It's true in as much as there's a glass partition along the back wall, beyond which is a row of old desks drudged up from a basement somewhere so that there would indeed be somewhere for people to sit and observe. They're clearly an afterthought, stacked into the room messily and in a hurry, the kind you'd find lining the polished floor of a school's gymnasium during a final's week. They're hardly fit for purpose considering what's being contained in the room into which they're now facing.
They call it an observation room but it could more accurately be called a cage. Aside from the long glass window, inches thick, the rest of the walls are a block of solid unpainted concrete. There's only a single exit, a heavy steel door that locks from the outside with a sliding hatch to allow for more faces to peer inside. The buzzing tube of a fluorescent bulb lies flush against the ceiling, the only source of light except for a modern LED ring light that stands at the ready in a far corner, the breaks of its rolling wheels clipped into place. Against the furthest wall is a medical trolley, as sterile as the rest of the room, lined with a polished tray of small, exacting instruments. Finally, positioned in the center, able to be seen from all angles, is a narrow stretcher.
And there's something lying across it.
It isn't human. It can't be. No human could have survived whatever's happened to it and, even from behind the thick glass of the observation window, it's obvious that it is indeed breathing. Its chest expands and contracts in a steady rhythm, somehow emphasizing the unnatural concave of its stomach, the jutting of its hipbones through what appears to be raw, naked muscle. It looks as though it's been flayed alive, like its skin has been peeled back to reveal every nerve and tendon underneath. But there doesn't seem to be any blood, nothing pooling onto the table its lying across, none flooding over the lip of it to drip onto the floor. Its whole body is a wound, scabbed over and scarred.
And, aside from the shallow rise and fall of its chest, it doesn't move. Above its head hangs a bag of clear liquid, leading down an IV line to the back of one of its hands, which are curled loosely at its sides, weighed down by heavyset chains and whatever drugs are in its system. Its ankles are similarly restrained, bolted to the legs of the stretcher and out of its reach if it were ever to rouse enough to attempt to free itself.
They call it an observation room but its more of a torture chamber.
and some inspiration?
It's true in as much as there's a glass partition along the back wall, beyond which is a row of old desks drudged up from a basement somewhere so that there would indeed be somewhere for people to sit and observe. They're clearly an afterthought, stacked into the room messily and in a hurry, the kind you'd find lining the polished floor of a school's gymnasium during a final's week. They're hardly fit for purpose considering what's being contained in the room into which they're now facing.
They call it an observation room but it could more accurately be called a cage. Aside from the long glass window, inches thick, the rest of the walls are a block of solid unpainted concrete. There's only a single exit, a heavy steel door that locks from the outside with a sliding hatch to allow for more faces to peer inside. The buzzing tube of a fluorescent bulb lies flush against the ceiling, the only source of light except for a modern LED ring light that stands at the ready in a far corner, the breaks of its rolling wheels clipped into place. Against the furthest wall is a medical trolley, as sterile as the rest of the room, lined with a polished tray of small, exacting instruments. Finally, positioned in the center, able to be seen from all angles, is a narrow stretcher.
And there's something lying across it.
It isn't human. It can't be. No human could have survived whatever's happened to it and, even from behind the thick glass of the observation window, it's obvious that it is indeed breathing. Its chest expands and contracts in a steady rhythm, somehow emphasizing the unnatural concave of its stomach, the jutting of its hipbones through what appears to be raw, naked muscle. It looks as though it's been flayed alive, like its skin has been peeled back to reveal every nerve and tendon underneath. But there doesn't seem to be any blood, nothing pooling onto the table its lying across, none flooding over the lip of it to drip onto the floor. Its whole body is a wound, scabbed over and scarred.
And, aside from the shallow rise and fall of its chest, it doesn't move. Above its head hangs a bag of clear liquid, leading down an IV line to the back of one of its hands, which are curled loosely at its sides, weighed down by heavyset chains and whatever drugs are in its system. Its ankles are similarly restrained, bolted to the legs of the stretcher and out of its reach if it were ever to rouse enough to attempt to free itself.
They call it an observation room but its more of a torture chamber.