Novella
Chapter 2 of 17
After a while, the overhead light snapped on, flooding the room in a harsh glare. Two women stepped inside. Both were dressed in white overalls, buttoned tightly down the front, their sterile appearance a chilling contrast to the intent in their eyes. I recognised them instantly as the women from the car.
They introduced themselves with unsettling calm, outlining their backgrounds as if giving credentials before a procedure. They looked to be in their twenties, perhaps edging towards thirty.
Sarah, pale Caucasian with a faint tan, sharp blue eyes, and blonde hair, said she was a nurse at a hospital outside town. She refused to name the location. Her specialty, she explained without hesitation, was in the mortuary - assisting in dissections, establishing causes of death, and preparing cadavers for the undertaker. She spoke of opening bodies as though describing routine housework.
Sofi was Asian, maybe Chinese, darker complexion, piecing eyes and black hair, identified herself as a nurse in the neonatal ward, where she delivered infants and cared for fragile new lives. The contrast between her usual role and her presence here was jarring, almost grotesque.
I tried to speak, telling them I was pleased to meet them, but pressed them: why was I here, why was I restrained?
Sarah turned sharply, her expression hardening. Her voice was cold, clinical, and final:
“You have no right to question us. We ask. You answer. Only then will you begin to understand why you’ve been bound here. Do you understand?”
My reply was little more than a whisper: yes.
Sofi gestured around the room, her finger tracing the dim corners as if giving a tour of some grotesque theatre.
“You’ll notice the monitors,” she said, her tone disturbingly casual. “One mounted on the ceiling, like at a dentist’s chair, another on your left, and one more on your right. You’ll use them to watch what we’re doing - since you won’t be moving from where you’re restrained.”
The screens were huge, sleek fifty-inch panels - too polished, too expensive - more suited to a high-end lounge than this sterile chamber. Their presence only made the setting more surreal, more sinister.
Sarah’s voice cut in, colder, more matter-of-fact. “The room is wired with cameras - fixed along the walls, above your head, everywhere. Each of us also wears a head-mounted lens. Every angle, every detail, every moment will be captured.”
With a press of a remote, the screens flickered to life, bathing the room in a bluish glow. My own body appeared across them, multiplied, fragmented, displayed from every perspective - overhead, profile, close-up. The split screens made me a specimen under observation, dissected visually before anything else had even begun.
Then the images shifted. On one screen, glowing outlines traced across my torso - surgical cross-sections, skin peeled back to reveal muscle, ribs, and organs beneath. Another overlay dissected me virtually, highlighting arteries and bone, flashing labels as though I were a specimen in a medical textbook.
I was no longer simply restrained. I was catalogued, prepared, reduced to anatomy before the procedure had even begun.
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