It begins when you are loaded into a cage on a transport vehicle. You can struggle, you can fight, you can strike or bite, but their armor – or their ability to feel pain? – is impervious. You can try to hide, or you can try to run, but they will find you and they will catch you. All appeals fall on deaf ears. There is nothing you can do to avoid it; they will, no matter what you try, load you up into the cage, onto the vehicle.
And then they take you to the Place of Terror.
They unload you from the vehicle outside an imposing brick-and-glass edifice and bring you inside. They don’t bring you immediately to the Terrormaster to cower before her, of course. That would be too easy. They leave you in a cage in the Place of Terror for what seems like an eternity. Their bureaucracy grinds through your papers while they let you stew in suspense.
Eventually, they pull you from the cage, but soon you would give anything to be back in the cage, back on the vehicle, because each step of the process is worse than the last. They haul you before the Terrormaster; you are laid prostrate before her, under a burning lamp. Your vitals are measured and indexed. Your every orifice is scrutinized and roughly probed. Your blood and excreta are taken for analysis. You are catalogued and recorded by the Terrormaster’s assistants, as the Terrormaster herself watches on, observing the process with malevolent relish.
Soon, they inject you with unknowable chemicals. These are not chemicals of execution; that would be too clean. Perhaps these chemicals reduce your will to fight – you just want to get back in the cage by now, anyway, away from the Terrormaster. Perhaps the chemicals make the fear center of your brain fire uncontrollably, but it’s already doing that. Or maybe they just burn like fire rushing in your veins. Whatever they do, your own heart is complicit, forcing the chemicals to every corner of your body as it beats a drumroll – exactly as they intend.
In the end, they don’t kill you. Maybe that’s too easy for them, or maybe if they control your mind so entirely with fear then they don’t even feel the need to destroy your body. Once your terror has nearly consumed you, they load you back into the cage, back onto the vehicle. They transport you away from the Place of Terror, back to your home. There, you are set free again, and left to stew, always in the back of your mind that they will bring you back again to the Place of Terror one day: perhaps soon. It is impossible to know for sure; you can only wait in fear and trepidation until once again you will be forced to go on a trip to the vet.
And then they take you to the Place of Terror.
They unload you from the vehicle outside an imposing brick-and-glass edifice and bring you inside. They don’t bring you immediately to the Terrormaster to cower before her, of course. That would be too easy. They leave you in a cage in the Place of Terror for what seems like an eternity. Their bureaucracy grinds through your papers while they let you stew in suspense.
Eventually, they pull you from the cage, but soon you would give anything to be back in the cage, back on the vehicle, because each step of the process is worse than the last. They haul you before the Terrormaster; you are laid prostrate before her, under a burning lamp. Your vitals are measured and indexed. Your every orifice is scrutinized and roughly probed. Your blood and excreta are taken for analysis. You are catalogued and recorded by the Terrormaster’s assistants, as the Terrormaster herself watches on, observing the process with malevolent relish.
Soon, they inject you with unknowable chemicals. These are not chemicals of execution; that would be too clean. Perhaps these chemicals reduce your will to fight – you just want to get back in the cage by now, anyway, away from the Terrormaster. Perhaps the chemicals make the fear center of your brain fire uncontrollably, but it’s already doing that. Or maybe they just burn like fire rushing in your veins. Whatever they do, your own heart is complicit, forcing the chemicals to every corner of your body as it beats a drumroll – exactly as they intend.
In the end, they don’t kill you. Maybe that’s too easy for them, or maybe if they control your mind so entirely with fear then they don’t even feel the need to destroy your body. Once your terror has nearly consumed you, they load you back into the cage, back onto the vehicle. They transport you away from the Place of Terror, back to your home. There, you are set free again, and left to stew, always in the back of your mind that they will bring you back again to the Place of Terror one day: perhaps soon. It is impossible to know for sure; you can only wait in fear and trepidation until once again you will be forced to go on a trip to the vet.
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