The Cage

You awake. You are naked and cold. You sit up and look around, and you see you are in a cage. Steel bars grow from the smooth cement of the floor, and end in a roof of steel bars about three feet over your head when you stand. The floor of your cage has a drain in the center with sickly yellow stains running down into it. From the ceiling of your cage hung a single bare light bulb, throwing a pathetic light down onto your.

For a few minutes, you sit there quietly in the flickering light, trying to know how you got here. You can hear heavy breathing, animal breathing coming from the dark surrounding your cage. After a few minutes, it subsides. You peer out into the dark, but your light bulb illuminates only a small patch around your cage, and past that is sheer darkness.

You see a bucket in the corner, and as you crawl over to it you see there is water in it. You reach out to touch the water, when suddenly a face slams into the bars of the cage beside you. It is the face of a chimp. It is screaming at you with primal fury, its mouth stretching so wide the corners of its mouth are tearing. Its canines are long and yellow and razor sharp. Its eyes look as if they have been stabbed again and again, and blood flow from them down the chimps face, yet still the eyes focus on you.

You recoil and cry out, pulling yourself into the center of your cage. It lunges for you, and its filthy, overgrown fingernails scrape your forearm, which starts to bleed lightly. In the center of your cage, the chimp is unable to reach you by about eight inches. It beats its arms against the cage, for five, ten, then fifteen minutes, all the while screaming in that animalistic way. It beats its arms against the bars so hard that you can hear the bones in its arms breaking. It beats and beats at your cage until so many of its arms lose their shape because the bones are broken in so many place.

After a very long time, the chimp finally calms and jumps off into the darkness. You sit for a long time, listening, trying not to make any noise. You don’t hear any more screams, but you do hear animal breathing occasionally, and the scuffling of feet on cement. You stand and walk to the bars of your cage and attempt to see anything through the darkness, but to no avail, the darkness past the light of your light bulb is thick as tar.

But as you look out, the chimp attacks your cage again, and you fall back to the center of the cage. But this time, the chimp is not alone. about fifty other chimps are with him, and they come at the cage from all sides, all grasping for you, none able to reach you in the center, but you unable to move away from the center for fear of being grabbed. You put draw your knees to your chest, and put your head between your knees, your tears dripping down the drain in the floor as you try in vain to drown out the sound of the chimps. The beat and beat at your cage with their arms, breaking their own bones in the frenzy to get at you. In fear you piss on the floor of your cage like an animal. For what seems like hours the chimps scream and beat at your cage. Eventually they calm and all disappear into the darkness.

For two and a half days this continues, any time you try to sleep, get at the bucket of water, or go near the edge of your cage, the group of chimp’s returns and attacks your cage. You are desperate with hunger, thirst, and tiredness. Fragments of teeth litter the floor because the chimps have been biting the bars of your cage with such pressure that their teeth have groaned and broken under the pressure. Your cage reeks of fear and human waste. The chimps are looking progressively more horrific, as their teeth and bones break, their flesh appears to be rotting off them, and their fur comes out in clumps.

Finally, in desperation you lunge for the bucket of water. The chimps run at you, and you are too slow in pulling the bucket of water away from the corner. They grab your arms, and you try to scrabble away, but they pull you to the edge of the cage and rip into your flesh. You cry out in agony as the chimps tear away hunks of your flesh. You can smell the scent of your blood gushing along the floor, running down the drain. You sob as you watch the chimps scoop out handfuls of your intestines, and as you see them feasting on you, black steals across your vision.

The next time you awake, you aren’t in a cage. You feel stranger, and as you look at your arms, you see they are covered in hair, and your fingers end in filthy, overgrown fingernails. No! No, it can’t be! Your one of those dirty god forsaken chimps! You gouge at your own eyes again and again, not wanting to see what you are seeing. But, despite your eyes being mutilated, and blood flowing from them, you can still see with crystal clarity. You look around, and you see a cage with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A slim youth is inside, and suddenly you know. It’s his fault you are like this! You feel rage build inside you, and as the boy reaches out to touch a bucket of water, you run at him, screaming. He recoils to the center of his cage, and you grasp for him through the bars.

He looks at you in terror, his face tear soaked. You want him to die; you want him to die right now. It’s his fault. You don’t know why it is his fault, but you know it is his damn fault you are like this! You want to destroy him, to rend his young flesh...but then you know what you really want. You want to make him and animal, just like you. You want to make him an animal more then you’ve ever wanted anything before.