My memories of that day are hazy, fragmented. One moment I was walking home from work, the next...the next I was waking up to a nightmare.

     At first, there was only pain. Agonizing, searing pain in my arms. I tried to move, to sit up, but I was strapped down. A man loomed over me, his face twisted into a grotesque grimace of concentration. He held something shiny and metallic in his hand, and as I watched in horror, he brought it down onto my arm. There was a sickening crack, and the pain...the pain exploded through me.

     Everything went black again. When I came to, he was sewing. I could feel the tug of thread through my skin, the prick of a needle. I screamed and screamed, but he just kept working, his face impassive. I could feel that everything was broken. This man had broken every bone in my hands, my arms, and my legs. It was surreal and excruciating. Eventually, the darkness took me again.

     The next time I woke, I was on a hard, cold floor. Wood chips dug into my skin, and every part of me hurt. I tried to move, to push myself up, but my arms wouldn't budge. I looked down, and what I saw made my blood run cold. My arms were attached to my sides. My skin stretched effortlessly, and since all the bones were shattered and out of the way, the skin of my arms was stitched down my sides. Frantically, I tried to move my legs, but they were the same. Sewn together.

     I was trapped.

     The room was huge, and I was in some kind of...of terrarium. Glass walls rose up all around me, and the air was thick and heavy. I spotted a mirror across the room, and with a surge of adrenaline, I dragged myself towards it. What I saw made me scream.

     My face...my face was gone. My nose was just two holes, my ears were nothing but gaping holes. My hair was all gone, my scalp shiny and bare. And my mouth...I had only a few teeth left, and they were pointed, like fangs.

     The door slammed open, and I screamed again. The man was there, and a boy with him. The man had a pair of tongs, and he was lowering something into the terrarium. A rat, dead and stiff. He was trying to turn me into a snake, into some kind of grotesque pet.

     I cried myself to sleep that night. I passed out from the exhaustion of the pain. I don't know what I dreamt about. I could have had the worst nightmare imaginable, and it still wouldn't compare to my reality.

     I woke up to find myself still in the terrarium. It was real. I had really been turned into some kind of pet for this man and his kid. Panic set in as I realized I was not alone. A figure loomed over me, his features indistinct. I tried to scream, but my voice was hoarse and barely audible. The man turned and walked away. I looked to my side and the dead rat was still lying there. Looking even more disgusting than the day before. I felt sick to my stomach looking at it and thinking about what I had become. 

     I had to urinate as well. That was the easiest part though. What happened next was painful, disgusting, and embarrassing. The sickness that I felt was days’ worth of not using the bathroom. I couldn't keep holding it. There didn't seem to be a way out in my near future, so I let it go. As I lay on my stomach, legs stitched together, excrement found its way out of me, and just piled up on the back of my thighs and buttocks. I laid there for a few moments, crying silently. The man came into the room and saw me there, shit all over myself. He yelled at him and sent him in to clean me up. Then he left. The son came in with a washcloth and some rubber gloves. As the boy got to work cleaning me, I felt so dirty and embarrassed. 

     This child couldn't be more than eleven years old, and here he was cleaning the anus and vagina of a fully grown woman. But as I got clean, I felt even filthier. The boy started squeezing my buttocks, and spreading my cheeks and staring. He would poke and prod. He tried to roll me on my back but I did everything in my power to stop that from happening. I screamed out and finally the man entered, he slapped the boy upside his head and dragged him out and shut the door. I never thought I'd be thankful for that man, but in that one moment, he gave me a break. I cried myself to sleep again.    

     Days blurred together, turning into weeks, then months. My captor brought me dead rats, the only sustenance I received. At first, I refused to eat, but starvation eventually won out. I remember the first rat I ate, the dry flesh and metallic tang of blood in my mouth. I wept and screamed until my voice gave out.

     The next morning, my captor returned. He injected me with something, and a burning sensation spread through my throat. I tried to scream again, but all that came out was a faint whisper. He had damaged my vocal cords, stolen my voice. My only solace was the captor's son. As horrible as my experience with him was, he'd visit me, change my water, and pet my head. His touch made my skin crawl, but I had no way to push him away. I just had to let things play out and accept what was becoming a daily routine.

     One day, the man left, and the boy came to visit. He opened the door of my terrarium and asked if I wanted out. I shook my head, and he left the door open. After a while, I decided to make a move. I slid out of the terrarium and fell onto the floor. The boy was startled, but then he smiled and began to play with me. He petted me. He would say I was so pretty. He named me Violet. I laid there as he continued to touch me and call me by some other name. At some point, he fell asleep, and I saw my chance.

     I slithered to the door, then got my shoulder against the wall. Pushing and lifting with my feet, and walking my shoulders up the wall I was able to stand. I used my teeth to flip the deadbolt, then grabbed the lever with my teeth and managed to open it. Freedom was within reach. I hopped out into the bright sunlight, my sewn legs clumsy and uncoordinated. It was so hard to keep myself upright with my legs not having much structure, the bones hadn't had enough time to heal in any way that was truly helpful to hopping around. I heard the boy behind me, and I kept moving as fast as I could. I hopped so far, I couldn't believe the boy hadn't caught up, but he may have just thought it was a fun game or something. He was still fifty yards behind me or so. 

     I reached the road and tried to cross, but I tripped trying to hop up the ledge of the asphalt. I looked back and could see the kid getting closer. I had nothing around to lift myself up, so I had no choice but to slither. I wriggled back and forth, as fast as I could. Then a truck came around the corner. I tried to move, but it was too late. The tires screeched, and then there was a blinding pain as the truck ran over my skull. I laid there, my vision fading, and I heard the driver's shocked voice, "Holy shit, was that a snake?" His wife's voice followed, "I don't know, just keep going." They then sped off. 

     As blackness closed in, I saw the boy walking towards me, a look of confusion on his face. “Violet? Violet, are you ok?”...

     I tried to whisper anything back to him, but all that came out was a faint hiss. After that everything went silent, vision went blurry just in time for me to see the man walking over to my body. He reached down and picked me up, and then there was nothing but darkness.