17. Circeei’s Day

Christian slid along the bed until he fell from it. He immediately stood up on his legs and looked through the window to see total darkness outside. But there was enough light inside for him to notice that there were many inscriptions inside the room and also a symbol of cross. The walls seemed to be made of some variety of mud and the colours were all brownish and silver. There was the smell of spicy food around, and a few books were around, but none of them were made of paper.

“So you are finally awake” a voice from the darkness inquired.

Christian turned to the door to see the lady who was on his right side in the torture chamber. She was wrapped up with so many white bandages on her body that the very little silver clothing made her look like an Egyptian mummy covered in silver. She was moving with the help of two walking sticks and from the way she looked, there seemed to be some trouble with her eyes.

“You are alive. It didn’t seem so at that time. There was so much of blood loss and your whole body looked mutilated. The thought of the pain which each part of your body might have endured made me wish that I was dead rather than go through all of those” he said.

“Of course, I am alive. They never really had enough to kill me – it is not that they never had the power, but they wouldn’t make death easy for me, and that helped me in bailing out more than once. As you can see, I am still standing”.

“Who are you? What is this place and what kind of demons from hell are those creatures? Or on scientific terms, what kind of miserable sadistic aliens are they?”

“You can call me Circeei. It is not my real name though. To be frank, I never really had a name. Throughout my life, I have been known by code names, and they have slowly developed into Circeei replacing those 2s with Es and the 1s with Is, and as you might already know, it stands for the Goddess of Magic, for that spell which I have to cast for these people to save them. I was just born when myself and my parents were taken prisoners of war from the beginning of the third world war when the Northern Bloc became the most powerful of the superpowers. We were separated and we children were put in their experimentation cells. The plan was to create super-soldiers to change the direction of the war, but unfortunately for them, the war ended too early. But, they came up with a better plan later to increase our endurance to hostile environments and make us the first creatures on Titan. There were nine hundred of us, forced to run around under different test environments. As our survivor skills were tested, only three hundred and fourty eight of us remained”.

“But all the concentration camps in the Northern Bloc were decommissioned. The human rights groups checked each and every corner of the globe for anything that remained. The Northerns were even applauded for being the first Bloc do so and in the most efficient manner”.

“There lies the irony in it. They were the greatest champions of human rights on Earth, but on the Moon and later on Mars, they brutalized us with no mercy. One has to wonder what they call humans on another planet – aliens? After we were declared the slave champions who were to test the underground of Titan which could support human life, we were chained and taken into one of the largest space ships ever built, and were sandwiched between their code-signalling machines in the basement so that they eight thousand men and women from the Northern Bloc could use the vast world inside the ship and see us live in that underground and learn” said Circeei showing the writings on her body. “Some of the faded signs do go a long way back though, and I don’t want to talk about it” she added.

“These are codes? The secret transmissions which the Northern Bloc denied existence? So they planned this throughout. No wonder they were so hostile in claiming most of Titan. They must have always knew there was scope for pure life in the underground of Titan”.

“Unfortunately for us, they could hide all of these from the media. They literally own Titan. They could even hide this big a spaceship with the help of signals from Titan. They could also jam any signs of life here. What you entered was actually the entrance to this giant ship which covers the original entrance to the underground. It is not just a ship, it is big enough to be called one of the districts of the Imperial Bloc. I am actually surprised that they allowed your Bloc to exist here. I feel that you might slowly disappear from the map sooner or later. This symbol seen on your clothes of your Bloc on this planet might slowly be erased like our very existence were erased from the world, and there are so many things they can blame it on, including a little human negligence or a natural disaster of high level”.

“I should go and warn the others of my camp then. Some of mates have also gone to a Northern Settlement. From what I hear from you, none of them might survive”.

“You can’t go out right now. They might be outside. They are incredibly powerful in the darkness. We are effectively trapped out here. Lets see if we can work out a plan. We are going through desperate times even as I have seen worse. Even the concept of hell has remained just a word for me, as I have gone through most of it in reality, in this life itself”.

