Here In the Hereafter, Chapter 0.5
I'm starting to make progress on some writing and wanted to post it to see if it garners interest. The premise is a world fractured by nuclear armageddon, rending reality apart and leaving a shifting landscape governed by human belief and emotion.
This chapter is very whump heavy and may contain triggering material.
CW: Implied off-screen non-con, graphic torture, detransition
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“Do you know why I’ve dedicated so much time to you?”
Hard-toed, spit-shined black boots came into Bridget’s view as she laboriously tried to open her eyes. The left was swollen shut after she was struck with the butt of a gun two days prior while the right squinted shut in the searing white fluorescent light. Staring at the floor had been Bridget’s only reprieve from the harsh glare off the overhead panels- not to mention the only position she could somewhat comfortably occupy with her wrists chained to the wall above and behind her.
The handle of a taser pressed itself under her chin and raised her head painfully against her shoulders, bringing her gaze into the agonous light. Bridget’s already labored breathing quickened in response to the harsh stimulus. “I said, do you know why I’ve wasted so much of my time with you,” said the figure who slowly came into focus.
Ugh. As if her day couldn’t get any worse, now she had to look at Agent Harper. He was gruff-looking, with a permanent 5 o’clock shadow and rough, toughened skin on his face which more closely resembled hide. To Bridget, he was reminiscent of a drill sergeant but with somehow less charisma, likeability, and a wholesale lack of bravado or spine. But then again, months of being forced to endure torment after torment while staring at his ugly face and lack of lips probably triggered some form of a Pavlovian disgust response. She dropped her head again and tried to stifle a thousandth of a laugh that escaped in the form of the slightest exhale. Before Bridget could start to wonder if Harper had registered that, she was violently thrown to the left as he struck her with a cruel hook to her right cheek.
The world around her turned bright white and deafening for a brief moment while her nerves screamed in response. Bridget couldn’t tell what hurt worse- her knees, after so long kneeling bare on the cold concrete? Her already swollen and bloodied eye, viciously struck again by her captor? Worse still, what of her back after hours of being prone and splayed out in front of Harper with her arms chained behind her?
The steel cuffs bit further into the skin and tormented the bone beneath her wrist as Bridget tried to right herself, compounding the pain that had become the background noise of her life. A dull groan escaped from her as she growled, “This...,” she shook out, haggardly, each breath another labor “This…i-is all you’re capable of.”
Bridget doesn’t remember the instant that followed. The next moment she recalls, everything went white hot and Harper was patiently waiting for her to regain consciousness, her eyes squinting open to the sight of his boots splattered with her blood. Over the sound of blood rushing in her ears, Bridget could hear Harper smacking the taser against his palm in a slow, persistent rhythm. Ah fuck, Bridget thought to herself as her whole body shook involuntarily, he fucking tazed me again.
Bridget noticed that Harper was now pacing the space in front of her. “It is becauuuuuse,” his voice stretched on as he dipped dramatically to one side, “I simply cannot understand you, David. Why do you keep hurting yourself? Why make your life harder?” He stared at her expectantly, searching for a hint of defiance. Finding none in Bridget’s bruised exterior, he instead flinched in her direction, laughing as she recoiled at a mere feint. Her breath quickened, hot shame streaking across her face. Just the thought of another strike had her raggedly gasping for breath, exposing the very fear she had to hide in this godsforsaken place.
Bridget, she thought to herself. Bridget long learned that if correcting her name out loud would earn her a beating she’d have to at least correct it mentally, otherwise allow Harper to gradually take more and more of herself away from her. But gods, it took so long to correct herself this time. Who knew how much longer she could reasonably stay herself as weeks in this cell turned into months. The sad reality was that no one was looking for her.
Sure Bridget had family, family to whom the Agency reported that she died during her arrest, and as a result her corpse was part of a classified investigation and would not be returned. In reality, she was abducted on her way to work one morning, black-bagged from behind and thrown in an unmarked truck to be delivered to an unnamed facility on an unnamed road. Everyone who knew her would lament her loss, fooled into mourning a woman who could only long to be dead. To everyone else her fate had come and gone while she yet languished between these four concrete walls, in a freezing room with a drain in the floor.
How fucking ridiculous.
She stared pleadingly up at Agent Harper, biting back the hot, shameful tears that tried to force themselves forth. The jackbooted monster stopped to exhale a short, bemused laugh at the creature bound before him before returning to pacing in front of her. Rage took hold as she railed futilely against her bonds, shouting out in grief as the blinding pain intensified into rage and rage turned to despair.
I don’t want to die here, I don’t want to die in chains.
She tried not to think about how, between now and the day she dies, she may never feel a moment unburdened by restraints. She may never feel the sun on her face again. Will never see my mothe- Bridget growled ferally in Harper’s direction, tears spilling forth to mingle with the blood streaking down her face.
“You see, David!” Bridget. “This is exactly it! What is all of this fight for?” Harper rushed towards her as he made his point, grabbing her by the throat and forcing her backwards, wrenching her arms bindings further up and popping her right shoulder, eliciting a choked squeal.
