1 Prologue

I felt the sweat dripping down my back. The temperature in the room felt like it was at a zero degree. I felt a movement near me and I shrieked. I was going to scream out when I heard a familiar voice. I had forgotten I wasn't alone.

"We are all going to die," She sobbed. Her teeth were clattering.

"No. We need to keep praying and find a way out, Hanna." My own voice sounded strange to my ears. I don't know what made me say that because I was scared too and finding a way out seemed almost impossible.

"Do you hear that?" Hanna shrieked.

"Hear what?" I asked.

"Shhh." That was when I heard the footsteps. It sounded light, but as it came nearer it became more of a thud. Strange, I thought. Just then a sound of keys being jumbled was heard and the heavy metal door creaked.

My heart was pounding. We clung to each other as no one wanted to be left alone with the scary thing coming in. It was like together we were safe.

The door finally opened wide and light flooded the room. The sun pierced directly at our eyes. We squirmed our eyes and covered it with our hands. Two people entered the room. One was a young boy and the other was a heavily built man. That was possibly why I heard light and heavy footsteps, I thought.

"Please don't hurt us. We can give you so much money. Just call our parents. We swear we won't turn you in. Please," Hanna cried.

"Wha make ya think we want ya money?" The man huffed.

"James, keep a lookout on them. Keep the food. We won want them dyin yet." He smirked.

The boy called James kept the food on the ground and turned to leave with the man.

We cried louder. "Please leave us alone! Please!"

"Shut up!" The man roared making us silent and our cries muffled.

"Let's go son." They left and locked the door, leaving the upper part partly open. Perhaps, for James to see what we were doing.

It was then I looked around the room. It was a small room. With no furnitures. It was just bare and empty. The walls had become gray and were all cracked. The floor had also become beige due to lack of care. There was a funny smell in the room. I wonder what this room is for, I thought.

"Hmpf. Of course this is where they stuff people."  I didn't know that I let my thought out loud. The thought of people once being here made my stomach turn. What did they do with them?

We stayed quiet for what seemed like hours. James would peek in now and then. He warned us to eat the food. But none of us even looked at the food's direction. We didn't know what they put in there. At last he gave up telling us to eat, saying it didn't even matter whether we ate or not. That made us even more scared.

Sometimes, one of us would slowly get up and look through the upper part of the door. James would still be sitting there. We couldn't escape through it because it had metal bars designed across it.

"I feel weak Jameela," Hanna told me.

For the first time, I looked at her very well. Her usual sparkly eyes that always had eyeliner and different colours of eyeshadow because Hanna was always the one to experiment had drastically changed. Her eyes looked red and puffy from the cries. Her caremel coloured hair had become ruffled and full of dirt. She looked really weak.

"I know Hanna. The others would notice us missing and call for help. I'm sure. InshaALLAH we will get out of this freaking hellhole." I assured her.

"Help? Jam, what help? Yeah. Sure they would call for help and arrive when our bodies are already rotten or we have been eaten by these damn monsters."

"Don't say that. I feel exactly the same too. But I refuse to give up.

You know, I think I have a plan but I don't know if..."

"What was that?" She looked startled.

"What!" I immediately understood the voice even though he was screaming his lungs out.

"Oh my God. It's Joe."  I screamed.

"No. Are you sure? I mean it could be another man those sick psychos kidnapped."

The door was forced open and James and the man threw in a bloody person to the ground. His left leg was bloody and he was crying in pain.

"Joe. What did you do to him." We rushed at him. He couldn't speak and we all started crying again.

"What are we going to do with him?" James asked.

"He's gonna die soon. I think we should just end him. Go and prepare the kitchen," The man said.

"Oh I already did Dad. I said tha may be you woul bring someone." James said beaming from ear to ear as if he had just won his exams to make his father proud.

"Good, son." The man started dragging Joe and we all tried to stop him. He pushed us making us hit the hard concrete wall. We screamed in pain. Joe also tried to resist. That was when the man took out a long, sharp blade and sliced it into Joe's stomach causing a pool of blood to form and his stomach to open. His intestines fell out, half dangling from his stomach. Blood spurted out from Joe's mouth. He stopped moving. We fought to get up and struggled with them.

"Now!" The man shouted.

Just then, I heard Hanna scream and fall to the ground. I turned to her direction only to feel a hard blow on the head with a heavy object. I fell to the ground. My eyes became watery. At that moment, I saw the man take out another knife and plunged it in Joe's chest. He then turned the knife and gave James. Blood splattered everywhere. He dug his hands in Joe's opened chest and took out his heart.

"Hmm. This heart is healthy. I'm sure theirs are too." The man said beaming from ear to ear and opening his rotten teeth.

Why? He wasn't even struggling with you, I managed to let out. I tried to inhale and exhale but I couldn't. I started fading away. I'm going to die, I thought. My whole life flashed in front of me. I saw my Mom smiling while making her favourite pastry, my dad laughing on his couch while sipping his orange drink and reading a magazine. My siblings - Fatee eating from a box of chocolate, Muhammad watching a movie, Ibraheem studying the anatomy of insects he has brought from the backyard, and Sakna in from of her mirror having a face beat. My best friends, laughing and sharing jokes with me. That's it, I thought. My life is over. I'm not going to see them again.

The man dragged Joe causing an array of blood to follow and a sickening smell to form.

I slowly fell unconscious.