Exodus Read Free

He seldom had a lucid moment and when he did, he prayed it would pass quickly.  The bleak reality of confinement choked him like a noose.
    It had been two years since Anthony was first brought here.  Two years of daily torture, two years of not seeing the sun even for one minute.  It was enough to drive anyone mad, yet somehow Anthony had remained relatively sane.
    He dreamed that someday he’d open his eyes and his friends would be standing there.  They’d find him and come to take him home.  It was that fleeting vision that had kept Anthony alive this long, but now that dream was starting to fade.
    Where he once held to hope a different feeling now grew deep within. It was a feeling of anger, of complete and uncontrollable rage. It was the smallest of cinders. Anthony didn’t even notice it at first, but it slowly grew each day burning a little warmer.
    With a rusty shriek the door to his cell slowly slid open and Anthony cringed at the sound of the grinding metal.  He lifted his head and huffed as a pair of military boots came into view.  Instinctively, he slid towards the corner as someone jabbed a needle in his side and unlocked the chain.  He blacked out as they started to tug at him, dragging him across the floor.
    A few minutes later Anthony awoke lying face up on a metal table.  A bright light swung overhead, the intense white glare momentarily blinded him.  He moved to shield his eyes, but someone grabbed his arms and legs and strapped them down with chains.
    He’d been through this more times than he could count.  And it was always the same thing bright lights, pain and then blackness.  Hours later he’d wake up in his cell, aching from head to toe.
    This time seemed no different.  He waited, knowing any moment the nurse with the giant needle would walk in.  She strutted like a giraffe, not even glancing his way.  Stabbing him as if he were a pin cushion, before disappearing like the reflection in a lake when you toss a stone in.  She normally came through the doors right before the doctors, which was the last thing Anthony would see.
    The room seemed a bit colder today.  He shook on the table uncontrollably, looking from side to side.  Suddenly, the door burst open and several men in masks with white robes piled into the small room.  They walked to the table and stopped.
    Standing over him they whispered to each other and pointed.  Then for the first time since he’d been there one of them looked directly at him and spoke.  It was an older man with white hair and prickly eyebrows.  He stared down at Anthony from behind a pair of thick glasses with bronze rims.
    “Do you know why you are here?” he asked with a scratchy voice.
    Anthony glanced around the room.  He wasn’t sure how to respond, or even if he should respond.  His eyes rested on each of the men for a moment and then he stared off at the wall.
    “Dr. Marshall, sit him up,” the man directed.
    A stout, pudgy man quickly stepped forward and pressed a green button beside the table.  A buzzing sound rung out and the top half of the table leaned forward.
    Anthony sat up feeling a rush of anxiety.  In the two years he’d been there they’d never deviated, never changed the routine.  Now they were actually talking to him.
    “My name is Dr. Vorcick,” he said as he pulled down his mask.  “It’s okay, no need to be frightened.”
    Anthony looked past him and focused on the other men standing around.  Their beady eyes and awkward stares pressed in on him.  They stared at him with awe, how a child might look at a lion in the circus.
    “Why am I here?”  Anthony glanced back at Dr. Vorcick.
    “Why do you think you are here Anthony?”
    “I don’t know.”  Anthony sighed and laid his head back onto the table.
    “What did your uncle tell you?”
    “That he wasn’t my uncle,” Anthony quickly replied as he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
    “Ah, that would be true.  Frank is not quite your uncle.  Still