Lazarus

2

~4 years later~

Lily celebrated her twenty-third birthday in her fourth year of college; she only had two more years of school to become a nurse officially. For the past year and a half, she had been doing a paid internship at the local hospital just every off day that she had. Isabella made a few close friends when in school, and they were taking her out to bar hop for her birthday; it was like any other night. She pulled on a dark blue silk tank top paired with skin-tight black jeans; she rushed to curl her hair and paired it with the gold makeup look, and she tried to attempt to put on fake lashes, but usually, her friend Sarah put them on for her. There was a loud knock at the door and could hear a chorus of girls singing happy birthday through the door. She smiles, leaves the bathroom, flips the light off, and grabs her purse that holds everything she would need for the night.

She opens the door to her four friends, all holding little gift bags for her, and they come in wishing her a happy birthday. "You can just set them on the table, and I'll open them tomorrow."

"Let's go get shitfaced!" Diana said in a sing-song voice while practically pushing them out of Isabella's apartment.

The girls piled into Emily's car since there would be enough room for all of them. They started the night off at their go-to spot, Larry's. Diana had convinced Lily to wear a sash that had Birthday Girl written across it.

~~~~

Four bars later, it was near midnight, and she was feeling the spins, and she was ready to call it a night. But her friends were still going at it; she decided to head outside to get some fresh air; she was leaned up against the brick wall outside of the current bar that she was at, the music from inside was silenced, which helped her pounding head, the cold autumn air made goosebumps on her arms stand on their ends.

"Help!" a voice shouts from the alleyway a few steps away from her. She looks over but debates about going over there to see what is happening. But her goodwill made its appearance as she found herself stumbling into the alley, and she didn't see anything, and she kept walking deeper into the path when she felt a hand wrap around her mouth, and she screamed into the unfamiliar hand.

She struggles against her attacker, and she can feel his grip tighten around her, he kicks her heel back into his groin area, and he loosens his hold on her. She is able to escape and run, but the ground is uneven, and her heel breaks, and she stumbles and falls, twisting her ankle badly. But the adrenaline was pumping in her veins, she was quick to get up, and when she looked behind her, the man was gone, but when she turned there, he was the neighbor who helped her all those years ago. Before she could even let out a sound, his fist reared back, and a blow landed to the center of her face; all she saw was the bit of static stars in her vision but she wasn't going to let one punch knock her out. She wanted to live, so she tried to shake off the punch, and Isabella moved to swat her hand, her nails catching the man's face, and he made out a pained grunt noise; yet another blow came after, and that was when she finally fell into forced darkness.

~~~

When she comes to her eyesight was blurry, and her mind was hazy; when her bearings were found, she realized she was sitting on a damp concrete floor, and in what looked like a chain walled-in room, she tried to get up, but her right wrist was chained to the wall behind her. When she pulls the chain, she sees an IV in her arm, drawing blood out of her body and into a bag. The confusion in her mind was overtaking her thoughts; where was she.

"Hello?" Lily calls out; her voice is hoarse. There was talking in another room; it was muffled, so she couldn't make out what they were saying.  "I know you assholes can hear me!"

A door opened, and footsteps came into where she was, and there stood that man that she saw in the alley. "We are aware that you are here, and we don't care."