Melody

2:22

Melody was meditating. Listening for any sound outside, waiting for the smallest shift of the wind. She wasn't sure what it was that sent her adrenaline into overdrive. The air was still, the hall was silent, though Melody was certain she could now hear lots of movement from far away.

She was on edge, she was ready. When she heard a prowling, though uneven gait come down the hall. Stopping outside her door, Melody listened, parsing each sound for all the information she could glean from any stimulus.

The jingle of a key ring with too many keys being moved.

The clink, clink, clink of key after key being sorted in a hand.

A metal on metal grind as a key was fit into the lock outside of her door.

Someone was outside, and they were not calling out to reassure her. They had the keys. Whoever was coming in, they were not a friend. A friend would let you know they were coming.

Melody moved on swift feet faster than she thought herself capable of. To hide in the blind spot when the door was opened. Melody was in place as the lock clicked open and the door was opened from the outside, swinging in. Melody could smell stale smelling clothes and a body that didn't shower frequently enough from whomever it was the moment the door moved. Assured from the smell of unwashed clothes and body was certainly not someone Alexander would send wordlessly to rescue her. Melody unleashed the storm that was inside of her.

It happened so quickly. She dropped low into a squat inching her way forward, and as the kidnapper entered her cell to try and see where she was, Melody started her attack. One leg swung out from her crouched position as she moved to be just ahead of the open door, sweeping her leg in a powerful stroke, taking out the tall thin man's legs and knocking him down off his feet.

He fell hard, on his ass, before continuing downward, cracking his head sharply on the metal frame of the door behind him. Melody didn't stop. She leapt on top of her would be attacker with a snarl, grabbing his ears, one in each hand she wrenched his head up and down, slamming it hard into the concrete floor he had come finally to rest on.

Melody kept going, screaming wordless animal sounds until she felt a sickening collapse as the back of his skull caved inwards. His head suddenly went closer to the floor than it had on previous swings. The shock knocked Melody from her violent haze. Melody looked at the blood on her hands, up her arms, splattering the walls. Her horror growing as her eyes saw more and more blood spatters, the entire room was covered in blood. She was covered in blood.

She looked down, for the first time seeing the face of the man who attacked her. "I know you." she breathed, not believing what her eyes saw. He was older, and somehow even thinner, but it was the same hyena from her first kidnapping. The one who had been in her math class and then vanished along with all the other hyena's in town shortly after. Not all at once, that would have been too obvious. But Alec had kept close watch on the changes in the town's population.

His dull eyes, now unseeing as she looked at his face with fresh horror. His still warm body was still. His skull monstrously misshapen. She had killed him. She realised she was still sitting on his corpse and jumped up as though she had been electrocuted. Pressing herself against the farthest wall, pressing herself into the corner. Eyes closed, ignoring what was now blocking her exit. Ignoring what she had done, squeezing her eyes closed as she bundled herself tightly into a ball.

A logical, small and quiet part of her brain was trying to tell her to move. To go and steal the keys, Now was her chance to go and save Ansley and run free. To save herself. But she was frozen. Even with her eyes closed all she could see was blood. Blood and Jeremy's dead unseeing eyes looking at her. Jeremy, that was his name. The quiet kid in her class that she never paid attention to. That no one had paid attention to.