1 5 years ago
"Hey, get up," The man tapped the girl's cheek twice to rouse her.
She slowly opened her eyes, the chains shackled to her limbs creating loud, clanking noises as she moved.
Once again, she woke up to the same scene. The same hell, day in day out. The familiar grimy walls. Walls that had bared witness to her pilfering days. The rotting smell of corpses and the faint waft of herbs had already slightly dulled her senses. The dark cell only lit by one oil candle. All that was left on her body were tattered rags that once resembled a simple cloth to cover herself with but was now riddled with holes, traces of blood and other unknown substances.
"Stop wasting time Glenn. We need to hurry up and leave this area before those blood of vermin get here," A woman from the other side of the room chided the man in a saccharine-like voice.
The girl, already used to their words, knew the title 'the blood of vermin' was used by them to refer to the vampires, "Start packing all the papers, we can't afford to lose any of them. Really now, I wonder how they found our whereabouts so quickly?"
She glanced at them through her half lidded eyes. Both the man and the woman looked similar in their features. The pair having reddish-brown hair, dark eyes and faint freckles spread across their cheeks. They were clearly, very much, siblings.
"Olivia, did you hear that? We get to leave soon. Are you happy, hmm? You get to leave this dreary cell for a change," Glenn slowly caressed Olivia's hair. Olivia did not reply neither did she move away. She couldn't even if she wanted to as the chains made sure for it to stay that way.
It had been 7 long years since Olivia was first brought here against her will. In other words, kidnapped. She was a lowly orphan that had been scouring the streets for years, eating whatever she could find. Of course, she had a good head between her shoulders and was not tricked to come here, like how other girls may have been in those fairy-tale stories parents tell to scare their children. She was simply hit around the head, unguarded, and dragged here. Before she knew it, she was chained up to a stone bed.
From that day on, each and every moment, she was forced to go through pain and torture.
The reason? Her kidnappers were witches and not just the normal kind. They were well versed in the forbidden arts and had a mad pursuit for making new potions and spells, Olivia being their best test subject.
Of course, she had tried her best to escape before in the past. But that attempt was what killed the humanity inside of her. That was when she had found out that people only care for themselves and would not go out of their way to help others. Especially at the expense of themselves.
[5 years ago.]
After having made herself look as if she had passed out from the numerous expriments performed, Olivia lay on the stone bed while Miran, Glenn's sister, decided to leave as she needed to go and collect an important ingredient for one of the potions that they had been waiting to make.
Usually before an experiment, the siblings would give Olivia certain drugs so that once they took off her chains, for better access, she would be sluggish and wouldn't be able to move around.
Unfortunately for them, on this particular day, the drugs wore off earlier than they had expected. It appeared that over a long period of time, Olivia had, somewhat, built immunity to the anesthesia they had repeatedly pumped into her.
In a rare moment of trust, the siblings decided to chain Olivia once she awoke and left her limbs free for movement believing that even if she was awake, the drugs would deter her from being able to do anything.
Once Miran had left, Glenn no longer had anything to do but to wait for his sisters' return. He just sat there, looking through the day's observations that they had noted down. There was no entertainment, no reading of novels, nothing that could distract the siblings from their goals. In Olivia's eyes, it was more than passion. It was downright obsession.
After a while, Glenn took a quick peek at Olivia to see whether she really was unconscious. Although he saw no signs of movement, he couldn't put down the niggling feeling in his chest, so he stood up and walked towards the stone bed where she lay.
Olivia at this point was very much conscious. She lay unmoving, praying for Glenn to pass by. Glenn, however, stood above her silently. He continued to stare at her until he lifted his hand and gave her abdomen a hard pinch. It took all of Olivia's willpower to not scream out in pain at this moment. Her mind raced with a million thoughts to keep the pain at bay, at least until she had assuaged whatever suspicions Glenn had.
She successfully continued to lay there, unmoving, as if she were an inanimate doll. Glenn took this as a signal and put his suspicions to bed, deciding to finally relieve himself in the toilet outback.
The reason why he took such precaution was because whenever one of the siblings needed to go and relieve themselves, the other would guard Olivia for fear that something might go wrong if left unattended. Seeing that Olivia was still unconscious, he decided to quickly finish his business then return.
Once he left, Olivia finally started coughing from the pain she had held in. However, there wasn't time for her to dwell on this. This was her chance. Her only chance. She cautiously looked at the door that Glenn had left through. Although he left the door slightly ajar, it didn't matter. Olivia quietly tiptoed to the front, slowly opening the door bit by bit so it didn't make any alarming noises. Once the gap was big enough, she slipped through and made a run for it.
The siblings were too secretive to hire any guards, neither did they want anyone to catch any hints about what was going on, so the only people here were themselves and Olivia.
Once outside, the glaring rays of sunlight hit Olivia's eyes first. Although painful, she didn't have the luxury to stop and adjust. Instead, she continued running until she reached a nearby village. The cell where Olivia was held, was hidden behind bushes and shrubs at the entrance of a small forest, near an inconspicuous corner. Olivia did not know where the nearest village was located neither had she recognised her surroundings, rather, she chose to continue running frantically.
