XXXII

After Phatt Tonie was removed from the cell, Jess was left alone and had plenty of time to think being the only one left in the cell. She had no idea what happened to the others. Probably dragged off to be tortured and killed or experimented on if some of the others in the cell was to believe. Not that they ever returned so she could ask them. So she was left in the cell all to herself, only able to wonder at what happened to the others. Sometimes at night though she could swear she heard the distant faint sounds and wailings of what she could only imagine was what the human soul sounded like as it toiled in pain and anguish.

The eerie sounds sent shivers down her spine and kept her up late into the night. Though she would says this about her captor: After the fat man was taken away, people had come in and completely cleaned out her cell and brought in an actual full size bed for her to sleep in with a complete bed set. She was also told that she would be given access to any book shed like. She would only have to think of the title and author, or at least one of the two, and if it could be found in the Grand Library then a staff member would bring it to her.

The masked figure never neglected nor forgot her either. She was given 3 meals a day. Allowed to bath and relieve herself in a separate area then where she slept and ate though she was always under guard. He even continued his meetings with her. With all this treatment, at times she could forget she was a prisoner.

So she spent most of her time thinking. She thought about all the choices in life she had made and all the decisions that had lead her up to being a prisoner for some guy. During her visits with her captor, she learned that everyone from this cell had been taken to the lab to be experimented on. Her companions were placed in different cells where the information that her captor wanted was beaten out of them before being moved to the lab. Phatt Tonie seemed to currently being the only one tortured.

She had no desire to be tortured or experimented on so she spent her time running through different schemes and scenarios on how she could prevent it. However with each new idea she had, it was only a matter of time before she had poked so many holes in each and every one to render them all useless and ineffective. And so she waited and observed and bided her time as she continued her visits with the masked captive.

As the time in-between each visit lengthened, her concerns about what he was going to do with her grew. And then suddenly He stopped visiting. Three whole weeks went by before He visited again. It wasn't very long either. It was as He was walking out the door when she blurted out for him to wait.

"H-h-hey. Wait a minute please??" she called out just as He was just about to close the cell door behind him.

"Look, I've been in here a while now. I don't know what you plan to do with me but I don't want to end up like Phatt Tonie or the others. Is it possible for us to come to some kind of agreement or understanding between us to prevent that from 

happening?"

He thought for a moment before responding. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well I ain't had nothing but time to think about it and honestly I don't have anything to offer you other than myself..."

As she spoke her voice became quieter and softer and she trailed off at the end of her sentence unsure if He had heard what she had said. I was quite taken aback by her suggestion that at first I didn't know what to say but I must have hid my shock at her proposal very well because she just stood there in silence waiting for me to say something.

" I have something yet that still remains to be completed though I accept your offer. However we will see when I return to collect if you are still serious and willing to go through with it." And with that I turned and closed the cell door and walked off back to finish off the fat man.

' I don't know what is more unbelievable: The fact that I just totally offered up my body to my captor just to keep from being tortured or experimented on or the fact that he just seemed to have accepted it. I just made a deal with the devil' was Jess's last thought as she fell into a restless sleep.