The Bleeding Rose

Rose in Captivity

Riddle slowly roused himself awake, something screaming inside of him and crushing his lungs as he fought to drag himself out of sleep. A light headedness plaguing him as his body felt as if it was swimming around through a calm ocean. 

What had happened? Why did he feel so...so... the best way he could describe it was like a cloud. Ready to dissipate and be blown any direction the wind blew. As if the moment he wasn't putting in his full efforts into waking up he would slip just a little further. Gradually though, he willed himself into the waking world. 

The first thing he felt was his fingers, flexing them as much as his muscles would allow. He could feel the texture of wood under his fingers. A soreness immediately followed. A light burn seeming to fade in like a television set starting at his feet all the way up to his neck. A pinching pain rooting in the bend of his neck from where it had creased. His head hanging limply on his chest. 

He was beginning to recognize this grogginess that plagued his system. It was similar to what it felt like after taking medicine for a cold. Except much more potent. Like comparing the medicine to a lizard, and whatever drug that had been administered to him being like a dragon. 

A small groan escaped his throat as he tried and failed to lift his head. Only slightly rolling it to the side before it dropped back down to the center of his chest. With that failure, he tried to lift a leg or an arm. Successfully moving them, but not lifting them up. Something trapping his limps to their spots. Riddle realized he was sitting. He doesn't really know what he thought he was doing before this realization, but it didn't really matter.

He experimentally pulled and wriggled around. Surprised when the sensation of rope pulled him right back. Its fibers itching at the exposed skin around his wrists. 

He was tied up...why? Where was he?

He reluctantly peeled open his eyes. A fogginess clouding over his vision, but he could see the unmistakable sight of blood. Adrenaline spiked through his chest and suddenly whatever drug that had been keeping him sluggish was eradicated like the flame of a blown out a candle. Riddles eyes snapping fully open as he rapidly blinked away the fogginess to better see. The clothes on his stomach and side were soaked with red. Sticking uncomfortably to his skin with a dried stiffness. 

At the sight of it, the pain that had earlier not yet registered came crashing in like a wave. Riddle screwing his eyes shut and grunting as his stomach involuntarily tightened. Only seeming to aggravate the wound even more. 

With this sharp pain came memories, flashes back to what had gotten him here. He was arguing with his mother, then he was running. The timeline jumped forward, watching helplessly as a knife plunged towards him. Then he was yelling out in pain. Then...

Then he was here. He lifted his head to assess the environment around him. A chilling shock seeping into his bones as he looked around at his bedroom. It was exact, down to the last wonky floorboard. Where in the Great Seven was he! Because even though it looked like his room, it didn't feel like it. It wasn't as warm and nostalgic as it should have been. It was like looking at a foreign area. This was not his room, but if it wasn't, then where was he?

His pondering was put to a halt as the door directly in front of him creaked open. The girl with black hair shuffling in. She no longer had her jeans on. Instead wearing a long purple skirt that hung down by her ankles, a white t-shirt hidden away under a pink cardigan. For the first minute or so she didn't even acknowledge him, shuffling into the room and past his chair to fiddle with something behind him. The sound of metal against metal clinking through the room.

"I demand to know who you are! Why have you taken me here!" Riddle ordered, his tongue heavy in his mouth as his head whipped around, angling behind him as he tried to look at her. She squeaked, seemingly unaware and quite surprised that he was awake.