The further away, the better. As she desperately ran, the sweltering heat and the summer breeze swept past her face. If it was any other day, she would've stopped to savour the moment, unfortunately, this was not the time.
After running for a while, Olivia was panting, the soles of her feet were bloody with grass and twigs digging into the soles of her feet. Her hair was unkempt and the tattered rags on her body looked about a few seconds away from being blown to pieces by the wind.
She caught sight of a middle-aged woman carrying what seemed to be her daily groceries in her wooden basket. Tears welled up in Olivia's eyes as the thought of finally being able to taste freedom, came at an arm's reach.
"Miss! Miss! Please help me! I need help, I've been kidnapped, please call the local guardsmen, quickly! There are witches and-," Before Olivia could finish her hysterical encounter, the woman harshly tugged Olivia's hands off her arm, hurling her to the ground.
Olivia bore the brunt of pain from being pushed and looked up at the woman, confused.
"You dirty thing, why are you bothering me? What do you want? Kidnapped? Why would anyone want to kidnap a thing like you? Look at you, all in tatters, with blood and filth on your skin. You look like an orphan. If you're hungry why don't you just say so instead making up such a story. Huh, kids these days. Here, I brought some apples earlier and that blasted shopkeeper seemed to have given me a rotten one," The woman rambled, spitting out various words without pause. She then threw a rotten, mouldy apple at the pale-faced Olivia when she had finished.
Olivia let the apple roll past her. She shook her head as she desperately went to grab the robust woman's clothes, "No, Miss I really need help! These people… no, these witches they-," Once again, before Olivia could finish her speech she was harshly pushed away, this time by a big burly man.
"Deli, do you know who this is? Why does she keep on blathering about witches?" The man fired questions at the woman named Deli after having watched the whole encounter by the side. His inquisitive mean eye roamed Olivia's body. In his eyes, she was a thing to judge.
Deli quickly became panic-stricken and profusely denied, not wanting to be associated with the witches.
She wasn't really paying attention to Olivia's speech before, merely thinking that the child was making up a sob story, but now that the topic of witches was involved, the woman's mind quickly started to spin to avoid being labelled as such, "No, of course not! I don't know where she came from! She just pounced on me like an animal! Maybe.. Maybe she's a witch."
The man looked at Olivia with disdain and abhorrence.
"If she's a witch then we need to burn her at the stake. We can't let disgusting creatures like them roam the land, or do you want another happening of 'Gail's Night'?" At this point, Olivia had already lost all hope. The hopeful light in her eyes had significantly dimmed.
She came here in order to beg for help and be saved from her plight. Instead, she got labelled as the very same people who had kidnapped and tortured her for the past 2 years. It wasn't as if Olivia didn't think of the consequences of speaking so freely about witches, but at the time she was frantic and just wanted someone to help her.
She thought the people would be kind and help her escape the evil, help save one of their own, but reality begged to differ.
Before Olivia could continue the rest of her thoughts, her body automatically scrambled up from the ground and ran back the way she came, before the man and woman could tie her to a stake.
It was better to be experimented on than to be dead.
It seemed no one could help her here. If no one could help her here, then who could? Would she have to continue being a puppet, some sort of disgusting rag doll for the witches to experiment on?
Olivia aimlessly walked, a few people came across her path but they all steered clear away from her as if she were an infectious disease. Neither did Olivia try her luck again with another person. Soon after someone stood in front of her, blocking her path.
"No one helped you, did they?" Glenn asked with a pitiful, sympathetic look on his face. She knew however, he was far from sympathy, perhaps glee was better suited for the emotions he was currently presenting.
"Why do you think I didn't immediately chase after you? That's how your people are. Humans. Always selfish and always greedy, yet cowardly to not help their own people. Tsk, tsk, tsk," He looked at the emotionless and torn Olivia. Her eyes completely devoid of anything.
"I like you, Olivia. How about we keep this little incident to ourselves, hmm? You know how my sister is once something doesn't go her way. The one who would be punished isn't me, but you," Olivia didn't comment, nor did she reply.
Her mind continuously replaying the earlier encounter. She allowed him to drag her back to the same dark, dreary cell. He securely tied the chains around her limbs once again as she stared blankly at the ceiling.
That all happened 5 years ago. Since then, Olivia didn't try another attempt at escaping again. What did surprise her though, was that Glenn really did indeed keep that incident a secret from his sister.
Although from then on, having learnt his lesson, he became more cautious and made sure to tightly secure the chains each time as well as giving her a slightly higher drug dosage, lest a similar event ever occurred again.
From that day, she no longer harboured thoughts of getting any outside help. It appeared to be futile. From this, she had learnt that she could not rely on others. On humans. This, however, did not mean that she didn't want to escape her prison. Contrary to what one might think, Olivia was just biding her time for an opportune moment which seemed to be fast approaching.
