Travis Bliss

“Room 101.” The man’s cold and steely voice sent a chill through spine as I realized where I was

inevitably going. “Not Room 101! Please! Anything but that! I’ll Tell you everything!” But it was no use,

three men dressed in dark uniforms stepped forward and grabbed me and started dragging me to the

room.

My name is Travis Bliss, and I was arrested for thought crime a week ago. Until then, I was a

worker in the Ministry of Truth. I wasn’t even aware that I was committing thought crime, I was caught

mumbling in my sleep by a telescreen that was hidden under my bed. The though police arrested me

and dragged me to the Ministry of Love that night.

All of a sudden my blindfold was torn off. The room was completely white with a telescreen on

the back wall, and filled with bright flickering lights overhead. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head

as a migraine enveloped. Each flicker felt like it was pushing a nail deeper and deeper in to my brain.

My hands and legs were tied down to a metal chair welded to the metal floor of the room. All of a

sudden, the telescreen started emitting a sharp, high pitched, whining sound. It started at a soft volume

and got louder at each passing moment. After a few minutes the sound was at its maximum volume and

I felt my head splitting in two. I wondered briefly if I could even hear the noise anymore, all I could feel

was the fire inside of my head. My vision started dimming and I felt a sharp pressure pushing on the

back of my eye balls. I couldn’t remember how long I had been in there…it had to be at least a week…or

maybe a month. There were no windows in the room so I had no way of telling if it were day or night. I

wondered how I was still alive. I had not slept since I was put in this room.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a black spot on the ground. It was a cockroach. “PLEASE

LET ME OUT! PLEASE. I’M GUILTY. I’M A MEMBER OF THE BROTHERHOOD. I AM GOLDSTIEN. PLEASE.”

I realized I could not hear my own voice, I had no way of knowing if they could hear me or not. More
and more cockroaches began crawling through the hole in the floor, inching closer and closer to me. I

realized that I was only wearing a short pair of shorts and nothing else. All my skin was exposed to this

ever approaching menace. After a minute, hundreds of cockroaches filled the room, they began inching

towards me. They began crawling up my feet and hands, until I was covered with them. I was trying to

shake them off, but I was tied down so tight that I could not move a single muscle. Not an inch of skin

was left open.

“Do it to her instead of me. Punish her.” The words slipped out as a whisper. Big Brother had

won, I had betrayed the one most important to me.