Short Story: The Factory

Pounding. Was it the pounding of footsteps that I heard? Or the beat of a nervous, anticipating heart? I didn’t want to open my eyes, not prepared to see what lay beyond the confines of my mind. Somehow, I knew the sight of what was about to be seen would not be pleasant. Then it dawned on me. I had not heard footsteps or an erratic heart beat. It was my head that was pounding as if a sledgehammer was persistently knocking into it.

The shock of this information forced my eyes open. I glanced around, bewildered. Where was I? Suddenly, it was my heart that was beating like it was my last day on earth. I racked my brain, trying to put all the pieces together. My memories of any day prior to this one were crystal clear, yet as soon as I tried to recall what had happened today, my brain seemed to shut down.

Slowly, I assessed my surroundings. The room appeared to be a cross between a classroom and a bathroom. A chalkboard rested against a wall, and desks and chairs littered the floor, but the tiling had the distinctive air of a bathroom. There were also no windows, adding to my suspicion that it had once been a large bathroom.

There it was. A door. My path to freedom. As soon as I opened it, I could escape this horrible room. I yanked harshly on the door handle, yet, as my luck goes, it wouldn’t open.

I ruffled my hand through my silky brown hair, something I never ceased to do when worried. On the back head, my hand was met with a large lump. It instantly reminded me of my pounding head, but there were more pressing matters. How could I get out of here?

A pungent odor suddenly reached my sensitive nostrils. I turned around, trying to discover the source. My eyes connected with a tray of food, the finest food I had seen in a while, but that was not what had caught my attention. Instead of filtering the room with the smell of a juicy roast, the food made the air so strongly metallic I could taste it on my tongue. Where had the food even come from? It was certainly not here when I had first awoken. How could someone come in here without me noticing, especially as I had been standing right by the door?

I frowned, racking my brain for an answer to this puzzling question. There must be another exit, I realized.

Another glance showed me what I had missed priorly. A note. My curiosity spiked, momentarily causing me to forget about the mysterious second exit. I walked over to the plate, wanting to inspect it. Before I could take more than a step forward, I tripped over a chair, and stretched out my hand to brace myself for the fall. It grazed one of the tiles opposite the door, and something very peculiar was set into motion.

Several tiles appeared to melt, and before I could so much as blink, they turned into an eerie, narrow passage, littered with cobwebs and flickering lights that barely illuminated it. Discarding the note, I bent down, slithering into my path to freedom.

Hunched over, I embarked on the journey through the tunnel. It led steeply downward, quickly exhausting me. Within minutes, I was panting heavily, my calves and knees screaming in pain, begging me to stop. I didn’t know why I was here or how I had gotten there, but my instinct overpowered my body’s desire to stop. I had to get out of here.

Once the passage had reached a dead end, I was drenched in sweat, my chest heaving as it tried to expel the carbon dioxide from my body. I dragged my hand across the tiles, hoping that was the appropriate cataclysm for what I had achieved before. The tiles turned into liquid and seemed to seep into the floor. I crawled through the minuscule opening apprehensively. Had the other end of the secret corridor really been that small?

The hallway I crept into was pristinely clean and deserted, an antithesis of the state of the passageway. Not even a speck of dust was on the shelves, not a single cobweb was suspended from the golden chandeliers. The hallway was immaculate and surrounded by splendor.

Hoping my poor sense of direction would not hinder me, I turned left, my heels the only sound to break the hallowing of silence. Soon I reached a bronze door. For some inexplicable reason, shivers creeped up my spine and sweat gathered at the edge of my brow.

When I had fully opened the door, something in the atmosphere had shifted. The familiar metallic perfume rotted the air. And this time it was much stronger. This room was the opposite of the hallway I had left behind. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all a monotonous grey, and dirt and dust shrouded the every inch of the furniture.

As my eyes took in every detail of this room, I stepped forward, carefully leaving my arm on the door handle to prevent it from closing. This single room could fit my house in it several times.

Suddenly, my eyes fixated on something at the end of the room. There were moving figures, a quiet murmur infiltrating the room. Foregoing all my precautions, I stepped forward one more. The door slammed shut behind me, but I didn’t care.

I was in a trance, the figures slowly advancing on me. They were so intriguing, all I could do was run up to them. Once we were face to face, I noticed how they were dressed in all black, a hood with slits for eyes covering their faces. It was a group of three.

In a split second, the person on the right struck out. His club met my head, and all at once, everything was black.

The next thing I knew, my eyes were opening once more. I had returned to a room much like the one I originally woke up in, but everything was different. The desks and chairs were gone. The only thing suggesting it could be the same room was the blackboard on the far left, and the mismatched tiling on the floor.

“Not quite so free now, huh?” An eerily familiar voice sneered behind me. My neck snapped back so fast that the crack echoed out loudly through the room.

“Where am I?” Why are you-“ I protested, prior to being cut off.

“Look out the window,” the voice drawled from the shadows. “What do you see?”

When I glanced out of the window, sparks of information were flung at me all at once. It took me a minute to make head or tail of them.

“Are we in the deserted factory outside Brookland forest?” I inquired, yet the answer was branded into my brain already. There was no way I could forget the place I had spent many happy summers in.

The figure in the shadows nodded. Though I could not see her clearly, I knew her face was shining excitedly, much like it always did when she was triumphant. How could I not? She was my best friend after all.

A wave of calmness washed over me. Somehow, ever since I had woken up here, my emotions were out of control, as if someone else was steering my body.

