Fallen Prey

Fallen Prey

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I want to scream.

I want to scream and yell and rip at my hair and eyes and skin until they listen to me. I want to hurt myself and hurt them and hurt everyone until they pay attention to me. I want to kick and punch and flail about until they release me.

I don't think that any of that will work.

I'm their prisoner. They have declared ownership of me, and no law or social rule or anything will keep them from making their claim on me. I want to hurt them. I don't understand, really, how I ended up here, with them. Was I meant to end up here? Was I meant to spend the rest of my days here? Or, is it my fault? Was I not supposed to leave that day? Was I supposed to stay home, and be a good girl, and not get stolen and claimed?

I hadn't intended to get stolen when I left the house that day. I had just wanted to run to the store and pick up something... Milk, probably. It's getting hard to remember the times before now. When I wasn't kept for the amusement of these people, like a dog chained up so its owners can beat it. They had appeared from nowhere, literally. I had just walked out the door, and had looked down to check for my keys, and they were there, surrounding me. They had all worn occult-like robes and masks hiding their identities.

A thousand stories popped into mind, about strange men and kidnapped girls. I had frozen in fear. I had heard mumbles of their conversations, with terms like "the dark lord," "this one's good enough," and "she won't break too quickly," peppering their speech.

I had reeled backwards, hoping to get back into my house where it was safe. One of them caught me by the arm. I noticed a thin strand of pale hair escaping his hood, and I jerked at it, satisfied as I felt the hair rip out. The man smashed me against my front door, and my head connected with the neatly painted surface hard. I watched black spots appear, multiplying until they overtook my vision as they laughed. Later, I came to consciousness here.

I try to scream again. My throat is raw, but I try to scream. It doesn't work. I can feel my breath leaving me, I can feel the vibrations of my voice, there's just no sound. I still try, screaming and yelling and crying, but to no avail.

One of them comes over and kicks me. Pain. This isn't the first kick I've gotten, and it most likely won't be the last. They are sadistic people. My body still feels the fading remnants of the torture they put me under, though I don't know exactly what they did to me. All I know is that it hurt. It hurt beyond what I've ever felt before.
I don't know who my captors are. They wore black robes and masks when they stole me. They still wear the black robes, though they have, for the most part, given up on the mask thing. That's a bad thing, I know. Every hostage book I've ever read attests to that fact. If you're going to be eventually released, then the captors stay masked. If they're planning on killing you, they don't bother.

In the books, the buxom blonde who has been snatched ends up being rescued by some handsome anti-hero on a mission of redemption. Unfortunately, I'm neither buxom or blonde. I don't think that any handsome anti-hero is going to come skipping along to rescue me, either.

The people holding me here are weirdos, on top of everything. I think they're in some sort of arcane cult. They all wear black robes and masks. I think they look like confused Ku Klux Klan members, dressed in black rather than white. They also seem to be prejudiced, though for the life of me, I can't figure out what "Muggle" refers to. It doesn't sound like a racial slur, nor does it sound like an attack on my sexual preferences or promiscuity. It's just a flat word that commonly follows the words "filthy" and "we should kill them."

My arms ache. I'm tied up against a post in the corner of this dungeon, my arms drawn up above my head, and secured to the post with chains and sturdy leather cuffs. I feel like the S&M poster girl. My wrists sting, the sensitive skin there has been rubbed raw on the cuffs that secure my hands. I keep thrashing and pulling at my bindings anyway. It may break. That is the only hope I have, after all.

The robed man who seems to be the ringleader approaches me. He sneers down at me, and I wish I could cower, but I can't. I'm strung up here, and I can't pull away, or turn around, or do anything but stare at the man as he approaches. His eyes are cold and unwavering.

He points his stick at me. I've heard them call these sticks 'wands.' That seems a bit silly, like they think they're magicians or something. Like they can wave their wands over a top hat to produce a rabbit. Everyone know the rabbit wasn't magically produced, same as they know the woman in the box isn't really sawed in half. It's all an illusion.

Maybe all this pain is just an illusion, then. Maybe my nerves aren't really screaming in agony and my muscles aren't on the verge of just ripping away from my bones so that my arms will no longer feel so taut and stretched. Maybe I'm still in bed. Maybe I never left that morning, I never got dressed, I never left my comfortable bundle of blankets. And maybe, just maybe, Michael Jackson really isn't a paedophile.

The man is now directly in front of me. He smirks down at me, and then says a word I've heard a lot lately. "Crucio." Suddenly, I'm hit by a thousand Freightliners, a hundred bees sting me, a thousand cramps wrack my body, and there are several paper cuts in there too.

I want to die.

The pain is just overwhelming. I lean over as best I can, and puke. The tiny breakfast I was given comes up, then I'm convulsing in violent dry heaves. I heave until I'm sure that something is going to rupture, and the pain is still ebbing at me, and then...

It stops.

I pant heavily, strings of bile plastering against my chin, the sharp taste of vomit fresh in my mouth. They won't offer me a drink of water to clear the rancid taste from my mouth, either. I just lean back against the pole, and pray for death. Death is an angel. Death is the most comforting thing I can think of. Death is as desirable at this point as ice cream on a hot August afternoon. Death would greet me with open arms, as warm and comforting as a lover.

If only. If only my pain could end with something as simple, as joyous as death. I would die happy knowing that death had finally come. I wish it were coming now.

