They have tried before – to hurt me, to take me in. They don’t realise how strong I really am.

I have been here longer than the others. I am the ghost they have yet to find.

The others have morphed into skeletons of their former selves – branded with the unmistakable scars of this life. They are the clinical and sterile. The white, the gray, the pale, the weak, the tired, the sick. I haven’t given in like them.

A new cut sears on my finger as I twist another thread. I relish the warm blood. They don’t have their blood anymore. It has been extracted and packaged and labelled. A foreign entity.

A white one peers at me from behind a mask. I flinch. A group of them appears. I brace myself.

I know what they are here for; what they are after. My blood. My body. My life. My soul.

A flash of silver and a whispered instruction. There are too many of them now. A voice. A thin, wraspy voice is pleading.

My voice.

The curtains are drawn. They have argued enough; speculated enough.

A scream. Blood seeps.