“It’s ok Alena, you can come out now;” I whispered monotonously, when all I wanted to do was scream, “Just know that when you do, when you confirm you are the one who kidnapped me, and took away my memories of today, the last shred of our bond will be snapped like a thin tree branch, never to be fixed, ever.”

Taken aback, my so-called bet friend stepped out of the shadows. Though I had tried to prepare myself for this moment, it was in vain. I gasped as soon as sunlight from that tiny window hit her face. Fearing the worst, before it even happened did nothing to stop my heart from plummeting into my feet, or prevent betrayal and disappointment flood my veins.

“Before I lock you away, Mina, I’m going to tell you what is going on. I knew being a scientist would come with a price, but please know, I never wanted to hurt you,” Alena explained a hint of desperation breaking through her calm, emotionless demeanor. Though I tried to fight the war of emotions in my head, my heart, or what appeared to be every fiber of my being, I could not keep the tears at bay. They rolled down my cheeks silently as I listened to my captor’s story.

“You know I’ve always wanted to be a scientist, my interest in anything of that sort never lacking enthusiasm. So, several months ago, I finally perfected a chip, which gets inserted right behind the left ear. It allows me to control that animal or person. Before I jeopardized anyone’s health, I inserted them into animals, of course, and once my plan was fool proof, I enacted my commanders to kidnap any child between the age of sixteen and twenty. Young and fit, they are the perfect subjects. You’re the only fifteen-year-old. So, I started inserting the chips into humans. And you’re the last person we need. As an army of eight, the seven experiments and I will go to the government and have this approved. Then all crimes, homicide, and lies will be vanquished. We will live in peace and happiness. There’s just one small price to pay. After a couple days living with the chip inserted, the soul of a person will be gone. The younger you are, the quicker it happens,” Alena said, her eyes staring off into the distance as she got lost in the story. Then she turned to the guards, all friendship between us forgotten. “Commanders, Mina has heard the entire story. Take her to the cell. Now!”

“STOP! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” I bellowed venomously, finally understanding why I could not control my emotions, “Someone who steals a soul is a thief too!”

The commanders unlocked my handcuffs, and dragged me into a cell across the hall. They shoved me in prior to locking the door. Promptly, I sat down on the floor and began to weep.

An immeasurable amount of time later, when my eyes had shed their last tear, I examined the cell, only for a scream to escape my throat. I clasped my mouth shut quickly, trying to avoid attracting attention.

I glanced back at what had caused me to scream in the first place. There were six other people in this tiny cell, all fast asleep.

Gently, I shook them awake, a plan forming in my head. When all my cellmates were awake, we swapped names, and I spoke, my voice raspy from all the crying. “We have to get out of here!” I declared, voicing my mission.

After we cleared up any confusion, our plan was as good as it could get. We would sneak out of the back entrance and sprint to the safety of the forest, with me in the lead as I had been here several times since the factory closed four years ago, spending joyous hours playing hide and seek on sunny summer days with my brother.

We waited for our food in silence, our hearts pounding as one. After what seemed like years later, it was time.

Bianca chatted away with the guard, and in some miraculous way, I succeeded in extracting his key without a hitch. He closed the door, the automatic lock clicking. The receding footsteps were the only noise in the hallway, the seven of us not even daring to breathe.

After several silent, motionless minutes, we all seemed to agree that waiting any longer would only endanger our operation. With all the speed of a turtle, I turned the key in the lock. Once heard a click, I froze, straining my eyes and ears for any sign that I had caused a disturbance.

When I was assured that no one had noticed anything amiss, I pulled the door open slowly, and gestured frantically for everyone to crawl out quickly. We made our way through the corridors, stopping at every corner in search of trouble, but everything was deserted.

Though we faced no trouble, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. It almost felt like things were going too well.

Just as I was turning to the right at the next corner, I noticed two shadowy figures making their way down the hallway, away from the exit and towards us. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and I quickly turned back into the hallway we were coming from. I gestured to the others behind me, and we pressed ourselves against the wall, as if we were hoping it would swallow us up. Once we had hidden as well as we could, all the energy seeped out of my body, as if someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub. I was flooded with a wave of anxiety, sweat pooling on my forehead and leaving my shaking hands clammy and useless.

I held my breath and closed my eyes despondently, begging for them to continue down the same hallway without looking our way. The footsteps and murmuring grew steadily louder, as if they were marking our impeding doom. My heart was jumping out of my chest, my legs shaking so violently it was a miracle that they were still supporting my body.

Unexpectedly, the footsteps began to recede as the unidentified figures walked away from us without sparing us so much as a glance. My legs stopped shaking, my heart rate slowed. I could breathe again.

“Come on,” I whispered determined once more, “I’ll get you guys out of here. Just keep quiet and follow me. If someone sees us, run and don’t look back.” Then, my mind went blank, as everything I had ever hoped for and wanted and loved was swallowed up.

There is only logic, facts, knowledge. How can you save lives, prevent hunger, betrayal, war? There is only one solution. Mina’s body leads the others to the left.

I hope you guys enjoyed this short little story I wrote recently.

I wanted to explore the dangers technology poses and consider whether or not human emotions should be sacrificed for the ‘Greater Good’. What do you guys think?

Thank you so much for reading this! I really hope you enjoyed the story. Check out my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/LisaEftimescu

Written July 22nd, 2020
Published January 11th, 2021