I'm just not as lucky as the others.

There had been three other girls. None of us had been a thing alike. One had been all sunshine and cupcakes; a pretty young blonde flower who deserved to have a handsome young hero come along and save her, and to ride off into the sunset with a kiss of true love. She had gone with naught more than a faint whimper. Sunshine was fading, the flower was wilting on its stem.

She wasn't sunshine and cupcakes any more. She had lasted four days, but then she had started to sob. She sobbed and sobbed until one of the large captors had thrown a similarly large knife. It hit her squarely in the throat, and precious red blood had leaked out, then poured until she was no more.

Another of my companions had been a ragged street child, a girl no older than fourteen who had been dressed in leopard print, faux fur and leather. Her overly rouged face had been pouty and sullen and jaded, and she had screamed bloody murder when they'd killed her. I hadn't pitied her death any, she was probably much happier now. She had only lasted two days, she had broken early. The marks I'd seen inside her arms had something to do with that, I think. Between the heroin withdrawal that sent tremors through her skinny body and the torture by the captors, she had gone insane very quickly. When she'd started muttering about the a dancing hippo wanting to eat her, the captors had killed her.

I'm not really sure how they managed it- the street junkie had been screaming too much and the other girls freaking out to the point that I didn't even see what happened. I just looked back over and the street girl had been dead. You could see in the slump of her body that she was gone, not just knocked out. She was still hanging there, though she couldn't be mistaken for a sleeping girl any longer. Decay was working its magic on her, just like the others.

The final girl had been plain. Plain hair, plain face, plain clothes. I still have to look over at her decaying face to remember what she looked like. She had been quiet enough, and the captors hadn't really bothered her too much at first. But as the first two girls died off, she had borne more and more of the brunt of the abuse. She had tried to talk to me, but I hadn't talked back. I knew what was in store for her, and me as well, and I didn't want to make attachments to someone who would most likely end up rotting beside me. So I had offered her rude suggestions, and made sacrilegious remarks to her offers of prayers, and had tried not to cry when she too died.
I saw her death. One of the captors had laughed, and held out his wand a beefy hand, and said two words that had sounded remarkably like the birthday party clown's "Abra Kedabra!" A green light flashed, and the plain girl died.

Then I was alone. The captors aren't here all the time, and those long hours I was alone in the dark I would try to sleep, and pretend I wasn't surrounded by corpses, and try to think optimistically. It hasn't worked yet. I can still smell them, that cloying smell of death and decay and rotting meat that seems to be stuck in the back of my throat.

Most of all, the stench reminds me that I'm alone. It reminds me that I'm still alive. It reminds me that I'm prisoner here, with no chance of escape or salvation. It reminds me I'm alone.

I don't know why they've saved me for last. I wish they had killed me first, instead of the street girl. I wish that I knew what was going on. I don't understand why some words cause agony, and other words death. I guess these people are magic. If so, it's no wonder that they used to burn witches.

The man with cold eyes unhooked my chains, and, holding them firmly, led me to the hole in the corner of the basement were I'm meant to use the bathroom. I do, though my bladder is nearly empty. I'm not given much to drink. I hate the man's eyes on me as I raise up, but there's nothing I can do about it. I am chained back to my post, and the man leaves.

I manage to rest some by doing my best to ignore the pain in my body.
I awake with a start. There are several captors crowded around the room. One sees that I'm awake, and moves close. He leans in, and holds out something. A rat. He drops the rat on my shoulder. I refuse to scream. The rat begins to crawl around my neck, its tiny claws scratching into my skin, its damp nose pressing against the sensitive skin on the back of my neck.

I shudder involuntarily. The rat continues its journey around my neck, digging into my skin, and then it follows the scoop of the neckline of my tank top. I flinch, doing my best to suppress the cry of disgust that wants to escape my lips. The rat makes its way slowly down the slope of my chest, tiny red scratch marks marring my pale skin.

The rat's tail curls up around my throat. As the rat moves higher up, the tail slides across my chin and lips. I want to puke. The claws are still digging into me. The warm, bristly tail continues to slide down around my neck. I shudder again. It's the not most horrible thing they've done to me, but it's the worst. The rat's tail tickles my ear as the furry creature moves around.

I want to scream, and bite the rat. I want to feel its bones crush under my teeth, I want to feel red blood flow and hot gristle crunch in my mouth. I want to feel fur trapped between my teeth. I want to kill and maim. I want to come full circle, and hurt these people as much- no, more than they've hurt me.

I glare at them, ignoring the rat's claws digging into my skin, ignoring the pain in my arms, the pangs in my stomach. I want to hurt them. I want to smash and burn and hit and break them. I want to find myself. I want to know I'm still alive, not just a zombie tied in the basement of some sicko.
I begin to kick at them, and thrash, and tried to capture the rat in my mouth. To my great surprise, I manage to. But it's the rat's tail, and though I immediately bite down, it doesn't do much good. I continue to contort my body, trying to get loose. I know it's a futile attempt, but I can't stand this anymore.

I just want it to end.

Death is my only friend.

My desire to live had been so long broken, my very will has eroded to the point that I want death more than anything. My thrashing and screaming is the best I can come to suicide. I just don't want this anymore. The pain, the agony, the torture will end with death. The cold eyed man raises his wand. Two words are softly spoken, and then green light.

I am free.

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