WITCH - ARA

Twenty two

A cold drop splashes onto my forehead, jolting me awake. My eyelids flutter open, but my vision is blurry, like I’m still half-dreaming. I try to lift my hand to rub my eyes, but—nothing. My arms won’t move. Panic rushes through me. I try again, harder this time, but my wrists don’t budge. I’m cuffed. To a bed.

“What the...?” I whisper, my voice shaking. My heart pounds in my chest, my breathing growing erratic. I twist and pull, my body thrashing as much as it can, but the cold metal of the cuffs digs into my skin.

Where am I?

It’s raining outside. I can hear the rain pounding against the roof, relentless, like it’s trying to drown the world. The room smells like damp wood, and when I squint, I can just make out the wooden walls surrounding me. The bed creaks beneath me as I move. Everything feels old, like something out of a nightmare.

"What the hell..." My mind races. How did I get here?

Before I can scream again, the door creaks open. A man steps inside. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a look on his face that instantly makes my skin crawl. I don’t recognize him.

“Who are you?” I demand, my voice sharper than I feel.

He smiles, but it’s wrong—like he’s enjoying this way too much. “Sorry about this. My men brought the wrong girl. Should’ve brought Blaze instead.” He sighs, as if talking about a small mistake, a simple error.

But then his words hit me. Blaze? He was after Blaze?

My blood runs cold. "What are you talking about? Blaze? What do you want with her?" I yank at the cuffs again, my wrists aching, but I don’t care. The panic inside me is bubbling over. "Let me go! You’ve got the wrong person! Let me out of here, you psycho!"

The man just laughs, a low, cruel sound that twists my stomach into knots. He steps closer, and I feel the bile rise in my throat. “Now that you’re here already,” he says, his voice dripping with sick amusement, “we need to make use of you.”

I freeze.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of scissors. The kind you’d use to cut fabric—no, clothes. My breath catches in my throat. He’s coming closer. I can hear the soft snip-snip as he opens and closes the scissors, his eyes glinting in the dim light.

I scream, thrashing harder than ever, my body twisting and jerking, but it’s no use. The cuffs keep me in place. My heart is hammering in my chest, my mind a mess of fear and confusion.

He’s going to cut my clothes off.

“No! Get away from me!” I scream, my voice raw with terror, but he’s unfazed, his sick grin only growing wider as he comes closer.

“Let’s not make this harder than it has to be,” he says softly, like he’s speaking to a child.

I yank at the cuffs again, harder, the metal biting into my skin, but I don’t care. I can’t let this happen. I won’t.

He raises the scissors, and I feel my skin prickle with cold, my breath catching as the blade gets closer and closer.

As the scissors edge closer to me, I brace myself, my heart hammering so loudly in my chest that I can barely hear anything else. My breath is caught in my throat, every muscle in my body screaming to fight even though I'm trapped.

But then the door opens again.

“Unbelievable.” A new voice, deeper and older, fills the room. “One simple task—to bring Blaze—and your men couldn’t even do that.”

I turn my head toward the door, and there’s another man standing there. He looks older than the first guy, his face set in an annoyed frown. He sighs in frustration, clearly disappointed with how things have turned out.

The man with the scissors turns toward him, his expression shifting from sadistic glee to pure rage in an instant. “You’re the one who gave my men the instructions last night, and now you dare blame me?”

Without warning, he storms toward the older man. The movement is so sudden that I barely have time to register what’s happening. Before I can scream, before I can even think, the man with the scissors lifts his hand and drives the blade straight into the older man’s eyes.

A sickening squelch fills the air as the scissors sink in, and the older man’s scream pierces through the room like a knife, echoing off the wooden walls.

I scream, too, louder than I ever have before. My voice is raw with terror, my mind a blur of shock and horror. I thrash wildly against the cuffs, trying to block out the image, the sound, the horror of what’s happening right in front of me.

The man pulls the scissors out, blood splattering across his hands as the older man collapses to the floor, his body twitching.

I can’t breathe. I can’t move. All I can do is scream and scream, hoping, praying that someone—anyone—will come and save me.

The man with the scissors snaps his head in my direction, his face twisted in fury. “Shut up!” he screams, his voice a roar that shakes the walls. I choke on my breath, my scream faltering but still trembling on my lips.

His eyes, wild and burning, flick to the body on the floor—the older man, still twitching and bleeding from his now-empty eye sockets. I watch, frozen, as the man with the scissors crouches down beside the body, muttering angrily under his breath. Then, with one swift, brutal motion, he plunges the scissors back into the man’s chest, twisting them until the body stops moving completely. The final gurgle of life fades into silence.

I can't breathe, my entire body paralyzed with shock.

And then, with a sickening calm, the man drags the lifeless body toward me. My heart pounds in my ears as he places the bleeding corpse right beside me on the bed, its lifeless eyes staring up into the ceiling, blood pooling onto the sheets. The smell of iron fills the room, mixing with the dampness of the wood and rain outside.

I gag, tears streaming down my face. My body shakes uncontrollably, my wrists still bound to the bed as I try to push myself as far away as possible from the cold, dead body beside me.

The man stands over me, wiping the blood from his hands as if it’s nothing, a twisted smile playing on his lips. “There. Maybe now you’ll be quiet.”

Thunder strikes outside.

But all I can do is stare in horror, my body trembling, unable to process the nightmare unfolding around me.