The blackness was all encompassing, as was the silence. Carly could hear her own breathing, but that was all. She was used to it, and the sensation of isolation no longer affected her as it once did. She was not alone, she knew, someone was outside the box, somewhere, watching her.

The young woman lay perfectly still on the black slab of hard plastic that served as her bed. She knew that to move would provoke pain.  It took only a few movements, long ago, to demonstrate the pain to her. It was like everything else she was required to do in the box: follow the precise instruction or feel the pain.

Without knowing if she had slept for ten minutes or ten hours, Carly tried to go back to sleep. Her Mistress would let her know when it was time to awaken. That she desperately needed to go to the bathroom suggested she had slept for quite some time. Time was not a relevant measure of her existence any more, though. She lived outside the boundaries of time.

Her Mistress. How could she know that it was a woman who controlled her life? Why not a man? If it were a man, why would the images that appeared on the monitors within her box be of a woman? The same woman each time. Why would she feel such comfort when seeing the beautiful face? Carly wanted to turn her head to see if her Mistress' image was being displayed on one of the monitors, but to turn her head was to ask for punishment. She would know when movement was allowed. Besides, if a monitor were to come on, she would see the soft glow from it. Then, and only then, would she dare to turn her head.

Controlling her breathing and trying to relax as best she could, Carly managed to drift off to sleep. "The Dream" came to her again. It was not a dream she wished to have any more, having dreamt it so many times. She was not that person anymore! She didn't want anyone to think she was that person, or to even remember her. That was someone else, someone who didn't want to please her Mistress. But she dreamed about the other person, just the same.

She recognized herself, of course. How wild she was! How...untamed. Yes, that's the word - untamed. And, so very naked. She had run her hands over her head and was shocked to find that her curly blond hair had been removed. Further exploration of her body confirmed that her privates were hairless, as well. That was the first of many changes that she had to come to terms with. She had later contemplated to what degree her beautiful hair had defined her identity as Carly Fletcher. But without it, wasn't she the same person? She knew she was, yet...she didn't feel like Carly Fletcher without her golden curls.

The confines of the box had been frightening when she had first awoken inside its smooth square walls. It was pitch black inside the box and terribly stuffy. She screamed and beat against the walls, calling out to anyone who might hear her frantic cries. Exploring her surroundings in the darkness, she estimated the box to be about fifteen feet square. She had jumped up to touch the ceiling, but had failed to reach anything overhead.

There was no door. Oh, she had searched every inch of the smooth surface and could not find a crack. Being fairly intelligent, she suspected there was a hatch or door somewhere, maybe even overhead. She sat against a wall and cried. Even in her dream, the feeling of slow suffocation pressed in against her lungs. It made no sense that someone would kill her like this; she had no enemies that she knew of. But yet, here she was, slowly running out of oxygen.

Her mind searched for an explanation for her situation and found none. The last thing she could remember was laying on the chaise lounge at poolside, sipping a Pepsi, and reading her book. It was so nice and warm, the hot sun caressing her bikini-clad body with its energy. It had grown quiet by the pool, as the family from Indiana had finally gone back to their room to cool off, and she must have drifted off to sleep.  

There was no doubt that the drug had been in the Pepsi, and that she had become a statistic, another American student who had disappeared while in Mexico on spring break. The school Administrators had issued warnings against traveling out of the country, but the untamed part of her simply ignored those warnings.

And now she was going to die. Alone.