Easy Shame

The intensity of this one was not like ones she had felt during her stay here before, nor could she locate a memory that could even hold a candle to this feeling. She could nearly see the blue light pushing the hair on her arms on edge, closing her throat, replacing the blood in her veins and pulsing at exhilarating speeds. Her eyes were raining, the tears that were bitterly traveling down her cheek almost as hot and painful. She could feel her teeth chattering together, her entire body shaking uncontrollably, her life being ripped away from her.

Despite what she had always promised herself, she cried out. She hated herself immediately afterwards, but could not stop such an involuntary action. She could almost feel the wicked smile of the wicked men who held her to the chair, could almost feel the joy as clearly as she felt this pain. She leaned her head back and suddenly smelled burning skin.

 

Then it was gone. Gradually, slowly, falling away, leaving her panting, eyes half-open, nonexistent stars dancing between the ceiling and her face. Her ears were ringing, her head pounding. Though she wished to face her captors, she could not bring herself to move. 

The sound of an electrical buzz lingered in the air, until the feedback of a microphone banged at her, making her grimace and pull into herself, her heart racing as her clear blue eyes ran to find the men whom had injured. Brown hair, glasses with a glare, a large white lab coat. She had never hated such simple characteristics so much. Were she not to a chair and were they not behind a glass wall, she would be tearing at them with her nails.

"Do you understand now?" The man leaned over a stationary microphone, his left hand pausing on a button. A blonde, similar to the speaker, paced in the back, studying her reaction. He must be some sort of psychologist, she decided. A shiver that had nothing to do with her recent pain went down her back.

"Yeah." The steadiness of her voice pleased her. "I understand." 

She didn't. She didn't want to understand. But telling them that only brought the pain up a setting, and this was something she knew her burning body could not endure. 

She had been taken in fifty-two times for questioning. Each she had gotten off, as her brother had always said, "easy." She remembered her first time, screaming and thrashing at five years old, crying for parents that were long buried and a brother who was hundreds of miles away. She could never identify that experience with easiness. Getting eggs from the store was easy. Passing her math test was easy. Skipping stones on a lake was easy. Being electrocuted within an inch of life was not easy.

"How old are you?" The man leaned over the microphone again, tapping it. Before he could repeat his question, she jumped in.

"Sixteen." She couldn't help the biting anger that she had been here nearly thirty minutes and he still could remember neither her name nor age. Before giving him the opportunity to ask, she called, "My name's Ellia Rasn." 

"An interesting name." He waved to the blonde to write it down, who sympathized with her by rolling his eyes at his dim-witted companion.

A smile began to cross Ellia's face, but she swallowed it. This man was analyzing her. She would not even give him the opportunity to see her emotions, let alone diagnose them.

The finger was taken off the microphone, and the two discussed what had just been seen and heard. Ellia watched the men's lips, trying desperately to read their words, but their lips moved too quickly, their heads turned too often. She abandoned her task and examined her empty gray room with little interest. Millions of people visited this room and ones like it every year. Could they not spruce it up a little bit?

But that was the point. The gray room, the glass examiners, the wooden chair with belt straps. It was all to make you feel hopeless and trapped. That was exactly how she had felt her first time. That was exactly what her parents had been when they died here.

Her gold hair was hanging in front of her face, and she blew at it to distract herself from the fact that she couldn't force herself into a sitting position. Had her waist and arms not been strapped to the chair, she would be on the ground.

The brunette half-wit left the room with the blonde examining her, the glare on his glasses hiding his emotion. Ellia used the mask she could pull out even with her hands tied to a chair, and matched his flat, emotionless gaze.

He finally leaned forward, putting his hand on the microphone. "You know why you're here." It was a statement, and a very firm one at that.

"Yes." She narrowed her eyes, hid the deceit. "Why are you bothered with it?" 

The man stroke his face in speculation. Rather than answer her question, he pressed, "Why are you here?"

"Because everyone comes here at least once." 

"Why?"

