Last Seconds

Chapter 4. Reality

I'm back! So here is an early chapter post and the next one will be Saturday (as usual). Now you can continue with reading. (o‿∩)

I take a breath in. A musky, dirt smell tickles my nose. Where am I? I remove a sheet that I don't ever remember being there, off of my face. That's when I hear him and I'm violently slapped back into what must be the awful reality.

"Finally! I've been calling you for half an hour!" My captor, Emerson I think, frustratingly says into a phone.

"I assume you got my messages?" He continues before pausing to let the person on the other end speak. "I'm freaking out? What do I do?" He paces a few steps to the right and stops clearly annoyed. "This isn't funny." He shouts angrily.

I look around, my vision blurry from the sudden brightness. This place looks like some sorta of cellar. There is food and water along the right wall, a cot and chairs on the left and two doors. The one with the stairs must be the exit and the other one could be a bathroom.

I look once more at the exit door. Emerson is distracted so now would be perfect to escape. I try to sit up but as I do a sharp pain shoots like lightning through my body originating from my side. I bit my lip, so hard that I'm sure its bleeding, in an attempt to stay quiet.

Time for try number two. I move a little bit quicker sitting up but the pain comes even stronger. This time through the bleeding lip I yelp. I struggle to stay sitting. Another small cry escapes my mouth fallowed by a tearing noise as I fall off the cot I was on. With a loud thud I hit the cold concert floor. The wind is knocked out of me as the pain slices like little scaples through my body.

I peer up through the gut wrenching pain expecting to see an angry captor instead I see the ceiling but right where he was before is a baffled Emerson just staring at me, mouth wide open.

I grab at my side which pain has gone from a eight to a twenty in seconds. As I touch the skin, my hand becomes wet. I look down to see blood covering my palm and fingers. I remove part of my torn shirt and see where its coming from. I briefly look at the spot before pressing my hands firmly down in an attempt to stop the blood flow.

Emerson appears next to me and pulls my hands out of the way. He begins pressing a cloth down soaking up the blood better then I was.

"Yeah I'm sure. The log says she was dead." Emerson says into his phone that's pressed between his shoulder and his ear. "Shes been dead for a good forty-five minutes!"

Dead? I was never dead I'm sure of it. My date is still years away and I'm pretty sure I'd know my own date.

He says goodbye to the person and chucks his phone onto the cot I was on. "Here press down on this." He gets up leaving the wound to me. When he returnes his arms are full of stuff. He sets a bucket next to me and dunks a clean cloth in. "Lift your head" he says. He sets a pillow under me making it much easier for me to see the things he has. Dental floss, a needle, hydrogen peroxide and scissors.

"Alright I don't have any vodka on hand so this is really gonna hurt. Bite down on this." Kneeling down beside me, Emerson places a thick, and clean, cloth in my mouth. He then removes the bloody rag and inspects the wound. I can still see blood coming out of the hole. Moving aside the hydrogen peroxide, he grabs the needle and dental floss. Now I can tell what he's doing. I gulp nervously.

I take a deep breath in just as the needle goes through the skin. My teeth clench the cloth as he continues sewing me back together. I whimper through the cloth my voice to hoarse to scream louder. I stare at the ceiling as a way I keep calm. Though it doesn't help much. I fight to keep my body still so I don't get hurt worse. My hands ball in to fist at my side not because I need to punch something, its that I don't have anyway else to hold myself down.

Once the pain has sort of gone, my muscles relax a little. But I'm caught of gaurd when I feel a stinging and warming pain. I look to see that he's cleaning the wound and the surrounding skin gingerly scrubbing the drying blood.

Slowly I grab the cloth out of my teeth and take the bits that aren't slobbery and pat the beads of sweat away from my hair line. "Thanks," I say shakily, still feeling like the needle is in my skin and my wound bleeding.

He takes the scissors and cuts the bloody bits of my shirt away and then starts cleaning off the floor. That's when I remember what he had said before. "You said I was dead but I couldn't have been. I mean my date is still years away. No one dies before there date right?"

He didn't reply though he keeps cleaning. After finishing the spot on the floor he pauses and finally gives me an answer. "No one dies before there date." And that's it. He says it more to himself that to me. I guess it does answer my question but then why did he say I had died. He was very sure that was the case.

After a few more moments of laying helplessly on the floor Emerson crouches at my side. "You need to rest you don't want that stitch to open again." He picks me up and places me back on the cot. He then dissapears through the mysterious exit door, leaving me alone in a silent cellar.

***

I end up falling asleep and when I wake the next day, a tray of food is setting on a small table beside me. Slowly and so carefully I sit up just enough to reach the plate and be able to eat it. Taking a bite of the egg and bacon sandwich, I notice the exit door open a crack. Oh how badly I want to go running but with a stitch its not that simple. I pop a juicy green grape in my mouth. If I was just a way to escape then why did he patch me up? He could have left me there to bleed out but he didn't. My brain is spinning with questions when Emerson pops back into the room closing the door behind him.

"Where am I?" I ask. Really out of all the questions my brain decides on where am I?

"A friends cellar," he says glancing at me. He's very helpfully ain't he.

Next question, "Why?" That's all I can say. Why, why, why? Everything is just why.

"Because," he says clearly trying to be a smart alec.

"Just answer my questions." I gulp trying to organize my thoughts. "Why did you kidnap me? Why I'm I here? Why didnt you just leave me to bleed out?"

He pauses sitting down in a chair at the wooden table. Letting out a sigh he brushes his hands up his face and through his rugged blonde hair. Then he turns to me, his hazel green eyes searching my features. "Because," he stops and if thats all then I will get out of this bed and smack him sencless. But he continues "I planned to let you go after I got in the car. Just drive a few kilometers away and drop you off at the side of the road. I didn't mean to shoot you. The gun just went off. I'm not indecent so I took you to a hospital. When it turned out that you died I panicked. Took you here so I could figure out what to do next. That's still what I'm doing."

I lay there. He seems to be telling the truth but how do I really know. Considering what he said I can't help buy ask another question. "So what are you doing next." I scratch my lower arm, anxiously waiting for the answer.

Emerson turns back away from me before replying. "I'll let you know once I figure it out."