There were strange screams outside, but none of them seemed to bother Circeei. Despite of her lack of steadiness and the bandages, she didn’t seem to be in a mood to sit or take rest. There was a strange determination of the highest quality on her face. Christian was never this much affected by a revelation before, and he was keen to hear more about this new world of terror.

To be continued…

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15. Partner in Agony

Christian hasn’t always been a patient listener. But this time, it was not his decision to make, and another thing is that this was not just a coversation, but a combination of so many things, and he was in need of something like this.

“It is indeed such a big shame. It was never supposed to be like this. They have made the devil proud, or rather too much of a vain creation that he himself might repent before these guys do. The power is within you, either use it or leave it; but keep this in mind, that the redemption is limited. You do not need to know yourself for that. You shall be revealed, by your actions to others and by your reflections on others to you, for you are a mirror, my spiritual ally – the world won’t finish accepting that change with your end, as it is a long process which can gain more strength by you ceasing to exist and your essence living on and gaining wings through an Icarus of the future who shall burn his waxen wings for the cause which you are going to start in this world”.

“How would I know if I am right? What if I do wrong? What if I won’t recognize my life’s purpose when most needed?”

“Well, you don’t know it or shall recognize it right now because it is not the time yet. There is a time for everything and everyone, even for the angels and the demons. When the right time arrives, not only shall you recognize it, but live through it and fulfill your destiny. If you do not, there is no purpose for that essence in you, and in that case, there would have been no ‘you’ from the beginning of your existence”.

“But I am not worthy and neither am I able. I am just an adamant human being, a weak and powerless…”

“You shall be ready, and it is not a promise that I make to you, for it is that belief that your essence has embedded your existence with, it is your faith in you and it shall shake the world sooner or later”.

“Please make it simple. I need directions, I need to be taught and guided. Look at me, everywhere I have been in chains, and now literally I am really in chains”.

There was silence all around. There was not even the air which moved, and the absence was threatening his thoughts. But there was no answer. He tried to make different sounds, but not even his echo followed him. Nothingness filled his world again, and he was still unconscious with no knowledge of where he was.

In the meantime, he had another vision. It was the same girl, wearing the same clothes, but of black colour. There was no writing on her body this time. Two of the creatures were holding her down. She was then stripped, and her arms were stretched up, to the maximum. A whip came down multiple times to her back as it hit her flesh, she screamed and tried to get loose, but couldn’t even come close to success. There was a pool of blood going down her thighs, and it slowly moved towards Christian. After she was weakened, the girl was dragged to a wooden wall and was balanced on the top of a stool. One of the creatures held her upright while the other held on to her legs.

Another creature came up with a box full of nails and a hammer. She seemed to understand what was going to happen, and struggled to get loose again with all the power that she had left, but it was of no avail. As the hammer swung back and forth, the nails pierced her arms and a cry of agony filled the air, and her legs were looking for land to place them as the stool went rolling over to a side. As she was sweating and struggling to breathe, suddenly Christian found himself on the other side of the wooden wall, with blood flowing from his own arms. The nail from the girl’s arms had pierced his own, and soon enough he noticed blood flowing from his legs too. He felt pain as if he had never felt before with his heart beating rapidly, and his back burned as if a chunk of flesh had been taken out of there. They were on the opposite sides of pain and agony, both feeling the same torment, as if moving towards the same end. The wooden surface was the only thing between their sufferings, and it served as the medium which transferred their pains. Meanwhile, a humanoid came in front of him and stuck a nail on his head which ended the vision.

In a world of uncertainty, there were only a few things that his unconscious mind was sure about, and one of them was that he was not dead; the second one was that the girl on his right side had suffered, and he might be sharing her pains like a silent partner, close to eachother in a bond shared by pain and misery. He never had a good partner to share his mental pains, but now as for the physical torment, this was his golden opportunity. But can he ever know how much she had actually suffered? How much did he wish not to be silent when she suffered? And what if she had already died? If she did, what did she die for? Is it for her ideology or just for the sake of the sadistic pleasures of these creatures? Would that land her in heaven or purgatory? If someone had suffered in their life like that girl did, won’t that be motivation enough to be lead to paradise? He still hoped that she alive so that he can do the knowing part.

To be continued…