"To test common knowledge. Skills. To display corporal and judicial punishment on wrongdoers, so we fully understand the sentences we pin on murderers." These words had been drilled in her brain since she could walk. She knew all the statistics, yes, all the premade and edited reasons. But it was still not enough to satisfy her curiosity. 

"No." The man shifted his position, studying her. "I wasn't asking what you were taught. I'm asking what you believe. Why are you here?" 

Ellia examined him. Perhaps these were some of the last words her parents had heard. Still, she readily took the bait to speak her mind. "I think it's to keep population down. To show the power the government has over the people so they're less likely to commit crimes. And, to put it plainly, because you're wicked." 

He broke into a smile, but with hidden eyes, it looked awkward and fake. "You've still answered the question incorrectly, however amusing you may be. I didn't ask why people were brought here. I asked why you are here." 

Ellia swallowed dryly. Nervousness rather than pain was making her stomach ache now, and her fingers twitched involuntarily as she studied him. 

"You see, Ellia, you're so fascinating." Taking the mic with him, he fetched a manilla folder and sat right on the table next to it, flicking it open and glancing through it. "What's the normal age for questioning?" 

"Twelve. But people can be brought in younger. Some have even been brought in at five years of age." 

"No." He smiled at her again. "Not some. Only one." 

Another dry swallow. 

"Your recorded appearances here have always coincided with not only your birthday, but also your brother's and your late parents', am I correct?" Before she could answer, "And you've been questioned much more often than your brother, and actually, you're one of our most questioned guest; at your age, you're questioned three times more frequently than everyone else in your age group. And"--he took off his glasses and rose, holding up a document--"unlike all others questioned, you are never asked any direct questions that do not involve your name, age, or understanding. You have received the test zero times." He stepped up to the glass, holding the paper high above his head. "You have endured the hardest electrical shocks for the longest amounts of time without death in your age group and many others above you." His unveiled green eyes flicked to her, smiling. "That would take a pretty strong person, eh?"

Ellia's heart skipped a beat, but for all the wrong reasons. This doesn't prove anything, she tried to remind herself, though she hated lies. She watched his steady hands set down the paper in glee, and imagined how much her numbed hands must be shaking. She tried to hide her fear, but she had never been challenged like this before. She tried to focus her eyes on him though the world was spinning in her terror, and spoke as boldly and as pointedly as she could.

"I suppose." Her voice failed her this time. She looked at the floor, swallowing nothing but air down her desert-dry throat.

She had fallen right into his trap, and she knew it before he spoke the words. She anticipated them, braced her twitching, numb body against it, but the words still cut all the same. "Would almost be supernatural. Couldn't you agree?"

He knew. They must've always known. This must be how her parents died. This must be how she would die.

The tears came again, so easily, augmenting her pale skin. She didn't care about keeping up her facade anymore. She wanted to be back home, wrapped up in blankets in a nightmare, and wanted it to stop. And it was stopping. Everything was stopping. Time was stopping. Her heart was stopping.  Her life was stopping.

What a shame. That's what they'd say, back home. A poor little girl died in examination room. What a shame. She must've missed a question. Only sixteen years old. Her whole life ahead of her. What a shame. 

Begging felt as if it were below her, yet she decided to try. "Don't." He had set down the microphone and was walking towards the panel that controlled the amount of electrocution she was hit with. Her heart had long joined her throat, the two throbbing together in horrified unison.

"Please! Stop it!" 

He looked up for a moment, suddenly amused. He pulled the microphone to him by its chord, then hit the incom button.

"You know, your parents died here. And by here I don't mean just in an examination room. In this very examination room." He looked around, a bit of an ominous smile. "Sort of funny. We've never had an entire family massacre in one examination before. We'll get your brother after this, if he hasn't done away with himself beforehand." He set the mic down and turned up the setting.

Suddenly Ellia could move. Her entire body jumped, her back arching in pain. She was positive now the light was visible, and she could almost feel her insides being ripped apart by the burning, could feel her entire body begin to disintegrate. 

"S-stop!" She could hardly make out the words through her quivering, already blue lips. The man had replaced his glasses and watched her suffering blankly. Psychologist? More like a murderer. 

What a shame.