Survive the Night

13

A gripping pain stabbed at the inside of Victoria's head as her eyes crept open. She flexed her elbow to touch her head, but found that her hands were tied to the back of a chair. The wire gripped her wrists tightly, so much so that she felt them numb.

She moaned silently, unable to endure the throbbing pain in her head. The room was too bright, and in reality it wasn't so bright at all. But she couldn't see a thing. She heard things moving on the table to her left. It sounded like metal scraping against the table.

Knife…?! her mind screamed. Breathe. Breathe, Victoria, breathe...

She opened her mouth to speak but only cried out at the pain in her jaw. Jesus, she thought. Bleak's gone insane and he's going to kill me.

She tried to speak again, failing again. She groaned in aggravated, intolerable pain. Her sight was beginning to adjust, but what she saw was completely skewed. The only contrast to the brightness was Bleak's black hoodie. And she saw two or three of him.

She shuffled in her chair.

"You're not going to get out of there," Bleak said.

She shuddered at the sound of his voice. She still couldn't speak, so she moaned again. How pathetic must she look? she thought.

She saw through half-shut eyes as Bleak walked her way. She flinched when he touched her hair, not realizing how close he was.

"No one will find you in here," Bleak said, almost directly in her ear. "Only Wendy and I knew about this room, and well, she won't be saying anything now, will she?"

Terror sprinted wildly in Victoria's heart and she began twisting and writhing crazily in her seat. To no avail. Bleak chuckled and returned to his table. Victoria could see clearer now and saw that the table was set with different tools. Torture weapons, the chilling thought came.

A toolset, knives from the kitchen, and the pipe he'd used earlier. He grabbed something from the tool kit and approached her. Was he smiling? Christ, the boy had gone completely insane.

It was a roll of duct tape. He zipped the roll and ripped off a sizable ribbon. Then he slapped it on Victoria's mouth.

"Just to be safe," he said.

Now Victoria shifted into full panic. The kind of panic that paralyzes you, she discovered. Her eyes were unblinking as she stared at the wooden wall of the room. She couldn't even take in her surroundings; couldn't register that she was still at Ashmore. This new room made her feel trapped in some foreign dimension miles away from civilization. It might as well have been.

Bleak grabbed the knife and put it away in a drawer. Then grabbed the lead pipe and put it away. Then the tools.

"After much thought, I changed my mind about how I want to hurt you," he said. "I was going to cut you up and kill you quickly, but..." he gathered the words carefully, "I don’t want that blood on my hands."

Victoria looked at him.

"I’m not a monster, Victoria. I just see things that the others don’t see," he said. "You’re the monster. You’re trouble. You’ve been trouble from the start. I can feel it!" He was shaking fiercely, and squeezing his eyes shut, and Victoria realized that this was the most she’d ever heard him talk. "So here’s what I’m gonna do…" he went on, "I'm just going to leave you in here. Leave you in the dark like you left Wendy. Maybe some old woman will come get you, too. I'll tell the others that something took you away. In this place? They'll believe it."

What would Wendy think? she wanted to scream at him. But she couldn't.

Victoria was breathing rapidly. She was breathing like a frightened child beneath the tape as Bleak killed the lights and locked the door behind him.