A Prison for Paradise - Gabrielle B-G (e books free to read txt) 📗

afraid to show them that I was resisting. I sat there and never moved. The lights bore into me. I don’t know how long I was in there. It felt like a whole lifetime. I saw things, beautiful things and terrible things but none of them were real. I remember that beautiful final moment. It was the end. The program shut itself off. I was in blackness. I was told to stand up and walk forward.

“Press the red button!” The wall said. “I was afraid, but I touched the wall and it opened to reveal a series of buttons and a window where I could see the people who were watching me. They didn’t look surprised, they didn’t look upset or anything. They looked right through me, I wasn’t sure. I only saw my own face reflected in their eyes. Was I always living in a false world? The torture and what I saw can be left to your own imagination. What I will tell is that the scientists were wrong. They thought I would become a slave to their false utopia.

The program was finally over so they stuck me in a metal room with four others. The others said they pretended they were blind. We quickly set to work on our escape plan. No matter how hard we deliberated, we couldn’t think of a way out.

If you didn’t contribute to the economy in any way, you were treated like scum and forced to live as complete outcasts. It wasn’t that simple to even be an outcast though because all citizens were equal.

We were treated like celebrities even in our own jail cells of cities. No complete “citizen” in America could go hungry. All the money was distributed equally to all who paid for freedom. Consumers were satisfied with their brainwashing products, and company owners were always fifteen steps ahead in society than the workers. Outcasts were slaves, garbage, discards of the new world.

So we figured since they thought we were brainwashed or stuck in fantasyland, they wouldn’t try very hard to contain us. The men came in one day and escorted us out of the cell through hundreds of other people. We faked the blind stare and pretended we could only respond to those commands. Other people were looking with disgust at us as they pushed us and tied up our hands.

One of the officers made a comment, “Don’t waste that strong rope, men! You won’t even need to.” Then he looked into my eyes, I almost blinked. He continued joking meanly.

“Are you sure about that? This one still has light in her eyes.”


Hidden In Plane Sight

“This one was on Level 2, there's no way she's still aware of her surroundings.” I wanted to scream. Then the guards shrugged and with mocking laughter untied our hands. We were led into some sort of metal cage. Once the wall we’d been pushed through started closing my heart was pounding. We figured no one could hear us now so we began to whisper what we thought we should do. The two boys thought we were done for. The other girl and I said that they were planning on drowning us like pests.

It was pretty easy to tell this was true by the fact that there was water dripping from the walls and the giant pipe behind and in front of us. It was horrible because we realized that there was no way for us to escape. The pipeline in front of us, that we were sure led to the dirty river they were talking about, was barred over. The other pipe, we guessed, was where the water would pour out from. It was also barred off.


There was only one solution. One boy was very skinny and looked like he could fit, with some work, through bars in the exit pipe. We decided to try to fit him through. He didn’t want to go in of course and thought it was a bad idea, but it was the only way. We thought that if somehow he could get to the other side, he might be able to open up the bars so we could escape. It was so dark that it was too hard to tell where anything was. The plan was so foolish at the time, but our insane desperation was what was driving us. It took a lot of twisting and turning and help before he got out.

He searched forever but could not find anything that would somehow assist in our escape.

“I’m going down,” he said.

He slid down the pipe, but all of the sudden we heard this big thump.

He yelled that the opening was sealed up and he was stuck inside. We screamed and yelled to him. Suddenly the pipe behind us began to stir. With a huge gush water blasted out it went straight through the cage into the sealed pipe where we knew our friend would drown.

“No!” I screamed.

I was not about to lose another friend. It seemed that every friend I ever made I was forced to lose. I just couldn’t. I began shaking the cage. I kept shaking it and shaking it. Screaming and crying all at once. My friend was going to die! We were going to die! It was all over. We all grabbed on to the top of the cage and helped each other’s feet up so that we were the highest possible.

The water filled up to the very top of the cage where we were, but then it stopped. The cage bars lifted and the water rushed us into the pipe. We fell down a long dark tunnel and eventually flew out into a giant river where we were rushed by a heavy current downstream. Water was pulling me under and pushing forward at an intense speed.

