hey had all attempted to flee the country together. It was a terrible risk they were taking, and almost a certainty that not all of them would make it, but staying where they were under the current regime it was certain that none of them would survive.

She was snatched up by the patrol having crawled halfway through the hastily-dug gully beneath the fence. Her older brother paused to look back for only a second, face drawn in horror, before he darted away. He managed to avoid the searchlights as the patrol fired blindly into the darkness. She could only hope that he rejoined her sisters and parents on the other side, where they were sure to be picked up by the humanitarian workers and ushered someplace safe.

As they bagged her up in the truck and drove away, she didn't struggle or even cry. She just felt numb...resigned to her fate. Warnings had been posted everywhere, after all - and broadcast with the official nightly announcements on state radio. The threat for everyone was clear: if you escaped, everyone you left behind would be rounded up and punished. The punishments were brutal, terrifying, and final.

State television had been showing up to a dozen executions a week by the time her family had decided to risk their exodus. Dissidents, petty criminals, undesirables, the poor, the sick and infirm, the academics, and eventually just random furs picked off the street...the State was slowly cannibalizing itself to sate the sadistic, perverse hunger of its rulers. At first, the variety of victims was matched only by the variety of methods the State used to dispose of them, but as time went on, the State seemed to favor one method more than the others.

When they came into her cell a week later with the duffel of tape, she knew that she'd been condemned to this 'preferred' method as well. Her only regret was that high party officials would probably be schlicking to her demise.