"How does it feel now?" the sinister voice asked the shaking girl.
"PLEASE! LET ME GO!!" she screamed, but she was silenced as he kicked her head.
"I'll take mercy on you and let you go, but you won't go home. No. You'll go to the place where all people like you go. You'll fit right in there." As he said this, he would pause to kick, punch, or slap her. She couldn't stop him because her hands were chained to a metal pole, and her legs where tied up. The last thing she heard before she slipped into unconsciousness was his laughter and, "Kasey, you don't look so good."
Darkness.
*****
"Do you think it's real?" Tasha asked her best friend, Marilyn, at lunch.
They were walking to their table which was, as usual, empty. As Tasha sat down, Marilyn noticed her hands were shaking. She looked up into Tasha's usually glowing face, and it was as pale as the snow that fell outside.
"Tasha, there's no such thing as 'The Desert'. There can't be. Those girl's all obviously hit their heads and that's why they're so loopy. Don't worry about it." She gave Tasha an assuring smile.
But all through the day, Marilyn could tell Tasha was thinking about Kasey Tanks, the girl who was missing for a month. When they found her, she was wondering the streets mumbling, “The Desert is real. They took us, shaped us into their plot. They're coming for us. Our end is near." It was a real mystery as to where she actually was, because she doesn't remember a thing. She was found last week, and ever since, doctors have been trying to talk to her, but she's so nervous and lost she won't say anything but what she said when she was found. Her parents are devastated.
Marilyn walked out the door of the school at the end of the day and was overtaken by a hurricane of anxious teenagers ready to get home as soon as possible. Nobody wanted to be left.
"Ouch!" Marilyn yelped. She had just felt a stinging sensation her arm, like someone stuck her with some sort of needle.
Stupid people, she thought.
When Marilyn got home, her parents stood in the doorway of her room. They wore anguished expressions, and she automatically backed away from them.
"Mom? Dad? What's wrong? Why do you look like that?"
They didn't answer. She looked closer, and saw that their eyes were empty. Lifeless. Dead.
They were dead. Their chests didn't move up or down, they didn't make eye contact, and they didn't move to embrace her in a big family hug like they did when she got home.
"MOM!!!DAD!!" she screamed and then started to cry hysterically. "You can't be dead! You can't!"
She then felt hands grip her shoulders, and she heard a melodious, urgent voice call her name, followed by a familiar thunderous voice also bellowing her name. They were both familiar.
She turned around and saw them. They weren't in front of her room anymore, but at the top of the grand stairway.
Her mother brushed Marilyn's blood red hair away from her face and said, “Honey, what's wrong? Why were you screaming and crying. You know I don't like it when you cry. Your hair turns rusty, your eyes go from blue-grey to slate grey, and your face contorts. Not to mention it's terrible for your pores."
Her dad rolled his eyes, and then focused them on her. "What happened?"
She couldn't speak. She was in shock, and it seemed like she was paralyzed! She just saw their corpses! They were just dead! What WAS wrong with this?
Her parents gave it a rest after about two hours of questioning. Marilyn slid past the next few days; the memory of seeing her parents dead became a small dust speck blowing in the winds of her mind. Everything was fine, until the night she came down with a horrific flu.
"Water..." Marilyn mumbled to her mother.
She was lying in her bed, and felt awful. Her back was sore from lying down for so long, her stomach ached from throwing up so much, and her throat burned from the acids being pushed up through it. Her mother worried for her; Marilyn had a 103 degree temperature, and she couldn't stop crying.
As her mom walked out to get some water for her, her dad came in and sat down on the chair beside her bed. His emerald eyes grazed over her, and she felt his pain of seeing her like this. She's never been this sick before. Her parents used to tease her about the fact that her blood must be made of oranges because her immune system was so strong. Now, they sat at her bedside all day, fretting over the disease that could steal their little girl away.
Her mother came back with an ice cold glass, and her father spoke while Marilyn sipped the water.
