The Girl

The Man stumbled in upon the room. It was small, dim, and cracked at the edges. There was no way light could filter this far down into the earth anyways, for the only fading light came from the single match The Man was holding. It was burning fast, nipping with nasty bites at his fingertips, but he did not hush it to smoke. He stood, bewitched by the sight that sprawled before him. A woman, no, a girl, dressed in the simple clothing of a commoner stood, or rather hung near the back-center part of the close quarters. The first thing he noticed were the chain links, all of different shapes and sizes and each glowing hot with a fiery heat. They all traced back, gradually fading in their searing screams, link by link until they glowed with fierce poison no more. The chains twisted like ivy, stretching and searching back to the thick, iron cuffs that closed their jaws like snakes around the girl's ankles, wrists and neck. These did not follow the rules of the fading heat, from what The Man could see, as smoking tendrils filtered to the ceiling from where they touched down to skin. The smoke traveled up to the ceiling, where it sat in mocking black clouds, jeering harsh smells down to the girl, and laughed as she coughed on their poisonous breath. The skin surrounding the cuffs was charred black, and there seemed to be an awful, deathly plant stitching its roots inside of her veins, claiming the charred skin and somewhat beyond as its own. Only now, as the match began to sink its burning fangs into The Man's fingers did she cast a gaze upwards. Her blue eyes were nearly grey, a dark, clouded grey with foggy thoughts wisping in and out of her pupils, tricking her eyes and leading her vision off course. But her eyes found their muddled way up to meet his stares. She was horribly pale, her skin drained of a life she could of had, and the crimson-purple bags under her eyes told a tale of many sleepless nights, kept awake from the constant bites of the iron cuffs. And as The Man dropped the match, and as it flickered from life, he saw a small smile creep its way onto her face, and heard a single, raspy word.

"Hello."