The Moon Chronicles

The Moon Chronicles: Chapter Two [Draft]

Drops of dew clung, smeared and dripped down the musty basement's single small window pane, as beads of salted sweat gathered and dribbled down Charlotte's furrowed forehead, around her vacant bloodshot eyes, and merged with her watery helpless tears. Charlotte tried concentrating upon the crude old window above: was anyone out there in the rain, was anyone coming at all?

The bleak mold-blackened walls of the basement featured intricate patterned furrows in the stone that Charlotte imagined were ancient cave etchings, and she focused intently to make out their designs — prehistoric hunts, mythic monsters of old, kings and queens of the stone age — any thing at all to distract from the blinding bleeding pain below.

Charlotte winced and writhed and tried again to scream, again to no avail. The rats sunk their gnarled incisors deeper into her bare flesh, tearing and swallowing bits and chunks, tearing off shredded skin, gnawing at tendon and muscle, guzzling the bloodied mess, digging in closer to Charlotte's little bones inside. Several rats at each leg, another at each arm, as she squirmed and tensed and failed to pull her limbs free of their binds. She held her head as high as her strength allowed for now, as her thin neck grew more and more tired, as she glanced down finally again across the bare but busy floor where more rats emerged slowly and greedily from under the decrepit walls, creepily scurrying toward her ragged and failing, enflayed little body — while a large shadow across the far wall lurched and shuddered in private amusement.

Scream, Charlotte thought. Please, just scream! She tried so badly to scream but could only manage a moan and feeble grunt, as gagging disgusting rags clogged down her throat to near suffocation; indeed she struggled even to breath in air at all. Charlotte's toes flinched as another rat brushed filthy fur against them, and she felt more little razor teeth sink into the soles of her feet.

Then control my mind, at least, she thought. They cannot feast on my mind. Maybe the answer is hidden there in the stone, on the walls, in the rain. Charlotte focused all the nuances of pain, all the multicolors of torture, into channels of thought and interpretation. She envisioned and read the words within the stone, secrets carved therein just and only for her to see. She heard the drops and coded patter of rain upon the sill outside, symbolic ciphers of potent rhythms of power that she hoped beyond hope to tap into here and now.

I simply must SCREAM, she thought, and tensed every muscle in her weary neck. Yet no sound emerged as her head began to ache backward finally and fatally toward the damp cold stone, and rest there just for a moment. Charlotte felt little teeth graze her neck and draw blood as a wormlike tail flailed against her cheek before she strained to raise her head again a bit longer.

No. I cannot scream, she conceded as her head collapsed back down again. Charlotte braced her mind for more and unending pain, pain, and never-ending pain in all directions along her small fragile body. She did live 10 years at least she thought. Finally, Charlotte heard a scream among the searing pain, though it was not her own.

'Charlotte!' Rats scurried about as a hatch door opened and a wedge of yellow light filled the dim murky room. "Hey Charlotte, where are you.. are you in there? Come to dinner now or Mom will be so mad! Are you in the basement again?"

"Out of here, you!" gruffly exclaimed the Dark One, as Charlotte had named her captor.

"Oh it's you" replied Charlotte's sister. They were not quite identical twins; at least, Charlotte never had wanted to look identically to her, having so little in common as they did. "If you see Charlotte, tell her to come at once, or Mom will come look for her with a switch, cuz she is probably doing mischief again!". Her sister left them alone.

"Guess yer lucky this time girl, for now" her captor cackled, before grabbing Charlotte's gagged soundless throat with one hand, while untying her binds with another. "And better keep quiet!"