I wake up with a terrible headache, worse than any hangover, and realize I'm surrounded by absolute darkness. Even so, I can make out a series of shadows encircling me, accompanied by sobs and laments that echo around me. A dreadful numbness spreads through my body, a searing pain between my legs, a lacerating internal agony that feels like fire consuming me from the inside. My eyes haven't yet adjusted to my surroundings. The cries are disturbing, the whimpers of a suffering child. A putrid stench—urine, feces, rot—assaults my nostrils, triggering a deep wave of nausea that forces me to vomit in violent spasms.

"Shhh," a tiny voice hushes me.

"Daniela?"

"Shhh," she insists, but it's too late.

He has woken up.

Blinding lights flick on, chains rattle.

A small, pained whimper comes from a bed in the distance, but I can't see where exactly.

It's as if we're in an underground chamber, a basement fitted with small cages and a bed on the far side, with no walls separating the spaces. The white lights burn my eyes, and I can only see blurry images shifting around me.

"Is that you, little one, or is it the new girl?"

The girl beside me starts sobbing, shaking her head, and pointing at me.

"It... it... it was her."

I turn, stunned, and begin to make out a tall, thin man, bald, with a depraved glare and a sinister smile that fills me with terror. A deep pang of pain shoots through the tiny body I inhabit, and a fresh wave of pain spreads throughout me, radiating from within.

"I see. The new one doesn't know the rules yet. The new one knows nothing. But she's already had enough. She's had her welcome. Now be a good girl and help me show her what happens when you make noise, when you cry for help, when you scream..."

"No, please don't," the girl whimpers, barely whispering, trying not to sob.

In the distance, a wretched squeal echoes—like that of a pig or a dying dog. At first, that's what I think, but with the next sounds, I realize it's actually the agonized wailing of the girl on the bed.

The man stretches, reaches for a key on the nightstand beside his bed, and unlocks the metal cuffs binding a tiny, powerless wrist. The girl next to me starts sobbing louder, the kind of stifled cry children let out when they know that, no matter what happens, the punishment is coming.

Without the slightest difficulty, the man grips the girl by the hand and drags her like a ragdoll to the cage beside mine. He unlocks the gate with the same key, then tosses the limp little one into the corner, where she collapses, groaning in pain but making no other movement. The other girl, cowering in the opposite corner, slowly raises her left hand in submission, awaiting something from her captor—our captor.

"What do you say, little one?"

"I am yours, master," she murmurs, stifling her sobs.

The beastly man grabs her by the hand, yanking her roughly. He drags her to the bed, cuffs her, and she offers him her shoulder. He injects her with something he heats in a spoon with a lighter, and in seconds, the little girl goes limp as the monster strips her, positions her, and rapes her without breaking eye contact with me.

This is hell.

"Do you like it?" he asks me.

Without realizing how, my body instinctively crawls backward, pressing against the farthest wall of my cage.

This can't be happening. What is this?

Where am I?

Shrouded in the shadows, I see them watching me—the spectral intruders who have lurked at the edges of my life since I took over my niece's body.

Specters. Ghosts. Demons.

In unison, they shriek violently:

"BREAK FREE!"

Or

"GET OUT!"

Or

"KILL YOURSELF!"

Meanwhile, the beast tears into the child's body with his twisted desires. Outside, almost imperceptibly, a distant farm noise echoes. A cow? A pig? It doesn't sound like the city, but it's faint—so very faint.

My thoughts race faster than I can process, faster than I believe the situation should even allow. But one thing is certain—I am locked away somewhere far from the city.

That's what I think.

That's what I believe.

My head is going to explode.

The spectral shadows begin to scream unintelligible things at me, pounding against my cage. Even though I assume the beast—the vile pig of a man—shouldn't be able to see them, he laughs hysterically as the ghosts' wails grow louder and more frenzied. Our captor appears to be feeding off the chaos, reveling in it. And as he arches his body, seemingly climaxing within his unconscious prey, he wipes the drool from his mouth, shoves himself deeper one last time, making her whimper in pain despite being unresponsive, and locks eyes with me:

"Get out of there!"