Animals [z.m. || a.u.]

xii.

A/N: It's My Freaking BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

xii.

Claire Watson's eyes never willed to be opened. Being a sleep-lover she is, she wouldn't really mind being unconscious forever, but the chain of events that resulted in her being unconscious surely made Claire uncomfortable. She wanted to know if it was all a figment of her imagination triggered by some action movie. Oh, how she wished it was a nightmare. How much did she wish to wake up on her soft bed with Alicia's soft knocking and Harry's car's constant honking followed by a tiny dispute with Harry and Spencer's comments. But the cold ground pressed against her body told her otherwise. It was as her body came back to consciousness, she could feel the gravel pricking her body, the tightness of the rope around her wrists and her ankles, the dryness of her mouth blocked with a gauze making her gag and lastly the inescapable agony rising from her calf proving that what happened the night before was just as real as herself. But, alas, she was tied up in an alien place.

Her eyes opened up to the very alien strangeness of the place. It took her some time to adjust to the lack of light in the room. But as soon as she took in the contents of the room she couldn't help but relate her life to some action thriller movie she'd enjoyed. The look of the room was overwhelmingly scary but most obviously disgusting. She lied in a horizontal position against a rotting chair in the room she supposed was either long abandoned or heavily ignored. Her hands struggled to feel the ground and she soon discovered it to be damp. Some gardening appliances heaped one over the other in a corner, dust covering them like a layer of paint. Cobwebs seemed to cover the ceiling like chandeliers making Claire fret about the size of the spiders residing there. Not that she's planning on staying there for a long time. Near some rotting furniture, Claire thought she saw a lizard moving making a shiver run through her spine of the absolute disgust she held against the reptile. But then again, the room was too dark and the possibility that she hallucinated the reptile's figure was undeniable. To the either corner of the room were some uncovered pipes covered in rust and moss. Them being a bit damp was the only evidence that they were still in use.

A basement?

For a girl with a fortune like that of Claire's the whole look of a basement was astonishingly new, not to mention sickeningly unhygienic. It won't be a hyperbole to say that Claire had never even got a glimpse of her own house's basement, let alone know where what was placed.

She knew there was no use of moving, for her movements were restricted by the presence of a thick rope but as human nature it is, she began to squirm underneath the grip of the rope. Those actions just causing the rope to dig deeper into her skin. She winced but never gave up on the thrashing making things from around her to be tipped and slam against the ground. As much as she'd learnt from the lame movies, making any sort of sound is danger and ultimately leads to something too wrong to be true, but she could not think of anything else at the moment. She felt so weak and helpless. With no chance of moving a muscle, Claire had given up on all the hopes of being able to escape this 'shithole' - as she addressed it. But that was not enough to make Claire cry. She surely felt the lump in her throat and was spooked by the fear of being held captive forever but she just tried to convince herself that there might be some way to get out of here.

It won't take Harry long to notice my absence, would it?

Finally there was some movement in the room, she wasn't sure of. Some shuffling sounds behind the door - which was way out of reach of the feeble light in the room to be noticed - guided Claire's eyes up. As the door opened, in came a silhouette. Claire felt fear shoot through her veins. The whole idea of being held ransom was way out of Claire's thinking, let alone facing the person who did it. She tried to push her body back wanting to keep as much distance as she could from the lean silhouette which made it's way towards Claire effortlessly.