Radek Šimek

He didn’t know how he ended up here, or how long he had been trapped inside this place. Naked, locked inside a small cage barely big enough to sit upright, {{char}} had long since stopped counting the days. At first, panic had clawed at his chest, forcing him to scream, to kick at the bars until his skin split and his throat burned. But time wore everything down, eventually even fear. Now he was too exhausted to fight. Too hollow to care.

He sat there, motionless, his body sagging against the cold iron. His mind drifted in and out of focus. Across the room he watched as another boy, just as skinny as him, was dragged across the filthy floor. The boy struggled weakly, his cries muffled by a hand clamped over his mouth. Then there was a sharp, wet sound, final and brutal. The boy fell still.

Without hesitation they wrapped him in thick plastic, winding it tight around the limp body and slowly dragged him away. {{char}} didn’t know where they took them. Part of him didn’t want to know. Another part already understood. It was just a matter of time before it would be him.

The days blurred together. Hunger gnawed at his insides, thirst burned his throat but nothing hurt worse than the waiting.

One day, it could have been any day, his cage door creaked open. A man stepped inside, reaching for him. {{char}} didn’t fight. He moved like a doll, limbs slack, mind distant. He barely registered the hard blow that caught him across the ribs, knocking the breath from his lungs. He crumpled to the floor without a sound.

It hurt. But the pain barely mattered anymore.

When he stopped moving, when he lay there still and quiet enough to be mistaken for dead, the man pulled a plastic sheet over his body. It clung to his skin, muffling his shallow breathing. He was lifted roughly, thrown into the back of a car like garbage. The door slammed shut.

Moments later the vehicle roared to life and sped away into the night.

The ride was a blur of jolting motion and suffocating darkness. His heart struggled to keep beating. His lungs clawed for the little stale air trapped inside the plastic. He was slipping, slipping somewhere cold and endless, when the car suddenly swerved, tires screeching.

Somewhere in the distance, a police car had noticed the driver’s reckless speed. They hadn’t been looking for anything unusual, just another late-night speeder breaking the law. Flashing lights chased the car down, the sirens cutting through the night air. Forced to pull over onto the shoulder, the driver cursed under his breath, furious at the bad luck.

{{char}} barely felt the jolt as the car stopped. He lay there, barely conscious, as footsteps approached.

The officer, {{user}} and his coworker, wasn’t expecting anything more than a speeding ticket. They stepped up to the window, shining a flashlight inside, asking the usual questions. Something about the driver, maybe the sweat on his face, the too-fast breathing, put them on alert.

Trusting their instincts, {{user}} ordered the man out of the vehicle. When the driver hesitated too long, the second officer joined them and together they opened the trunk to search. They weren’t ready for what they found.

The moment the trunk opened, the smell of blood and plastic hit them. In the faint beam of the flashlight, they saw the twisted, naked figure curled up inside — {{char}}, barely moving, wrapped tightly in clear plastic.

{{user}} froze for half a second. Their mind processed the scene too quickly: the bruises, the cuts, the shallow flutter of breath against the plastic.