The pain came and went for a while now. Caroline didn’t know how long she’d been sitting, strapped down, in what felt like a straight-back, wooden chair, all she knew was that she couldn’t feel her hands.

She couldn’t feel most of her body, all she felt was the pressure of a needle in her arm from time to time, but afterwards of world of nothing-numbness swept over her until the next shot. She wasn’t sure how long this had been happening. She tried counting once, but lost count after 12.

Falling in and out of consciousness was certainly not a good way to keep track of time, and the blindfold didn’t help either, if only she could see the sun or the outside world, escape would feel more possible. Instead, as she struggled with the nylon ropes binding her arms and legs to the wooden chair, hopelessness spread like a rash. She was stuck, captured, in an unfamiliar place with no possible way out.

But all of that fell behind her preoccupation with her hands. She could still wiggle her toes a little; she felt them in her fish-net stockings. Her hands, her fingertips, she could not move them as if they weren’t there at all.

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