No Rest for the Wicked

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Cassidy's eyes were closed as she sat against the wall, feeling as if she were going to collapse at any moment.

It had been three days. Three days since the devil had visited her, three days of sitting in her own filth as her body slowly began to fail itself. She hadn't eaten or drank anything in so long that she felt like she would disintegrate to dust from the faintest of touches.

The devil was depriving her of the necessities her body needed to survive. She was so hungry that her stomach felt like it was about to cave in on itself. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, an awful taste that was similar to what she assumed mold would taste like sticking to her tongue, constantly reminding her that she needed something to drink.

Was this plan? To kill her slowly until she inevitably dies of dehydration? It wasn't the cruelest death he could have given her, but boy was it taking forever. She'd be lying if she didn't want to just get it over with and waste away already.

Why the devil had failed to come see her was beyond her. It didn't make sense; he rarely kept his victims for longer than forty-eight hours, and during that time period he definitely visited them. Yet here she was on day three, still stuck in a nightmare with no sign of the monster.

To add insult to injury, the silence of the cellar had driven her borderline mad. Her delusional mind had begun to make random sounds and apparitions appear out of nowhere in the cellar with her, making her wonder if the supernatural was real. She couldn't tell if it was the dehydration or if she'd really lost it. Was it really her imagination? Or were spirits of the victims of the devil stuck in this hell like her?

The worst of it was the body. If she stared at the lifeless corpse for too long, it would look like it was moving. Cassidy knew it wasn't possible, but the idea that the woman could still be alive in that state just made her feel even more dreadful.

Cassidy had developed a strange coping mechanism in order to cope with the fact that she was stuck in a room with a rotting corpse. She had named the body "Hannah"; she felt giving the deceased woman an identity, even if it wasn't her actual identity, still made the woman seem more human than victim.

She would imagine that Hannah was a kind woman, a successful lady with a bright future ahead of her. Maybe she worked in a coffee shop, maybe she volunteered at a soup kitchen, or maybe she ran a business. The woman's hand's were dainty, a small diamond ring glinting on her ring finger. Cassidy liked to imagine that she owned a small floral shop with her husband, a shop full of beautiful and colorful flowers, a sharp contrast to the murky and barren cellar she was now rotting in.

She pitied Hannah's husband. She hoped that he was still running this imaginary shop that Cassidy had made up in her head, even without his wife... even if it wasn't real.

Hannah was the second time Cassidy had been truly exposed to a body. Of course she'd seen crime scene photos not only from the devil case but also several others that her father has shown her, but she'd never really been in the physical presence of one. Not since her biological grandmother's funeral.

Being alone with nothing but her thoughts now, Cassidy's mind had to fill in the time somehow. She found herself reflecting on her past, a past she didn't exactly want to remember.

The past with her biological mother.

She had lied when she told Scott she didn't remember much of her childhood. It was easier to lie about not remembering than it was to remember. Her childhood was a bit more vivid than she would have liked it to be, maybe because of how traumatizing it was.

Cassidy had barely known her grandmother. Her mother would never let the old woman see her grandchild, always keeping Cassidy away from her out of spite. She never did learn why her mother hated her grandmother so much; all she knew was that grandma was someone she wasn't supposed to be alone with.