I came to in a cell: a glorified concrete box, metal bars on one side, a narrow, uncomfortable-looking bench running the length of the opposite wall. The place stank of urine and vomit, stale sweat and fear.

I was cold and alone. And I hurt.

When I tried to raise my head, a searing pain flared behind and between my eyes. For a couple of seconds, everything turned horrifically, brilliantly white. My stomach lurched, out of my control, and I retched wetly, adding to the cell's unpleasant sour-sick smell.

Once I had stopped heaving and the pain had subsided to a more moderate level, I attempted a more thorough appraisal of my new surroundings. There was little to be added to my initial assessment. On closer inspection, I noted that there was quite a lot of blood on the floor where I had been lying. At least some of it had to be mine. There was blood in amid the vomit too, as well as a tooth, looking lost and unnatural.

There was no window in the cell. Set into the concrete ceiling, behind a metal grille, a strip light was either switched off or broken. The only illumination was a dull, headachy yellow light, the colour of a bad hangover, that slanted into the cell between the bars. There was no way of telling what time it was. I checked my wrist, but unsurprisingly, my watch was gone.

Footsteps approached, echoing along the hall outside. A guard came into view and stopped outside the cell. He threw a newspaper through the bars at me. It hit the side of my head, eliciting another blaze of pain in my wrecked face, before landing in the mix of blood, sick and sputum on the floor. 'Celebrity Journalist Held in Custody: Heller Charged with Incitement to Riot'.

As it turned out, incitement to riot was just one of a long list of charges (including resisting arrest) that they threw at me: they, the nameless, faceless powers that be, the invisible, intangible few. Not all of the charges stuck, but they didn't need to. The trial, a foregone conclusion, passed by like a surreal bad dream. I was sentenced to twelve months. That is to say, I was sentenced to death.

Following my conviction, I was transferred to HMP New Reading, one of the glut of prisons that had sprouted across the British countryside in the early 2020s, to accommodate the nation's seemingly ever-increasing criminal element. Squat and sprawling, an ugly, grey blemish on the picturesque Surrey landscape, New Reading Gaol has the capacity to hold some 60,000 inmates, and its location makes it an ideal supply of fresh and expendable test subjects for Westbridge STS.

I am writing this (which will more than likely be my last ever dissertation) from my cell at New Reading. For the time being, I am alone.

So far, I have not been subjected to the tortures of the Testing Station, but have been assured that a 'special programme' is being put into place for me at Westbridge. This is due to commence in two week's time. In the meantime, every measure has been taken to restore me to full health. It transpired that I sustained three broken ribs in the riot, a hairline fracture to my jaw, some internal injuries. I have received treatment for all of these. It seems to be of the utmost importance to my captors that I am quite repaired before I am to be completely broken.

Regulation here dictates that two people share each cell. To date, I have outlived three cellmates. The first two I tried to get to know, albeit briefly, until they were carted off to Westbridge, brought back lobotomised, cauterised, paralysed, amputated, and then they were replaced. By the third cellmate, I knew better than to bother.

He lasted a little longer than the other two. They all used to scream in their sleep, after their first visits to Westbridge. To begin with, it used to wake me up. After a while, I learned to sleep through. I can't decide which is worse.

Now I share my cell with a man called McGovern. Had things turned out slightly differently for him, and with a little more discipline, I don't doubt that McGovern would have made a fine addition to our nation's body of scientific researchers. Convicted of the murders of two adults and seven children (which he is always more than happy to discuss, at great length), he has a capacity for sadism and a kind of sick ingenuity that would make him a potent asset at any testing station. However, he made the decision to go freelance, as it were, got caught, and now we find ourselves on roughly the same side.

I just wish he wouldn't talk so much. Every day, non-stop, he speaks in a slow drawl about what he seems to consider his glory days. He talks more for his own benefit, I think than for mine, but I still have to hear it. Incessantly and with meticulous attention to every horrific detail, he recounts the series of inhuman acts that he visited upon his victims. His voice is a constant, steady monotone, his pitch and tempo only fluctuating when he reaches a part of his story of which he is particularly fond. He preferred the children, he says. After killing three children he'd felt that he needed a change, so murdered the owner of a local convenience store, along with his wife. He'd held the couple hostage in the flat above the shop for three days before he finally killed them both. He was creative and resourceful in the extreme, to the point that police pathologists had to resort to DNA testing to confirm the identities of the two bodies when they were found in their home a few short days later.

Not as good as the children though, he says. It had been fun and good practice, but his heart hadn't really been in it.

I've started to miss the screaming that used to wake me in the night. It was easier to block out than this.

Two weeks until they take me to Westbridge. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours 'til payback time. I wonder what they have in mind for me.

Unless... No.

There's a way out, but not one I can really allow myself to consider.

My stint as a Test Co-ordinator at Westbridge taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the abattoir that lies behind the eyes of men like McGovern. But it also taught me other things, about the station itself, about floor plans and protocols, the whereabouts of emergency exits.

It's not a real plan. It's barely even an idea.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...