The darkness of the box weighed heavily upon her, the shadows of the room crushing her until it felt as if there were no more air left in her lungs. Her breath ghosted out before her in the tiny pit of despair she now inhabited. If she could have seen it, she knew her little puffs of breath would be an opaque white, only proving how frigid the space around her was.
She would have shivered, had her muscles not atrophied. The result of too many nights spent in chains, no doubt. The unsettling shuffling of the shapes hidden deep within the dark invaded her ears, setting her teeth on edge. From somewhere in her damp, dank box, came the voice. A soft, melodic tone, bringing warmth back into her chilled bones for the briefest of moments. Her most cherished visitor.
This time, she did shiver as her heart beat with purpose for the first time in who knew how long. All she craved was too escape this Hell, search for a face to put to the shapeless voice that murmured to her in the dark.
And then the voice screamed in indescribable pain and the girl's dark hair flew about her wildly as she attempted to claw her way through the box. Her nails shredded, the copper tang of blood pervading the air. Escape, she needed to escape. She screeched, the distant rattling of chains echoing dimly in her head. She scratched and scratched upon her prison's immovable walls, her own blood creating a haunting mural on the stone before her.
And they came just as they always did, while the girl continued her incessant screams. She knew she should stop. The terrible afflictions they would force upon her now that she'd awoken them lived vividly in her nightmares. Over and over they came, and over and over again, she bellowed. Alone in her dark little box, it was as if her own mind had taken to attacking her, leaving her with nothing. No freedom, no choices, not even a solid state of mind. Without any of those, how could she even be considered a person at all? She was nothing. Nothing at all.
That wondrous voice, rich and smooth as honey, reverberated in her skull as its own shouts spurred hers onward.
Though she sensed the sting of the whip as it lashed upon her skeletal back, registered the oozing of fresh, oddly cold blood dripping down her spine, she could scarcely feel it, trapped in her own mind as she was. Even more so than in the chains that bound her.
Later, after they'd gone, with their harsh words and debilitating punishments, she had once again settled down against the wall that seeped blood. She stiffly rocked back and forth to the rhythmic sound of it splashing to the floor.
"Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop."