The Carrow Chapter 3

            I feel my body being lifted up and dumped onto a cold metal table. Rough leather straps shoot out of the edges and wrap themselves around my body, pinning me down completely. The fire of the poison spreads into my arms and I am struggling with my mind to stay in control, but it’s futile. With one eye half open, I see the professor with those deadly pliers, inching his way toward me. He’s grinning like a freak as he reaches for my toes. His fingers lash out and grab hold of my left foot, and before I know it, I feel like hell has descended upon me again. I can feel the pliers digging under my nail, clamping it, and then being slowly disconnected from my skin. He is deliberately working slowly so I can experience every excruciatingly painful feeling explode from my foot. Blood wells out of my skin and starts to create a puddle on the floor. He moves onto the next biggest toe. The pain is too much for me; I continue to scream and writhe uncontrollably, trying vaguely to kick his face, but of course the straps hold me down, and cut into my skin. I am powerless.

            He’s working on my other foot now. My left one feels numb with soreness and pain, and I feel fresh tears on my cheeks. My teeth feel tired from being clamped together so tightly. My hands are swollen after being clenched for so long. Everything hurts now, and the poison is still alive and dancing within me. Again, I can do nothing to stop it.

            Finally, the Carrow rises from the edge of the table and licks his teeth greedily. My breathing is shallow and I am gasping irregularly in short breaths.  What if he wanted to torture me again? I wince when he begins to speak, “Does it hurt Syren?” He whispers. I gulp nervously, too afraid to speak. “I’m going to make something even better for you. Something that you’ll never forget. I’ll make sure that you know who’s in charge here, and do as I say. So don’t screw up again.” And with that, he marches off into the next adjoining room from his lab and locks the door with a loud click. Right at that moment, the leather straps release themselves and I let out a ragged sigh of relief. The momentary hell is over now. And I am free to go. I try to lift myself up but it’s no use. So instead, I attempt to move my legs and kick them off the table. I end up falling completely and collapse onto the ground. My fingers feel a sticky substance and I realize that my blood is everywhere: I’m still bleeding. Slowly, I begin to crawl out of the room, up the long crooked stairs and into a broom closet where I keep all my extra cloth. Exhausted from my sluggish trek from the lab, I lean against the wall, still breathing heavily. My forehead and shirt are drenched with sweat. I feel slightly feverish. Remnants of the orange poison are still in me, but the majority of it is gone much to my relief. Finally, I force myself to sit up and reach for an old shirt and rip it into pieces, using it to patch up my feet and to staunch the bleeding. I do my best to avoid looking at my naked toes.

Afterwards, I just sit there with my eyes closed, trying to rest and to get a grip. I hear a clock down the hallway strike midnight and flinch. Then I remember that the professor is already finished with me today, and relax. Without realizing it, I fall into a dreamless sleep.

 

            I wake up from the sound of the Carrow’s voice, “Get up you fool. I want my breakfast.” I sigh. When would I ever get a real break from him? But I already knew the answer. Somehow, I am on my feet again and I begin to head toward the kitchen. On the way there, I look at the clock; it’s ten minutes to nine, which is good because now I have time to get the meds from the cabinet. Maybe this will calm the professor down. About fifteen minutes later, I’m back in his lab with his breakfast and wait for him to finish.

            “Syren, I think we need to do a bit of cleaning around here don’t you think?” the professor mumbles. “Especially that attic, I think there’s probably a herd of rats in there.” I start at the word “attic” and the professor notices this. “What?”

            “N-nothing. It’s just the rats, I hate them.” I say quickly. This is my chance! I couldn’t believe my luck.

            “Well what are you waiting for?” He says, “Go clean!” Before I know it, a rod pops out of the ceiling and pushes me toward the stairs. I almost run, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain shooting up my foot as splinters find their way into me. I am almost at the attic when I realize something. I should clean the attic last, so that the professor doesn’t notice I’m up to something. I decide to start in the kitchen. This place was a mess anyways. I begin to clean and scrub the entire place, lost in thought. What kind of map would it be? Who was Liam? Would I ever find the black cloak? So many questions run through my head, and before I know it, I’m at the attic. First, I just stand outside the door, wondering what I may find inside. Finally I push it open and immediately hold my breath. The stench of both dead and live rats wafts out of the room and I can hear the sound of tiny rodents scratching against the wood of floor. Relax, I tell myself, how many rats could there be? Before entering completely, I take one last fresh breath of air and throw the door open. I almost barf completely when I see hundreds of rats in all sizes. The attic is seething with them. I step back, too disgusted to continue inside when I hear the Carrow’s voice call out, as if he were speaking right beside my ear.

