Welcome to Your Living Nightmare

And thus begins the epic story of redemption in many forms. A warning, not everything is as it seems. In reality rarely is anything black or white, but instead usually it is a whole lot of gray. This is no exception. As we begin our journey let me ask that you forgive the early chapters of the work as the author was still learning. I promise things improve quite a lot in the second half. The idea was to try writing something different than anything out there and I hope I have succeeded.

Blackness

As she slowly opened her eyes, she immediately closed them as the bright light coming in was almost blinding. Her head felt like a thousand jackhammers had been pounding on it non-stop. Her body was sore all over seemingly in every crevice. Finally when she felt she could muster the strength, she slowly opened her eyes again letting in the bright light blinding her until her eyes finally adjusted.

Once open she began to take in her surroundings and immediately noticed she was in a cage. A small cage at that. Nothing like the detention cells she knew. There was a silver bowl in front of her filled with what appeared to be greenish pellets and a large bottle in the corner that was inverted and a tube extended from the bottom with a round metal ball at the end.

She looked down curiously and saw thin shavings of an unknown sweet smelling wood all over the bottom of the cage. Continuing her visual exploration, she looked down further and saw some long thin light gray feet with white toes and furry gray legs below her. This didn't surprise her because she was a rabbit and those things were supposed to be there. What did surprise her was that she was completely naked.

"Sweet cheese and crackers!" She exclaimed in shock but what came out was a high pitched squeak that only someone with her amazing hearing could even make out. She grasped her neck with her paws as she felt a shocking vibration from her throat and realized she was wearing some kind of collar. This collar appeared to suppress her speech and gave her a very unpleasant jolt anytime she attempted to utter a sound.

This was the first time Judy, as this was her name, began to get a very cold sick feeling all over her body that started at her head and slowly worked its way down to her fluffy white tail until she felt she was going to vomit. She tried to slowly stand up as she wasn't used to crouching on all fours, but hit her head on the top of the cage and had to crouch back down. For Judy was no ordinary rabbit, she was an intelligent, highly evolved anthropomorphic rabbit not some dumb bunny. However she didn't feel very special at the moment, but rather frightened and quite a bit panicked if truth be told.

She told herself to calm down, that she had been in much worse situations although at the moment she was doubting this just a bit. It was then that she noticed her cage was in a lab of some sort. She could see a wall with a rectangular window in front of her, and a door she judged to be about two meters tall over to the left. Her cage was on some sort of white table, and the room was filled with a lot of lab equipment she recognized and much she did not. There were test tubes and various monitors and analysis equipment. There was a clear glass cabinet that appeared to be full of vials and medications. She spied notebooks, several computers and something that stopped her cold. She saw surgical equipment. Scalpels, a bone saw, clamps and numerous other items she had viewed in the forensic lab when she had visited the coroner in the basement of the precinct. For this rabbit was a police officer. And a police officer that was starting to get quite a bit pissed at the moment.

It was then that her ears shot up and banged the top of her cage as she heard a noise coming from the room across from her. There was a click and the sound of a door opening in an outer room following by some footsteps and movement on the other side of the window. She made out a fairly large figure about the height of a panther wearing a white lab coat, glasses and a mask. But this was no panther or anything close to it as it appeared to have a pale sickly looking face with no fur and some brown fur, no not fur but strands of hair on its head. Judy shuddered as she guessed this creature had some sick disease and had to wear a mask and gloves to prevent it from spreading this disease to other animals.

She then heard a tonal beeping sound coming from the area near the door to her left, and saw it open followed by the diseased creature in white entering the room. Judy was already in the corner of her cage but unconsciously pushed herself further into the corner so hard she thought she was going to push herself out of the cage and into tiny cubes. The figure noticed her then as it moved in front of her cage. She had laid her head down beneath her paws trying to pretend she was invisible, but curiosity finally caused her to glance up out of the corner of her eye exposing the terrifying visage of the creature staring intently at her. It had beady small brown eyes behind glasses and sweat gathering on its forehead. This was part of the disease Judy rationed as it must have some kind of fever. The strange creature then surprisingly spoke and Judy surprisingly found she could understand it.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" It said in an inquisitive gravelly tone. "Dr. Meyers had said we had a special new specimen to analyze, but something tells me you are a lot more special than anything I have seen in awhile."

It then turned away and began to work on one of the computers entering some information and then opened a drawer and pulled a thin metal tube out and placed one of the vials she had seen into it and turned to return to her cage.

Judy then realized in horror that the tube it was holding was a large syringe with a long needle sprouting from it. The creature slid a latch on the cage and Judy heard a click. She then understood it was opening the cage and this was her chance to escape. She began to coil her body like a spring with her back feet partially pressed against the back of the cage for leverage and readied herself to lunge as soon as she saw an opening. The small door then opened and she saw the creature's paw, well if you could call it a paw as it was gloved and had four small extensions of varying size and a thicker one sticking out on the side. She really didn't have time to dwell on this as she was focused on escape when she pressed hard against the back and then suddenly lunged toward the opening.

Unfortunately the creature appeared to be ready for such an action, and grabbed her around the neck with this strange paw-like appendage and harshly pushed her head first into the other back corner causing excruciating pain. She began to shout out and curse when she got a shock and remembered the collar around her neck. Then she felt a sharp pain in her rear near her fluffy white tail as what she guessed was the needle was inserted deep into her already sore backside.

"Gotcha!" The creature exclaimed with what sounded like pride. "You critters are SO predictable."

Judy didn't know what a critter was, but she felt sorry for them and sorry for herself.

Then she felt another sharp pain in her side and felt what she assumed was a knife of some sort cutting into her fur and then into her flesh. She had never felt pain so intense before. She screamed instinctively and got another much more intense shock from her collar as the creature bellowed, "Hold still you little shit!"

She realized then she had been squirming and its grip then got much tighter. She felt another extreme pain as some of her flesh and fur were cut away and dropped into a clear flat cylindrical container she had seen the creature put into its coat pocket earlier.

She felt the strange paw release its grip from around her neck and heard the door to the cage door slide shut. She didn't dare turn around for fear the creature would be back for more torment, but just held herself in the corner it had pushed her into and closed her eyes. She heard the sound of what she assumed was a vial being inserted into one of the machines and some whirring sounds. Next, she listened as the door of one of the cabinets was opened and something was placed inside. Finally she heard the sound of a door open and close with a click followed by footsteps and a second click as the lights went out followed further by the sound of another door open and shut with a final click. Only then did Judy turn around and see the room was in complete darkness with only the faint lights of the various machines to see by, and only the faint buzz of the machines to keep her company.

She was alone and helpless and being tortured by a strange creature for some unknown reason. Where the heck was she and what was she going to do? She had never felt so low in her entire life. Not even when she had hurt her best friend because of some careless statements at a press conference. After that he had rejected her and wouldn't even speak to her. But at least she had her family to support her then. "I wonder where they are?" She thought and realized that no one even knew she was here. She formed a ball in the corner of the cage and began to sob in utter despair until she finally passed out from exhaustion.