"My, my, love. Are you sure you want to leave such a cruel world behind?"
Far beyond the horizon, clouds gathered-throbbing, budding, menacing. Time was slipping through their fingers. "What can be worse than this?"
A slow, wicked smile split his fa...
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Memories; fleeting and scattered. Squatting at the edge of her awareness. They splintered out like thousands of needles, flashes, and fragments. Faces, names, people. Memories. Bad ones and good ones, her name... her name? was that her name? forming on the lips of a tattooed girl. Her name. Caught in the smile of a boy. Her name. Maybe this was all just a bad dream. Maybe she will wake up in her bed, cold sweat sliding down her back, stinging her eyes. Her fragile heart thundering; boom, boom, boom. Her basement room yawning before her, cold and empty, as usual. Perhaps she will hear her aunt rattling downstairs, spitting curses, and threatening. You're a nuisance. She almost heard those words, combing somewhere between this nightmare and the next. But she was not sure which nightmare she wished to live, the catastrophe she had escaped from or this new hell she had entered. Memories continued to flicker and fade, fleeting like birds. She remembered.
It was one thing to be brave on the surface, where the sun was warm, and her friends would smile when she entered. It was quite another to be brave in the dark, in the shadows. The wicked, awful dark. Her bare feet stumbled over cold stone as two giant hands clamed around her scrawny arms on either side. Tugging her along. One painful, empty step at a time. She barely felt her feet, but the walls continued to slide past her. Moving. Where? she didn't know. It was always dark here, sometimes she'd be so disorientated that she'd walk around in circles thinking she was moving. The walls changed all the time, like the belly of this place was alive.
Staring pointlessly at the moving ground, Rose's legs buckled. Sending her toppling to the floor. "Fucking hell," one of her escorts cursed. He was twice her height, so big the tunnels seemed to grow just to accommodate him. They all were, you see. The monsters that plagued Rose's sleeping and waking moments. He yanked her to her feet roughly, making her head spin and body feel light. Red orbs burned like stars inside his pale sockets, offsetting his equally deathly pale skin. He reeked of alcohol and blood. That metallic smell was pungent down here, lingering for so long that Rose got used to it. Whenever the smell of blood hit her, realization of exactly where she was slapped her too. "I wonder what he wants with you," the man spoke, velvet smooth voice. Wrapped in steel and death. Another gifting. Their ability to seduce, to coax, to entice. Elongated fangs peaked from his freshly bled lips.
His companion, a dark-skinned man snaked around them. He too had a deadened look to him, despite his lovely rich colour. An odd, pasty, dead look. "She's a pretty thing, isn't she." Rose only stared at the wall, helpless. She watched her torment from some detached point of view, her conscious trapped within her mind. She knew what was happening, but she could only scream. Inside. Forever. The first man brushed a lock of her red hair from her exposed neck, revealing two healing bite marks. "Why does he have to have all the fun?" His hands rolled over her collar bone. Stop. Sinking lower and lower. A tear rolled from her stoic face, the only indication of her fear and pain. The man must have seen it, because he tipped his head back and laughed, pulling back his hand. "Don't worry, sweetheart. We have others to have our fun with."