I was worried for my life just as much as I was worried about my new friends’ lives. The thought of once again losing my only companions was also just too much to bear. Bits of debris flowed everywhere. The river was disgustingly orange in color.

My arm got slashed by a sharp object, and then I was caught by something triangular in shape. It was a large pointy piece of rusted metal that was sunken underground. I had rushed right into it. As the river rushed me forward, I tried to get a hold of it, but it was too slippery. I fell directly on to the top point of the triangle and could feel it pierce into my stomach.

It was a terrible pain. As blood poured out, all I could think of was the horrible pain. Finally, I managed enough strength to pull myself off of the edge and hold myself in front of the object so I couldn’t be rushed away. I waited there, for what seemed like hours. I was waiting for the end.

My friends were already dead by now unless they had found some way to safety, and even if they had they would never find a way to me so in a sense they were dead no matter what.

All my hope seemed to be carried like the blood from my cut, by the current: far away. My tears began to pour out. Pitiful horrible sobs began to break free from my troubled mind. Thoughts of nothing but despair and sadness filled me. Dark shadows clouded my mind. I could almost feel the empty roads, the dirty streets, and the mindless people. I could almost sense the dying lives of all who rebelled. So many people tried to stop it. I felt the pain as the last light in me flickered out.

The rebel me vanished into a wild dream where I was walking for miles on a long desolate plain. People cried out to me in all directions. They were hungry people. They were starving people. People who were alone  just like me.

Finally I came to a giant cliff. I began to climb it. With each step regaining more of myself. I began to feel lighter too. The air began to smell cleaner. As I turned to the sky I noticed it had no longer looked black, but grey and as I kept climbing it eventually turned to a clear crisp blue.

I was almost to the top. I focused so much on the cliff that when I finally got up to the top I was taken aghast by what I saw. There was a valley of beautiful flowers and green grass. There were great big trees with fruit I’d never seen. Everything beautiful that had ever been on earth was there. Feeling true happiness overflow, I smiled. It was a something that I had done so long ago.

But this was only the beginning. There, sitting in a patch of daisies, was my sister Molly. I tried to call to her but she didn’t seem to hear me. Finally she did hear me, and turned around. She was smiling and waving. I began walking towards her. But then, just as soon as I got to the valley all the beauty began to disappear.

I cried out to her and she cried out to me but it was no use. We both watched each other silently as she faded into nothing. The sky grew dark again and the horrible wasteland returned. I was so confused and full of disbelief. I wondered if I was really dead or in some sort of dream I could not wake up from.

Was I doomed to wait on this mountain for eternity? I decided I should try to climb down, but there was nothing down there. On every side of me was black dark space and I was left there alone and trapped. I lay down and dreamed again. I dreamed of how things could have been if none of this had ever happened.

I tried to understand. When I opened my eyes and saw that I was still on the cliff I felt true despair for the first time in my life. Then I jumped off into the space even despite my fear. It was emptiness and darkness.

I knew I would remain floating the dark space forever. But then I began to hear words. They were mocking words of others who could see me. They told me it was my stupidity that brought me to that place: it was my foolishness and failure to cooperate. I told them I wasn’t theirs to control. I told them that the war was over. Then I screamed, “I am not yours to control!”

Red light filled the darkness, then colors. I felt myself regaining consciousness as faith and hope returned once more. The voices turned into nothingness. Finally…but then suddenly, everything was pain again. Pain! The program hadn’t ended. “No no!” I moaned…I woke up and saw people looking down from over me. Then I looked down and saw blood all over my stomach. At my side stood my friends and at my right stood my sister, Molly.

 

 Unified Purposes

“Molly?”

She looked so little with her hair slightly tangled and her face so childish, unlike mine. She didn’t speak to me for a minute and then her face turned slightly red.

She had been holding back tears, "I missed you."

And then the tears started streaming from my face, “I missed you too! I'm so happy you're ok."

She just stared. “Do you think it's too late? I want to find Bobby.” Then another girl put a hand on her shoulder. They took me to a place hidden by giant boulders; there they helped to bandage my wound.

“I waited for you for so long. I waited until it became dark. I thought you would come back,” Molly told me this as if she had wanted to say it for so long. I felt like she didn’t want to say anything. She continued, “I started crying and was confused. I decided my