The moment I looked ahead with my eyes wide open from fear, I saw the group leader. In his bright blue eyes, there was a loneliness peculiar to fish living in a bottomless ocean."Don't sleep," he said—he didn't even linger on the words.
I didn't move, because my hair was being pulled as if it were about to be torn out by the roots. Through clenched teeth, I could only manage to say, "Let me go…"
"Then you too…" he said, staring at me with threatening eyes. "Do your task."
I swallowed hard and looked up at the top, and once again I saw that darkness. The tears streaming from my eyes made my skin tingle."I tried…" I said, clenching my hands into fists and bringing them to my eyes. Crying involuntarily, I murmured, "You didn't allow it. You didn't allow it…" My nerves had completely given out. "You didn't help me."
The man spoke, making it clear he wasn't used to such reactions. "No one can help anyone," he said. There was nothing in his voice except exhaustion.
A man and a woman standing right beside him were holding hands, watching the scene with familiar eyes.
The weary expression in their gazes seemed to pass from one to the other through their tightly clasped hands.
At that moment, the group leader stepped even closer to me. "Crying is not a solution," he warned, wagging his index finger in the air. "There is only one solution: fulfilling the tasks." After carefully forming his sentence, he fixed his eyes on a point behind me and waited.
In the background, I heard something like sobbing. The sound was coming from where the man was looking."Who's there?" I asked, but the group leader didn't react.
The others let go of me; the pressure on my arms disappeared.
Taking a deep breath and straightening up, I turned my waist and saw a woman ahead, crying with her knees pulled to her chest. My world was crushed beneath that image of helplessness. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I stared blankly. And yet my heart was burning. Somehow, I freed myself from the circle they had taken me into and crawled toward the woman… I managed to do it.
After swallowing as if trying to force down the weight in my throat, I asked, "What happened?"
The woman's hair looked so neglected that a feeling of pity filled me. As soon as she lifted her head, a pale, colorless face appeared.
The group leader and the other three turned their backs and began to walk away.
I was trembling uncontrollably.
"Why are you crying?" I had to ask again.
From then on, every crying woman reminded me of the lonely woman in that prison. My helplessness recognized hers. With the pain visible on her ashen face, she pressed her trembling hands to the ground."What you need to do…" she said, eager to explain. Her ribcage rose and fell lifelessly. But she, too, was out of breath. "The task… I…"
I nodded as if I understood. But I didn't.
"I don't understand you…" I said in the same half-dazed state. "I don't understand a single word. I…" My nerves broke, and as I cried, I barely suppressed my sobs. "I don't know why I'm here. Why, God, why? I… how could I have known I would come to a place like this? My mind… I must have lost my mind. Otherwise, how could I have chosen this place over my home or a hospital?"
I kept babbling meaningless sentences in front of her. The woman had stopped crying. Suddenly, my twitching left hand was caught between her pale fingers. The feeling of clinging to the last bit of hope in her light brown eyes took hold of me too. Her hands were cold. They chilled me. The darkness seeping in from above weighed down my soul as well.
"I have an advice for you…" the woman said, but I still understood nothing.
Even as I shook my head in confusion, I carefully turned my eyes toward her. I nodded—I wanted her to speak. The possibility that someone might know more than me mattered.
Stuttering, she murmured, "A-actually…" She clearly wasn't ready for this conversation either. "I realized it late myself, but…" Her voice now came out as a whisper. "Fulfill your tasks…"
"If I don't… What if I can't?"
Her eyes filled with compassion. I could tell, right before my eyes, that she pitied me.
Then, suddenly, something happened.
A violent noise erupted.
The moment I covered my ears, the parquet beneath where the woman was sitting rose, and a square opening appeared in the floor. As the chain of something resembling a small-geared mechanism inside the grate became visible, my heart began to race. My eyes shut reflexively. The chain rattled loudly, tearing the rust from my ears. The woman's scream scattered through the air along with the blood splashing onto the edges of the parquet.
Before I could even understand what was happening, I had already screamed, covering my mouth with my hands.
The floor closed again with overlapping grates.
The only thing left of the woman… was the mark her trembling fingers had left on my skin.
"Death," I whispered; the word seemed to catch in my throat. My lips had gone numb. "Death…" The word spilled mercilessly from my mouth once more. I was talking about that death I used to feel right beside me when I was depressed. In my state of shock, I couldn't cry or do anything else. The only thing I knew was this: I, too, had a task. And there was only one punishment for failing to fulfill it: death.