appointed two-storey building where he was unceremoniously dropped to his knees in front of another pair of guards. He collapsed and curled up into a ball, continuing to sob and shiver uncontrollably, desperate to conserve whatever body heat he had left. The guards talked for a minute and then he was dragged into a room, the door slamming behind them.

Mike looked around in a panic, the room was sterile white, the only thing in it being a large wooden chair with strange metal attachments on the arms, legs and backrest. This time the guards held his arms and forced him to remain in a kneeling position, staring at a blank wall. He was staring at it for a long time when another barked command was issued from behind him.

“YI-ERWUSIYISAN! SHOUBÌ!”

He didn't respond and the command was issued two more times before the guards forcibly held out his arms. The guard who'd been barking orders in their dormitory stared into his face and barked the command again. Mike responded in the only way he could, with a total lack of comprehension.

The guard nodded, appearing to be satisfied and before Mike knew what was happening, a pair of metal manacles identical to the ones he'd seen the other slaves wearing was deftly snapped around his wrists. He noted that there seemed to be some kind of mechanism as they snapped shut but once they were on, he could see no sign there'd been any join or hinge. “Permanent he'd said. SHIT! I REALLY AM STUCK HERE! I've GOT to find a way home!”

Mike looked down at his new accessories, when with one final shock he felt a metal collar snap around his neck. His hands shot up involuntarily as if to tear off this new unwelcome restraint when he felt a boot in the small of his back kicking him over. The boss guard barked another long stream of what seemed like gibberish to the other two guards in the room and stalked out, shouting down the corridor for something.

The guards again grabbed him, dragged him over to the chair and seated him in it, forcing his arms onto the armrests, his head back and his legs against the chair legs. Something clicked, he felt it in the backrest, he tried to move but all his new metalwork appeared to suddenly be glued to the chair, he could barely move an inch and yet the guards proceeded to tightly fasten a leather strap across his chest before leaving, rendering him even more immobile.

Again, another wait. Again Mike had no idea how long he was just staring at a blank white wall for but it felt like hours.

“Yi-erwusiyisan” It was a matter of fact tone, as if someone was just flipping through paperwork and ticking him off a list.

Mike looked up and around as far as his restraints permitted. A man in a white coat had entered the room from behind the chair. He heard a buzzing sound and felt a clipper removing his hair, then his eyebrows. He began sobbing again but the shaving continued unabated. Then he felt something smeared onto his head and a razor removing the rest of his hair before finally something that felt like liquid fire was rubbed into his scalp and where his eyebrows had been. Mike recoiled in pain. “What are they DOING to me?”

Again he heard a buzzing sound. This one was higher pitched, softer, quieter.

“Oh god, WHAT NOW!?”.

The man in white swabbed his chest with cleaning alcohol. Mike looked at him curiously and then in horror as he felt the needle begin to hammer into his flesh. He stared as the characters formed, appalled.

Finally, the tattooist finished, wiping his handiwork with another alcohol soaked swab and slapping a patch over it. Mike grunted in pain. He'd noticed the characters before the patch covered them. He could only conclude one thing, it was his number. His name. And now he was marked with it forever.

一二五四一三 [/align]

And again he was left alone to contemplate his fate. Was this part of the process? Making him stare at nothing for hours on end to think about what he was becoming or were they just busy processing more new inmates? Mike was getting desperate, they were turning him into something, something he didn’t like one bit and he could see no way out.

It was daylight when Mike was finally carried back out of the building but he was met by a sight he hadn’t been expecting. A crowd of people was gathered all around the square. What looked like hundreds of them, all wearing what Mike thought were called “Mao suits” after that Chinese leader’s favourite fashion, all in chains. Instead of walking back towards the hut he’d come from, he was marched towards the centre of the square where the chain apparatus he’d passed earlier had been moved to.

There was still a chill wind blowing and appeared to be a dim daylight. The thick threatening clouds seemed to be a permanent fixture here and seemed to be absorbing all the heat from the sun and most of its light. Mike began shivering again only this time it was more from fear than the cold.

The boss guard entered the square and proceeded to give a long speech, obviously whatever was about to happen, Mike wasn’t going to enjoy it and it appeared, he was going to be made an example of.

His manacles were attached to the chains dangling from the frame and his leg chain attached to a ring on the floor, then he heard a cranking sound as the chain was raised, stretching him out. His feet were off the ground and the leg chains taut when he heard the first crack of the whip.

The first lash stung, by the sixth, he was screaming, he lost count after that. Finally the whipping came to an end but his torment was far from over. He waited, dangling like a slaughtered cow, naked in the freezing cold. His arms screamed in pain as he was left there. Every breath of icy wind stung his back and added to his torment. Eventually, he stopped shivering, he began to feel a welcome warmth, his mind began to wander, what was that feeling? It felt nice.

Just as Mike was about to pass out from hypothermia, a new searing pain erupted in his back as the guards poured something onto it. He instantly snapped awake and screamed in agony.

When the chain was finally lowered he collapsed onto his knees sobbing, but he’d taken the man's words to heart and managed to resist crying out for them to stop. He looked down at the floor and with alarm saw blood dripping between his feet.

Despair gripped him, he gave up, whatever happened from now on, happened, he just didn't care any more, he was a slave, a number, something no-one in this world gave a shit about and he was stuck here. Probably for the rest of his life.

Those were the last thoughts to pass through his head before blackness engulfed him and he collapsed onto the icy ground.