White

Chapter 1

The screeching sound of a rusty metal door swinging open echoed along the walls of the damp cell, penetrating the complete silence with its horrid noise. No matter how many times that I'd heard it over the long years, the sound still grated across my eardrums, leaving them aching vaguely. As my eyes adjusted once more to the dim orange halo of torchlight, I looked around the small and familiar  confines of my cell. The dark stone walls were coated with damp, black moss and grime that climbed up the stone, as if it were trying to eventually reach the sun, and glistened when the flame's light touched it. An incessant drip, drip, drip bounced off the gray stone walls from water that fell from a crack in the ceiling and into a large puddle next to the rusty, metal door where a man is standing. The torch he wielded casted shadows across his face, somehow simultaneously lighting it up while also rendering his facial features unrecognizable.
    Slowly, I looked him over before I averted my gaze and settled it on anywhere but him. I had three people in my life and they were all the same; pretty much the last person you'd want to be locked in a room with. Their temperaments were always the equivalent of cobras, ready to sink their fangs into one as quick and easy as breathing. Unfortunately, it was always the same boring routine too. First they would demand the location of my people from me, then when I predictably refused to tell them, they'd move on to torture. They'd start with physical torture first, which hurt, but healed quickly enough. I couldn't seem to die no matter what they did to me or what I wished. When that didn't work, they'd sedate me and try to enter my head, searching through any nook and cranny I might offer up to them before inevitably giving up. Then they would leave, which was honestly the worst part of it.

When that door shut behind them, I would be left with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. It was the loneliness that was their worst torture of all. There were times that I didn't think I could take it anymore and that if someone would just come and rescue me from myself then I would tell them whatever they needed to know as long as they promised to whisk me away to a place with other people in it; so that I wasn't crushed by the overwhelming weight of solitude that was so heavy it were as if I were holding the burden of the very sky on my narrow shoulders. Then there would be nothing. All of my thoughts would fall away to oblivion and leave behind a simple husk. I would just exist and time would pass. Then they would remember that I exist again and I would come alive once more to start the same spiral. I would say that was a pathetic tumble, but I honestly had given up caring about dignity or lack thereof. There was only so much room in me for emotional turmoil and I'm pretty sure the loneliness had all of the territory on that one.                      

"What is my punishment today 'Oh  Dark and Sinister One?' I have some staring at the wall to do" I sighed nonchalantly before cringing at how absolutely hoarse my voice sounded from disuse. How embarassing. I  glanced down at the big chain cuffs around my bare ankles. Every small shift in movement caused  the large chain links to clang against each other. The skin had already been rubbed raw over and over, and was now bleeding... Again. It hardly even mattered. After all they have done to me through the  years, this small injury was nothing. It would heal. I always did. "A shame to interrupt" he stated simply. His voice was deep and his tone curt. Finally, I lifted my head to look dully at him. This one had boyish features with ginger hair that fell into the gray eyes that all of the Fallen possessed. Though he had an impish smile on his face, he always seemed infinitely bored with everything; as if listening to someone's cries of pain wasn't entertaining at all. Sometimes when I awoke from whatever he had done to me, he was even reading a book. 

Honestly, thank God it was this one though. It was a refreshing to at least wake up to

With a large roll of his eyes, he walked over to me. Despite my earlier bravado, I cringed away. Honestly, I had thought that I was through with being scared of these brutes. How long would it be until I no longer felt anything at all? Though I shouldn't long for numbness, I did. As I backed into the wall, I flinched when the chill of stone seeped through the thin dirt-splotched fabric of my white dress. Cracking a smile, he pulled a small rusted key out of his pocket. Now that he was so close, all of my courage had abruptly been snatched away and I tried to rally myself to speak again. My voice came out like a frog's, which didn't really inspire confidence.