DAY 2

Autumn came to in a haze. Her vision, a blur, returned in throbbing waves, Her head felt like hell. In a convulsive fit she rolled over and tried to throw up but nothing came out. She rolled back over and started to recollect herself. She was in a concrete room. A concrete room.

Oh fuck. Her memory started to return at a rapid rate. The cells. The other girls. The torture.

Her eyes went wide and she instantly clutched at her stomach, attempting to restore her eviscerated entrails back to their proper location. But they weren’t there. Her stomach was intact, exactly as she remembered it and without even the evidence of a scar.

What the hell? Had she dreamed it all? How could anything that felt so real have been a dream? Her memory had returned to her and she could recall what felt like every single moment of her ordeal. The cutting, the screaming, the blood and guts. The exact feeling of the blade cutting her belly, the sight of the man cutting her digestive organs out and laying them, arranged in pans, before her very eyes. Rubbing her intestines in her face and mocking her. Fucking her in the ass and making her watch as cum splattered and covered the internal walls of her empty abdominal cavity. And the pain. A pain she could never, ever forget.

Holy shit.

But what had happened? She looked around and saw she was in a cell still. So at least that much had been real. She also wasn’t alone. Four other girls sat in the cell, huddled together in one corner but not speaking. Three of them were staring straight at her, a silent creepy burning stare.

Autumn stared back with her emerald eyes for a few minutes, not knowing what to do or say, and then just rolled over again and closed her eyes. Waves of exhaustion coaxed her quickly back into a slumber. Hopefully her dreams would be better this time.

She awoke to the sound of the cell door opening.

“Anne, come.” were the only words spoken. Autumn rolled off her back and opened her eyes, catching the sight of one of the other girls standing up and walking silently toward the man at the door. Leisurely even. There was no denying it, Autumn thought, she was beautiful. Long brown hair and perfect features; a porcelain face. But her beautiful face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. Creepy. Looking back at the other girls huddled in the corner of the cell, she recognized the same expression.

A moment later she heard the door slam behind her and Autumn cried out in surprise! Her hands went to her mouth, realizing the noise she had just made. A quick glance behind her confirmed that beautiful Anne was gone. She didn’t want to think about where she was going. The other girls in the corner were still looking at her, only this time she detected a slight smirk on one of their faces.

Autumn put her hand on her forehead and clinched her eyes. This fucking headache. This fucking place. What the hell is going on!? Maybe it was time to start talking.

“Who… who are you all” she stated to nobody in particular.

One of the girls, a pretty girl with black hair in a tomboyish short cut, responded after staring at her weirdly for what felt like several minutes.

“You just had your first day.”

“My… first day?” Autumn responded. Her mind started reeling again with the memories of the previous day. The words “first day” suddenly started to frighten her. Terribly.

“What… what does that mean?” she continued. The other girls continued to stare into her eyes like they were attempting to penetrate her very soul. Her anticipation burned.

“It means that there are many days to come.” answered the same girl unhelpfully.

Autumn failed to reply before another of the girls spoke up: “You’re going to be tortured again, probably in the next few days. They give us a few days between sessions, the machine works better that way.”

Unsure how to respond, Autumn simply sat there a moment and pondered. Tortured again. Best not to think about that right now. She had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to avoid thinking about it soon enough. But the machine. The machine? What machine?

“What… machine?”

In a flash, before she could even react to what was happening, the short haired girl was on her feet and her foot was planted firmly in Autumns face. She blacked out in mere minutes as the girl pounded her face into the concrete floor. Teeth came out, blood was everywhere. She thought at one point she though she felt her nose cave in. “FUUUCK… ING…. STOP!!” She was going to die here in this room, she was sure of it. She passed out just seconds after she heard the sickening sound of her skill cracking against the cold floor.

DAY 3

Blinding light. Autumn batted her eyes in an attempt to reorient herself. She was on the floor yet again, staring right up into the single blinding incandescent light above her. Her head was throbbing again. She pulled herself together and sat up to find she was in what looked like the same cell she had been beaten half to death in. She clutched at her nose, half expecting it to be gone, but it was still present and intact as far as she could tell. Aside from throbbing headache, it was like it had never even happened.

Her surprise was waning; clearly something weird is going on here. She looked around and spotted the same four girls lounging in the corner, chitchatting quietly about something. She couldn’t quite make out the words. She noticed Anne was back, looking good as ever, no evidence of torture or grievous injury.

The girl with the short black hair noticed her stir and immediately jumped to her feat, causing Autumn to instinctually crawl back against the wall and wince. “Wait! Wait! Please don’t hurt me, I just want to know what the hell is going on!” she eeked out. The other girl just walked up to her and squatted down, putting her face mere inches from hers. Now that she had a better look at her, Autumn noticed she was pretty as well. A quick glance at the other girls confirmed what she suspected. Everyone here was beautiful.

The girl had the same smirk she had worn earlier before she had turned Autumn’s existence into a flurry of feet and fists.

“I’m Dana, welcome I guess.” Quite the heartfelt introduction.

“I’m… Autumn. Uh, I thought you were going to murder me, what the fuck is going on here?”

“I bought you an extra day, as a favor, because you are new.” Confusing response to be sure.

“What do you mean you… bought me an extra day?”