"Marilyn, your mother and I are very worried about you. You know since you don't get sick we don't have a doctor for you, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't just sit here and do nothing. So, we called the operator, and they connected us to a new doctor in town. His name is Dr.Sedethert, and he's going to come tomorrow to check on you."
Marilyn was very grateful to hear this news, but she suddenly burst into a fit of terrific screams. She started slapping her body and she was squirming violently, yelling, "Get them off of me!! Mom! Dad! GET THEM OFF OF ME!! HELP!!!"
"MARILYN! STOP SCREAMING!" her father's voice boomed, and it shook her out of the terrifying hallucination.
Marilyn looked down at her body. She widened her eyes as she saw that they were gone! The...the BUGS...they weren't crawling all over her anymore! She couldn't feel their tiny legs scuttle up and down her body, tickling her with fear. They were gone.
"There were...bugs. Spiders, flies, worms, maggots...Bugs! They were crawling all over me." She looked up at her parents. "Didn't you see them?"
The looks on her parent's faces scared the life out of Marilyn. They obviously didn't see anything on her. It was all in her mind.
Am I going crazy? She thought to herself.
"Honey, there weren't any bugs. It was all in your mind. Why don't you try to get some rest? We'll wake you when the doctor comes tomorrow," her mother said. She leaned down and placed a soft kiss on Marilyn's forehead. Her father followed her mom out the door.
"Good night, Princess." He closed the door.
Marilyn stayed in her cozy bed, but she didn't sleep. All she could think was that she was going crazy. There was no other way to describe what was happening to her. She was seeing things that no one else saw, that no one else would want to see! What was she going through?
She overheard her parents on the other side of the door.
"Something is wrong with her," her dad said.
"Philip! There is nothing wrong with her. She's just not feeling good. Lots of things can happen to a sick person."
"That's just it, Amanda. She's SICK in the head. First she sees us dead and just now she see's bugs crawling all over her. She started hitting herself, Amy! The next time something happens, things worse than bruises could come from it. I think when that doctor comes tomorrow; he should check her to make sure she's...alright."
She heard footsteps go down the hall. Her mom then said, “There is nothing wrong with my baby."
Then a door slammed.
"Amanda."
Her dad ran down to their room. Then silence.
Marilyn contemplated over what her parents had said. More on what her dad said.
Was she sick?
*****
"Hello, Marilyn, I'm Dr. Sedethert. I'm new to this town so I don't quite know everybody yet, but let's take this checkup as a get to know basis."
She stared up at him. What he said didn't make any sense, and neither did his clothes. He wore an ivory colored suit with white shoes, and his outfit matched the color of his hair. It was slicked back with a little too much gel, and it was weird his hair was white because he didn't seem a day over thirty! His skin was an unusual shade of orange, and his eyes were completely black.
He took a good look at Marilyn, and then turned to her parent's.
"I know this will sound crazy, but I do my work best when I don't have anyone watching me. It's sort of this pressure thing I get. You understand right?"
Her dad answered. "Now look here, doc, we really don't know you so we don't feel comfortable leaving you alone with our daughter."
The doctor gave her parents a crooked smile and said, "You have nothing to worry about. I can understand why you wouldn't trust me with your daughter, but you're going to have to. If you want your daughter to get better, that is."
Marilyn saw the anger flash across her father's face, but her mom spoke. "That's alright, Mr. Sedethert, we understand completely. Don't we Phil?" she asked him in a stern voice.
Marilyn could see her dad's strain to say something nice. "That's right, dear. We understand."
She didn't really feel okay being left alone with this guy. There was something about him she didn't like. Something sinister.
When her parents left the room, the doctor turned to Marilyn and gave a "Cheshire cat" smile.
"Marilyn, you don't look so good."
"I know. That's why you're here. To make me feel better. Could you give me some medicine please?"
He laughed, but there wasn't anything comical about it. It was full of evil. "Why, little girl, you've already received a taste of our medicine."
