A Test of Patience

Ivaila’s eyes were pooling up and spilling from all the yawning. She hadn’t slept in almost two weeks and she didn’t know if she could take it much longer. She had been taken to The Cage for isolation from the outside world and They had never told her why. She had been told that it was for her own good and that if she tried to escape, horrid days would follow on the outside. This led her to being here. Ten days with no sleep because she was just too scared that They would do something to her family if she lost focus. Focus on nothing really, except staying awake. That was what They had told her. If she lost her family, she lost her soul. If she lost her soul, she lost her being. Losing her being meant becoming a ghost, a zombie, whatever you want to call it. She was just hoping that she would see her brother, mother, and father again one blissful day.

The room was an inky black, and Ivaila’s eyelids were slowly sliding down her eyeballs, but she kept slowly lifting them up. Her eyelashes were heavily weighing down the eyelids but if she lost her focus now, she would lose her family forever. She couldn’t risk it. Or was she being too paranoid? Maybe They wouldn’t do anything to her family and were just trying to scare her.

So she leaned back making her final choice, and just as her lids were about to softly touch, closing the curtain to the outside world, keys jingled and a man stepped into her room wearing a white suit that filled the room with light.

“Ms. Thatcher, you have five minutes left, and then your family will be safe and you will go back home,” he said in a firm voice.

But it was too late, her consciousness flew away and she drifted into a deep sleep.