Circle of Friends

A white-hot explosion of light brought Kendra Jenkins back from the depths of her dreams; the only solace she had known in what seemed an eternity. In fact, God only knew how long she had been held captive. She had been a prisoner for long enough to have almost completely forgotten what freedom was like. What it felt like to take a lung full of crisp morning air. What it felt like to scream just to hear your own voice. Or what it felt like to even move a muscle.
Kendra's eyes adjusted to the intrusive lighting and she slowly became more aware of her bleak surroundings. The same surroundings that had greeted her morning after morning, or night after night, for as long as she could remember. A thick plastic tube forced its way passed her teeth and into her mouth. A familiarly warm sensation quickly began invading her mouth. It was mealtime. She sucked at the gruel not from a sense of obedience, nor from pangs of hunger, but from a survival standpoint. Kendra was certain that if she didn't suck and swallow the oozing mass it would surely drown her. The texture of the iron-enriched substance was not unlike the mucky sludge found on the bottom of a swamp. She closed her eyes and forced herself to swallow the repulsive goo.
The young woman slowly opened her eyes and tried to clear her head of the fog that had taken up permanent residence in her brain. She couldn't remember where she was or how she had gotten there. Her vision was blurry around the edges like looking through a kaleidoscope filled with cotton balls. Everything within her line of sight was a milky white hue that cast mysterious shrouds on anything solid. Her chest began to pound with excitement and fear and she could taste the tinny taste of bile rising in her throat as it had done for days on end. She tried to raise her hand and wipe her eyes but she couldn't move. Panicked, Kendra wriggled from side to side against her restraints.
The girl screamed, but the sound was muffled, as if it had come from within her own mind. The more her eyes focused, the more the milky white shroud seemed to penetrate them. Her eyes began to sting terribly. Kendra blinked to try and ease the dry grittiness, but her eyelids didn't close.
The girl could feel herself hyperventilating and tried to take slow, deliberate sips of air. It must be a dream. That was a statement she made to herself every time she was rudely awakened by the intrusive lights, which seemed to happen day after day for an eternity. Kendra had lost count of the days after the first several months.
As the mental fog lifted even more, Kendra's memories flooded back to her, albeit still void of any recollection of time. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her baby sister's cherubic face smiled back at her as warm and inviting as a mug of hot cocoa in the wintertime. Her little pink tongue danced as she giggled with glee over her big sister's loving attention. Kendra could smell her mother's Obsession and her father's Brut. A brand of cologne he always wore because his daughter had bought it for him. Neither one of them really cared for the scent, but it was all she was able to afford when she was five years old, and over time it evolved into a traditional birthday gift. Kendra was sure her daddy would wash it off and put on something a little more elegant and expensive once he had gotten to his office. But she was quite mistaken, her father wore Brut every day, all day. He had even begun reapplying it several times a day since her disappearance almost a year earlier.
All at once Kendra's world was plunged back into darkness. It took her several minutes to adjust to the abrupt change in lighting. Slowly, like a reverse fade to black movie screen, her world came sharply into view. She grasped at the harshness of her newly given sight and the information it provided her. She wanted the lights back. She wanted to back into the darkness of not knowing. She was suddenly faced with her reality and it scared the hell out of her.
Kendra saw that she was in some sort of container. A see through box that appeared to be made of some sort of Plexiglas. She saw the feeder tube as it retracted away from her mouth and disappeared obscenely into a hole in the Plexiglas about an inch in diameter. Oddly, now that she could see the gruel dripping from the tube she could smell it for the first time. Her stomach lurched at the malodorous air invading her chamber. It smelled strongly of liver and stale bread.