I wrote the following piece in response to a prompt. Not sure if it is the beginning, middle or end of a future story. Has the feel of somewhere in the middle, though I can't imagine the heroine later in the story yet!
EDIT: I was asked to put a warning beforehand, for the younger audience members out there.
TRIGGER WARNING: Horror
UNTITLED
She woke and the first feeling was pain. She felt beaten and broken from top to bottom. Her toes had throbbed all night in those sky-blue Christian Louboutin candidate pumps she had worn, so she wasn’t sure if that particular suffering was new or not. She hurt inside as well. Her dress! Her gasp changed to a grimace as a sharp pain lanced through her side. She had never had a broken rib, but she had watched a lot of football with her fiancé and remembered what pain he had complained about. She was pretty sure it was the same. She cracked open an eye, crusted with blood. The other eye wouldn’t open at all, it felt swollen shut. An aroma of metal, sweat, and drying blood drowned out her Chanel No. 5. Her tongue tasted blood and several new gaps in her once beautiful smile. She cried then. From the pain and the silly little thought of all the time she had worn braces and headgear to get that smile just right.
She tried to move, but found she was tied to a chair. Her elbows and hands were lashed to the armrests, her knees and legs bound by ropes as well. It was almost a relief. If she wasn’t bound to the chair surely she would have fallen out of it onto the floor by now. She couldn’t kick if she wanted to. Her head rolled weakly to the side and with her one good eye she noticed her left pinky finger was bent out at a wide angle. The deep blue nail polish on her pinky looked oddly out of place, away from the others. That’s not good, she thought. Luckily she couldn’t feel that particular pain at the moment, though the absence worried her in a different way.
More agonies were checking in from all over her body as she found enough energy from somewhere to look around. She was in a grey concrete room, maybe a basement. There was a sputtering vent fan high in a corner, maybe blowing air in or out, she could not tell. A metal table against a far wall drifted in and out of focus as her mind continued its slow climb to full consciousness. A quick scan of the table’s surface showed her some of the instruments of her torture. Pliers, a blowtorch, a hammer, hand saw, car battery, and her left shoe, strikingly colorful amidst all the other plain, industrial gear. With her foot and ankle still in it. The expensive sole was still red, the blue sides were now red as well.
That was what finally made her scream.
A door opened somewhere behind her. She tried to swivel her head, to seek with her one open eye, but her neck pained her. A man she didn’t recognize soon stumbled into view. Short, hard to tell since she was sitting down, but not even five foot tall she thought. Sharply dressed, his faced hinted at dark thoughts no manner of good clothing could hide for long.
He came closer, invading her personal space. He reached out and ran a finger along her cheek, tracing a ragged tear and making her wince anew at the feeling. “I like damaged goods.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I’m going to love you!”
She suddenly recognized him. Memories of her torture flooded through her and washed away her sanity. Her mind tumbled back into the sweet embrace of oblivion, her last thought was of her ending.
The sudden crack of gunfire shocked her awake. The smell of gunpowder overwhelmed the other acrid odors of the deathly room. Her eyes wouldn’t open. Over the ringing in her ears, she heard several male voices. The one nearest her said, “She’s still breathing. Looks like we got here just in time Cap’n.”
Picture for today is something horror-ish, to go along with the piece.
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