What is he talking about? She asked herself. Our medicine?
"It was so very easy to inject the poison into your arm. We just waited until you were surrounded by a hoard of people. The after school rush was just perfect."
"What are you talking about? What do you mean by 'our medicine', or 'injected the poison'? What is going on?" she Marilyn demanded.
"We used a needle to inject a type of poison into your blood stream. It doesn't hurt you, just makes you slowly go mad and you get these horrific hallucinations. From what your parents told me, the effects aren't as fast with you. Usually, girls get five hallucinations at least in the first few hours."
She blinked. Then, she realized she was shaking. Who was this man, and what was happening to her?
What was going to happen to her?
"Once the poison has been in a person's body for a while, they come down with what seems like the flu, but it's not influenza at all. See the poison, once it's injected, slows down the body's immune system. It takes a few days for the white blood cells to reach the poison, and when it does, the two have a nasty battle, and it causes the person to get very sick. There, happy? I explained why you're sick. Now to explain what's going to happen to you. I'm going to tell your parents that I need to take you to my office because I have a vaccine that I can give you and it'll make you better. It really will, just not in the way you expect it to be. All you have to do to make sure you have parents to come home to in a month is be quiet."
She just sat there. What else could she do? All this news was too much for her.
She was so confused.
"I'll be right back for you." He stepped out to talk to her parents. "It's the worst case of influenza I've seen in years, but that doesn't mean I can't cure it. I have a vaccine at the office that will make her ship shape. I need to take her there. Alone, of course."
"No. We left you in her room alone, but you are NOT taking my daughter across town all by yourself. I will not have it."
"What Philip means is, go ahead. But bring her right back."
There was a pause.
"I'll bring her back as soon as I can. That is, as soon as she's ready."
*****
"How does it feel now?" the sinister asked Marilyn, who was shaking on the floor of a clean, white room. There was a black window on the right wall, and a medal pole she was chained to, but that was it. There was only white.
"PLEASE! LET ME GO!!" she screamed, hoping he would unlock her hands.
She didn't like it here. After the doctor took her from her house, he drove for two hours, far outside town. They came to an underground facility, somewhere in the barren area around her town. She was taken to this room by two big men in white, and nobody talked to her until she came here.
"Don't you know where you are, Marilyn?"
"NO! BUT LET ME GO!"
He laughed at her. "But, your treatment isn't done. It takes about a month. You'll see our best doctors, and they'll try to cure you. Then, you'll be trained to fight."
"Cure me? Fight? What are you talking about?"
"The reason you're here is because we injected you with poison. Remember? I told you all about that. Now that you're here, we're going to get that poison out of your system. Then, we'll train you to fight, brainwash you so you won't remember a thing until the alarm sounds."
"Huh?!"
"Just be quiet! Let us take care of you."
"Why are you doing this?! Why me?!"
He sighed.
"Because! There is a battle coming. It's one that no one except us can see coming, and we need people to fight with us. The poison is just like bait. We use it to get people here so we can train them to fight with us. We then brainwash the people so they won't remember what happened to them, just so no one else finds us out, and they won't remember till we sound the alarm. Then, the people will come and fight on our side."
"But, why teenage girls?"
"It's natural for a teenage girl to be kidnapped," he shrugged. "Now, shut it!"
"Where am I?"
"You haven't figured out yet? I thought you were supposed you be smart. If you rearranged the letters 'Sedethert', you get the desert. That's where you are. You're in The Desert."
She screamed.
*****
"MARILYN!!!!" her mother screamed.
Marilyn was stumbling down the street when her mother saw her. She rushed over and hugged her daughter, and yelled, "Here she is Phil! I found her!!"
She mumbled something her mother didn't hear.
Just as her father ran over to her side, she said, "The Desert is real. They took us, shaped us into their plot. They're coming for us. Our end is near."
*****
THE END CAME.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 15.05.2011

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