            “Go on Syren, I want you to clean every inch of this house, and that includes this room.” I jump. Then I realize that one of the speakers have moved out of place to come up beside me. I push it away and force myself to step in. All the rats are afraid of me and quickly crawl back into their hiding places between the walls of the house. Before I know it, most of them are gone. I grimace as my bare feet touch the tainted ground. It’s full of rat dung and there’s at least an inch of dust. Then I start to really clean the place up, and I lose myself in the work. I couldn’t stand the dirtiness of it, and every fiber in my being is telling me to get rid of it. Finally, after about three hours, I have cleared up the floor and I can actually see the wood. I suddenly remember my real purpose for being here and begin to frantically search the room with my eyes, looking for an old black cloak. There are only boxes in here, stacked up along the walls. I stride towards the box on the left and begin to open them. If the Carrow asks, I’m checking for dead rats. However, all I find are unidentifiable objects and old pieces of clothing, but not a black cloak. After a few hours of searching through the boxes, I grow exasperated and kick one of them. The box I choose to kick actually has a few boxes stacked on top of it and all of them fall down on me. Rubbing my head viciously, I unbury myself from the mess. That’s when I see it. The black cloak is wedged in the corner and is sticking out from under another box. I make a dash for it and yank it out. I search through all the pockets but find nothing. This is hopeless, I think to myself. There’s nothing here, and there never was. I gather the cloak into an angry ball and am about to toss it when I feel something strange protruding from the side of it. Heart racing, I search through it again slowly, and find a button that’s out of place. I slowly unfasten it and open the hidden pocket, revealing a thinly folded piece of paper inside. I carefully sneak my fingers in it and fish it out, hiding it under my shirt quickly, before the Carrow is able to notice anything. It’s here, my ticket to freedom.

            I hastily clean up the rest of the place and leave the attic, trying to hide the excitement from my face. It’s late in the afternoon now. I’m surprised the Carrow hasn’t called for me at all in the last few hours. He’s probably completely absorbed in another experiment, so I take this chance and hide myself inside a tiny closet. There’s a camera in here, but the place is so cramped that I can easily hide my hands from it. I doubt the professor would notice anything anyways. But I don’t have much time, so I take out the map and unfold it. What I’m looking at seems to be a diagram of some sort, it almost looks like a honeycomb, but there’s something familiar about it. I realize that this is a map of the professor’s lab underground. There’s a red line marking the trail that I needed to follow in order to escape. I trace it with my finger and feel my heart come to a stop. It ends at the heart of the Carrow’s lab, right where his desk is. There’s another line leading from it to a captioned area. This is your father's escape route in case anything goes wrong. It leads to an area south of the house into another part of the forest. There should be a tiny latch on the side of his desk that will open the trapdoor... I stop reading. How am I supposed to get there in the first place? The professor’s desk is heavily guarded and he’s practically always there. Except when he sleeps of course… A plan starts to form in my head. The professor sleeps in a room off to the side of his lab. If I could only disable the traps around his desk while he sleeps… I would be out of this wretched and foul place… right? But the whole set up seems too easy to me. Shouldn’t it be harder than this? Besides the obvious death traps involved, I don’t feel completely confident about carrying out this plan. I continue to read the rest of the message: Wait for Liam’s signal. He will disable the traps for you. Now it really did seem too easy. And who was this Liam? And what kind of signal would it be? So many questions begin to form in my head, and I’m not used to thinking this much; I’m only used to hard manual labor and obeying the Carrow’s ruthless orders.

            “Bring me my dinner Syren, what are you trying to do?” I jump, “Starve me?” I know the Carrow isn’t serious when he says that last part, but how I would love to watch him starve. I quickly fix up a plate of noodles and deliver it to him. As I’m leaving with the empty plate, I’m thinking about the whole escape plan and drop the plate without realizing it. The sound of the crash snaps me out of my thoughts and I hurriedly begin to clean up the mess. Suddenly I feel a kick on the back of my head and I’m thrown forward, my face colliding with a broken piece of glass. “Break another plate, have we?” I gingerly pick myself up and touch the injury on my face, slowly pulling out the fragmented pieces of glass. “But I don’t have time to punish you today, I’m busy you see. I’m building something that you’ve never even dreamed of. It’s a huge project that requires all of my focus, so I’ll penalize you another time. Just you wait.” He snickers and kicks me one more time before turning back to his work. As I’m cleaning up the broken pieces, I think about what he just said. What could it be, that won’t even spare him time to punish me? I also couldn’t believe my luck. Once again, I am spared from meaningless torture. But a cold feeling is rising in the back of my mind, what could it be…this new project of his?

Author's Note

Please read the next chapter!

Reviews

[_]

i love it so far! insane...but totally wicked enough to be my new bed time story :P awesome job!

[Coyote Poetry]

No weakness in this chapter. I like his plan to try to escape. Old Dad is thinking ahead of the plans I believe. Thank you for a excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Sylvia E. Lioness]

Uht Ohs...

[Megan Muirhead]

It is very good makes you curious...

[kathrina]

The story keeps getting more and more interesting. :)
I'm already wondering what's going to happen next.
Awesome job. :)

[Myrmidon]

hah. so far, you really know how to make a guy curious. ive got a good amount of questions for 3 chapters :P. what kind of person was his mom? who's liam? how could liam disable the traps? whats the project? etc. keep it up!

[nenestarrs]

The story is vivid and the dialogue is great. I enjoyed it. Good Job!

[Hachamecha]

:)

[Ice Girl]

WOW! That was really great.

[Lizzy]

Chapter 4! Chapter 4!