Over the ripe stink, she smelled hot, scorched plastic and realized dimly that they were using the heat sealer, the one that locked thin plastic straps around bundles of cardboard in the trash room. Roughly, the hands tightened the straps, the sharp plastic edges slicing through her skin and muscle to grip bone.

All over her body, the bands cut into her flesh as they were pulled taut. She was a plastic bag full of blood being squeezed and compressed until she was about to burst. Breathing quickly and shallowly, she could barely deliver air to her lungs. A whine escaped her. It would have been a scream if she could have opened her mouth wide enough, but her jaw was strapped shut as well.

Where was she? Home Office? Bedrooms? It was too dark to know. Her surroundings were crowded with humanoid shapes, and she could feel the cold and the stink radiating from their bodies. Yet despite their presence, the space felt empty, as if everyone around her was hollow. As if they were un-persons. As if they weren’t really there.

Then a voice whispered from the darkness.

“It’s for your own good, you know.”

Amy whimpered.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Josiah hushed. “This is what you have always needed. You have no secrets from me.”

Amy tried to struggle but was unable to move.

“I understand your madness,” he whispered into her ear. Amy could hear the air wheezing in and out of the flap of torn skin across his throat. “Madness is an inflammation of your blood, an excitement of your arteries. My tranquilizing chair constricts the impetus of blood toward your brain and lessens muscular action, reducing the frequency of your pulse. If necessary, I may bleed you of inflammatory humors, or apply ice baths or boiling water treatments, without altering your position and without opposition.”

Amy felt Josiah moving to the other side of her head. She strained to turn her eyes in his direction, trembling with effort as she tried to see him in the dark.

“Your madness is a typical case,” Josiah said. “Your spirit is agitated and restless, and you engage in pointless activity, roaming about in an excitable frenzy to no great effect.”

His words resonated with something deep inside Amy’s mind. She did run around, trying desperately to get somewhere, and what was the point? Was there a point?