I'm still locked in the dungeon. No. Not me. My impostor is locked in the dungeon. I'm sealed inside a shell many miles away in some prison cell, forced to see, hear, and feel everything that the other me experiences. We've been here for weeks. It's been weeks since Mistress said she would come back soon. She and Elif had to do an easy job in Eatonton. Then she'd get me out of this dungeon where my impostor sits around day in, day out naked with a collar and a chain with 238 solid, heavy metal links rising up to a sturdy staple in the ceiling. She has started talking to someone that she imagines is in the room with her. At least, I can't see whoever it is or hear the other side of the conversation. My impostor is hallucinating badly. It happens to everyone in such isolating situations. It's strange because sometimes there are visitors to our dungeon and my impostor won't say a word to them. Then again, they are talking to me, not her. So, I guess, whatever.
Something must have gone wrong in Eatonton. The government people knew about Eatonton, because Mistress told my impostor and they are monitoring everything that I hear through her. Maybe Mistress is in jail or dead. It's been too long.
It's dark. I can't see anything. I guess my impostor is asleep. I wish that I could move, but I know that I am in a shell. My arms and legs are gripped tightly in tubes. Padding presses all around me, holding me in a tight hug, so I don't explode all over the place. Tubes are shoved inside me, fucking every orifice, eternally. I wish I could move.
I feel something cool and scaly slide across my leg. It makes me flinch and I try to bat it away with my arm. I can't feel my arm though. I roll over to my left and flex my torso. I twist up and around. I feel another scaly thing along my back and I jerk suddenly. Where are my arms? They are everywhere! Every time I move I feel a new scaly thing slither up against me, stealing my warmth. I try to stand up and run, but I can't find my legs. They feel like they are fused together. Something heavy drops around my neck. It slithers across my shoulders. Help! Someone help me!
A light comes on. Snakes! Everywhere! I want to push them away, but I don't have arms. I jump, but I don't jump, I uncoil. I don't have legs. Help!
This has to be a dream! Calm down, Heartless! You are in a shell in a prison in your impostor's head. Wake up! I am not one of Mistress' pets. This is a dream. Wake up!
-
My impostor has been lying staring at the ceiling. I haven't been paying attention. Not until now. The ceiling is different. We are in a different room. Wait! Maybe I'm not seeing what my impostor is seeing, but rather I have awoken from the shell and I can't move because I've been mummified for so long.
I hear a noise behind me. An upside down face appears wearing a surgical mask. All I can see are large, cold, featureless, black eyes staring back at me. A small flashlight shines in my eye for a second. Ouch! I feel a sharp pinch on my cheek.
"She's out," the masked face says. "Shall we begin with the operations?"
A second masked face moves into my view. Another set of alien eyes.
I feel my heart start to beat heavily. They are not looking at me. They are looking at my impostor. She is not me. She is not me.
"Let's start with her arms," the second face says and moves away.
What's going on? Get me out of here! Please!
The second face moves into view again. She raises something that looks like a hacksaw. I feel a cord being tied tightly up in my armpit and over my shoulder. Oh, shit!
"Right tourniquet is in place," upside down face says.
"Start the suction," second face replies. I feel my arm pulled out to the side. No!
The hack saw lowers down to my arm. I feel the blade start to slide across my skin. Cutting.
No! I'm awake! I can feel! Don't do this!
I hear the blade begin to rattle against the husk of my bone. A stream of blood sprays across the face mask of the doctor. I'm screaming loudly in my head, but all I hear is the steady rasping of the saw. Back and forth. Back and forth.
-
Guards enter the room. I'm feeling fairly clear headed at the moment. I think that they are really there. This is not another nightmare. My impostor seems clear-headed too. She kneels, passively, as they chain the heavy steel ball to her collar. They drape a long heavy robe over her shoulders. This is the first clothing she has touched since she arrived. Her arms are fed through long, loose sleeves. The robe opens in the front. There are no fastenings so it doesn't really cover anything when she stands with the steel ball held tightly in our trembling arms.
My impostor is escorted through the corridors underneath my Mistress' mansion to a large subterranean, dimly-lit room. Thirty or more spandex clad women are sitting quietly on a set of wooden benches rising up like bleachers.