“They can’t do the procedure on you if you are already close to death, and it wouldn’t do any good even if they could. The machine can fix many things but it can’t bring someone back to life.”

Autumn stared like a deer in headlights, her pretty green eyes blinking a few times before she finally found the words to the questions streaming through her brain.

“Uh… uh….. what is the machine?”

Dana sat down cross legged in front of autumn and grabbed each of her hands and held them in a tight but compassionate manner. She leaned forward and Autumn’s heart nearly stopped as she unexpectedly kissed her passionately on the lips, though it was more out of surprise then anything. The other girls in the corner were continuing to whisper amongst themselves barely paying any mind.

“The machine is now your world. When you are broken, you go into the machine. When you wake up, you are as good as new. Better even. Aging itself is reversed. The machine is immortality. You, Autumn, are now an immortal, for as long as you continue to have access to the machine. That’s why we are here.”

“Wha… what?”

“The Master found the machine long ago. The machine is the center of everything. I know you don’t understand everything that is happening to you or why, but trust me, the machine will save you. It will save us all.”

Dana flicked her hair out of her eyes and then relocked her gaze in a rather creepy manner. Her expression looked… off. As though someone was trying to smile a very dishonest smile. As though behind that smile was something terrible.

“Now that you are past day 1, things will become clear to you very quickly. The other people here are the closest things to friends you will ever have and you all will come to know each other better then you’ve ever known anyone in your entire life.”

“You are one of the chosen, Autumn. I have spent the last 50 years in this literal hell, being tortured and nearly killed in every conceivable way, over and over, day after day. 50 years. But my ascension is imminent and I will be leaving here soon. Tomorrow, I will face my final trial and will then walk the world again. In 50 years, you will do the same, you just have to remain strong. Your time will come.”

Autumn’s thoughts were everywhere and nowhere. What the fuck was she talking about? A machine that makes people immortal? Could Dana really have been here 50 years? She looked like she was barely 20.

“Dana!” she squeaked, “Dana… You… nearly beat me to death last I remember. I felt my face cave in for fucks sake! But I’m still here, how is that possible? Please just tell me what the fuck is happening to me.”

“Have you not listened to a fucking thing I have said?” she yelled in reply, “The machine repairs all. Your body is nothing, just a trinket. You go in broken and come out whole.” She paused for a moment and leaned back, letting go of Autumns hands. “You will meet the Master in time and he will explain everything. In the meantime, just try and remain strong. You will face terrible shit, horrible experiences, things that you couldn’t even imagine in your worst dreams, and they will become the entirety of the next 50 years of your life. But there is a reason for it and you will come out the other end stronger then any mere petty human. It is your destiny to become more then human. 50 years is nothing to an immortal. Think of these as like the pain of being birthed. A terrible but necessary ordeal.”

“But” Autumn coughed, “but why are they fucking TORTURING ME!? How could that POSSIBLY be relevant to ANYTHING!!”

The next moment was as strange as anything Autumn had ever encountered. Dana, without any hesitation, stuck her pinky finger in her mouth and bit it off. Entirely and bloodily. Then she did the same with the next finger, and then the next, spitting them to the floor as she went. Blood was squirting from the open wounds and Autumn immediately jumped up to try and help. She was rewarded with a quick and brutal punch straight to the middle of her chest, causing her to roll over trying to catch her breath. She could feel her heart pounding. What the literal fuck was going on?

“Don’t you see!?” Dana yelled as she bit off another finger, no sense of fear or pain present on her face whatsoever. “Pain doesn’t matter. The machine fixes all! The cruelty of the procedure teaches us how to accept pain, how to understand it, and how to inflict it. In a few years you will hardly even care if all your limbs are sawed off slowly. In a dozen years you will yawn as your skin is peeled off your face. Pain will mean nothing to you. When the procedure is complete in 50 years, you will be one with the pain. You will be capable of anything, or of hurting anyone. You will be the ultimate war machine, an angel of death, walking the earth and destroying everything that stands in your way.”

“That is your destiny Autumn, OUR destiny. To become an immortal, a weapon, an instrument of change! And to carry out the Master’s great plans! Your anguish is your weapon, and you will ascend whether you like it or not. I don’t envy where you are right now. I remember how I suffered here for my first few decades, how every single day was a new terror, a new pain, a new suffering. But you will get used to it, and in the end it will be worth it. Because it’s not about the pain. It’s about the total freedom you will find when you are liberated from care.”

At this, Dana embraced Autumn in a rather uncomfortable and sudden hug. She hadn’t even finished digesting all the garbage Dana had just spewed from her mouth. Immortal killing machines? 50 years of torture? None of this makes any sense!

She couldn’t help it. She was trying so hard to stay composed but this is all just too much to take in. Tears started welling in Autumn’s eyes. “Dana…” she meekly purred. “Dana, what’s going to happen to me?”

Dana leaned over and put her forehead against Autumns and stared deeply into her pretty green eyes.

“Tomorrow, you’ll begin your second trial. It will be even worse then the first. And I will leave this place, finally, after all these years.”

She leaned back again and winked at Autumn. “See you on the other side”

The last thing Autumn recalled was Dana’s fist planting itself firmly between her eyes and knocking her head against the concrete wall.