Lab 31

• Casey Pratt, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

He had labs full of animals. Hundreds of labs full of different kinds of animals. It's my job to keep the labs clean. I'm an inmate and in this prison we are treated no better than the fleas on a dog. He hever uses our names only our numbers, I refuse to say his name because it would be showing him the kind of respect that he doesn't show us.

Lab 31. That's where he likes to conduct experiments on the inmates, his experiments can range from mental and physical challenges to downright torture. he compares our results to that of his animal test subjects. I've seen it all. not once has he shown any of us animal or otherwise the slightest hint of respect or empathy.

His mind is twisted and cruel. I see the way that he smiles when his test subjects cry out in pain. He has locked inmates in dark padded rooms for days, the screams echo throughout the prison, bouncing off the walls of the ventilation shafts.

The bodies slowly pile up in a pit behind the prison. He goes unchecked and without consequences, someone needs to stop him. Even if I could find a way to tell someone what is happening to us, no one would believe me because criminals are untrustworthy, everyone knows that. I hope that one day someone will know what he did, that's why I wrote all this down in hopes that someone could read this and make things right.