My impostor is taken to a large chair in front of all the guards. She sits and drops the steel ball on the ground at her feet. She straightens up and pulls the robe more tightly around her.
The bleachers and her chair are facing out into the opening of the room. There is a wooden podium standing next to a pit. Some sort of machinery is set next to the pit as well. Most notably there is a wide tube snaking down into the darkness of the pit.
I hear a door open. My impostor turns to see Mistress walking in. She is wearing black robes with a black lace veil covering her face. My impostor gasps in relief. I feel tears of joy in my eyes. She is still alive! But...
Mistress walks to the podium and pulls the veil up over her face.
"Eatonton should have been an easy job," Mistress says looking out among the members of her guard. "But as you all know, it went badly wrong."
I get a sick, guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"That would happen, I suppose, when there is a spy in our midst."
My impostor sits still gazing plaintively at our Mistress. How could she be so cool? Maybe she doesn't even know that she is the spy.
"I'm sad to say," Mistress continues turning her eyes down toward the floor. "That today we must commit the guilty party to become a Soft Inside." I see Mistress' eyes rise from their gaze at the floor and stare directly at my impostor.
I'm struggling inside my shell, flexing against the mummification. Mistress has figured out that my impostor is a spy! This will be the end of my impostor! That's good!
But, that's not good. My Mistress thinks that my impostor is me.
Mistress raises her face towards the assembly and raises her voice. "Bring in the traitor!"
What? I'm not the spy?
Schulz walks in. She has a black patch over her left eye. She is holding a chain attached to the collar of a second woman, who is stumbling along constrained by a tight, black, latex hobble skirt and ballet toed boots.
They move to the edge of the pit where Schulz forces the woman to turn and face the assemblage.
The woman is dressed entirely in black, heavy rubber. Her arms are apparently wrapped around her torso and held tightly in place as though she were strapped into a straitjacket. Her head is covered in a thick hood. Canisters, like a gas mask, are positioned on the hood at her nose and mouth. Coils of long, black hoses hang down from the canisters. Two wide ovals of clear latex cover her eyes which are darting frantically, fearfully, seeking empathy, underneath the lenses.
"Elif!" Mistress says loudly. My impostor gasps. I gasp. "You are sentenced to become a Soft Inside for your act of treason, for endangering the lives of the members of our organization, for endangering the ideals that we live by, for endangering the very dreams of millions whose freedom and livelihood depend upon the services that we provide and the cause for which we fight!"
Elif is shaking her head back and forth. I think that I can hear a murmuring sound coming from her.
"Personally," Mistress continues, "I am disgusted that you would do what you have done. You were part of my inner circle! Perhaps, I have been too trusting!"
Schulz begins to uncoil the tubes attached to Elif's heavy, rubber suit and fake them out across the floor.
"Elif," Mistress continues, "I strip you of your name! From now on you will only be number 8. And like the seven before you who are scattered around this very room, you will spend the rest of your life in this pit... and it will be a long, long life. The organization will keep you warm and fed, clean and healthy. The machines will stimulate you - some would say - mercilessly. And the concrete will hold you in its uncaring, unrelenting, dark grasp forever more. You may jump in the pit now."
I definitely hear Elif's scream now, muffled somewhere deep inside. She seems to have no intention of simply leaping into the pit. Suddenly, I realize that Elif is looking directly at me and pleading. My impostor is tense. She frowns, but otherwise remains motionless.
MY stomach feels upset. I can't believe that Elif could be a spy!
"Fucking coward!" Mistress says and makes a motion towards Schulz with her hand.
Schulz hits Elif sharply in the sternum with the palm of her hand, knocking her backwards into the pit. As she falls, Schulz grabs the lower hem of Elif's hobble dress and pulls upward so that Elif enters the pit and a pool of wet cement head first.
Schulz grabs a pole off the ground and begins to push Elif further into the cement until only her boots are sticking up. Schulz then turns on the machine and more cement begins to fill in the rest of the pit. Three other guards begin pulling the tubes that will keep Elif alive and attaching them to outlets on a stand embedded next to the slowly filling pit. The stand has a large red number 8 emblazoned on its side.
Elif's sentence has been carried out.