“Why are you so committed to these delusions of yourself? It confounds me. Of all of the poor, sick souls who have come through my doors, none of them have gone this long without seeing reason or having the good sense to die. But why not you? Why is this so important to you, David?” Then please, just let me di- I-Bridget,,,
Harper stepped aside, allowing Bridget to hazily see herself in the mirror behind him. “Is this you?” He shook her chin in his hand as if to drive his point home. “I mean, do you know how selfish you are to insist that you’re still a woman? I was supposed to be having dinner with my wife but here I am, correcting your mistake.” He cast her away from him, throwing her off her balance to regain her next choked breath and wonder once more who the fuck would marry this creep.
Bridget lifted her head again to see herself in the mirror. It used to be a thin glass mirror with a utilitarian steel piping curved around the edges- until her second, or maybe her third month of captivity. After one gruelling and debasing night at the hands of Harper and several thugs, she was thrown into the cold solitude of her cell with the door slammed behind her, sealing her within.In her despair, she shattered the mirror that mocked her with a closed fist, curled her bloodied palm around the largest fragment she could find and plunged it into her heart before she could stop herself. Or was it so she couldn’t be stopped? Bridget couldn’t tell.
It didn’t matter regardless, as guards rushed into the room shortly after, having been alerted by the sound of the shattering mirror. Before she knew it, a syringe had been driven forcefully into her neck like a Capri-Sun straw and she awoke restrained to a gurney in the Recovery Ward. She recalled the twisted smirk on Harper’s face when he brought her back to her cell to see the mirror replaced with a metal plate, one she couldn’t break. Everyone and everything in her cell came and went without permanence, but her only constant had been her own mocking reflection. The mirror, Harper, and agony unending. Three things.
Harper was right about one thing, she could barely recognize herself anymore. The figure in the mirror barely looked like a person, and more closely resembled a pile of meat. It was hardly distinguishable where the blood was fresh and wet and where it had dried, and her face was bruised and swollen beyond recognition. She’d already been forced to make countless concessions about who she still was since being taken into Agency custody. Who she was with the clothes torn from her body. Who she was with the familiar weight of jewelry taken away and the polish scraped from her nails. Who she was with her head shaved under restraint and her name snatched away from her. Who she was after the cuts, after the shocks, after the burns.
And gods, why could she not let go? Why would oblivion not find her, death not take her? Countless nights she had cried to herself on the cold concrete floor of her solitary cell, tears escaping through the drain in the floor, praying to every god she could think of to just make it end.
And yet, for the several times that Harper had doctors intervene when she’d made it to the brink of death, there were just as many instances where she herself couldn’t let go. Who was to say if it was really Harper’s cruelty keeping her alive or her own cursed tenacity to blame. To Bridget it felt like she was hanging from the monkey bars, too paralyzed by instinct to let herself fall. Gods, her arms ached.
Harper brought himself close within sight of her good eye. “You’re loud tonight, but not very talkative, huh? Maybe you’ve deserved a break for the night.” He pocketed the taser and reached past Bridget to unclip her shackles from the wall- close enough that she could feel his disgusting, break room coffee breath on her neck. She gritted her teeth and tried to pretend she was anywhere else. As he lowered her further down to the wall, she fixated on the jagged scar on the outside of Harper’s right eye.
She had given him that scar on the first day of her second week here- she was still counting days at that point. He had put a clipper in her hand and demanded that she shave her head herself, pointed toward the mirror. In a moment of defiance, she shot towards him and stabbed forward with the buzzing clippers. She was aiming for an eye- instead she missed and drove the blades into the outer bone of his orbital socket, spraying blood and leaving a jagged scar there months later. She had lost the freedom to participate in the rest of the haircut after that. But in moments like these, where she was at her lowest, that scar was a permanent reminder that he was not untouchable. Harper stood up, casting his cast gaze downward at Bridget- galvanized, her eyes tensed into what semblance of a glare she was capable of.
“Fine, then. Seeing as I’m missing date night because of you, we’ve both earned this,” Harper said with a smirk as he began to unbutton the top button of his shirt.
Bridget backed herself against the wall. “Please…please don’t. Please don’t do this.”
⧫
For once Bridget welcomed the cold embrace of the concrete, its chill was a gift to the burns and slashes across her body, its frigidity almost medicinal for the wounds that bled freely from her face. She heard the rustling of clothing across the room but didn’t look at the source of it, not if she didn’t have to. She wouldn’t stare at the floor either, at the sickly saccharine pink blood that dripped toward the drain. Instead she looked up to the small window at the top of her cell, her only connection to the outside world. Her only reminder that there was a world outside these four walls, and she wouldn’t see it again.
“Just remember- that lie you used to live is over. That person you used to be is gone. Here you’re nothing. Good night, David.”
The light shut off and Harper slammed the door behind him. Bridget relished the opportunity for her to pretend that she was anywhere else uninterrupted. Relished the opportunity to not see the mirror across her cell.
Instead, she pictured what the world outside was like. Lately, it had been freezing cold- much colder than it had been when she was taken and was kept in group housing. Maybe it was warmer there because she wasn’t alone, or maybe winter was beginning and she was in for several months of this.
Bridget. Fuck.
In the next instant, Bridget’s cell lit up as if the harsh overheads had been turned on, but brighter, almost deafening in its intensity. She covered her head, flinching as she ventured a glare at the lights- they were off. Then, as quick as it came the light was gone, leaving Bridget with the dark spots that obscured her vision. She palmed at her eyes with her hands, still chained together at the wrist.
Bridget stilled, shutting her eyes and bracing her palms against the concrete. Through the floor she could feel a rumble, growing in intensity.
