Red Discord

Chapter 6

The stars shone bright in the blackened night while the moon happily smiled down at the sleeping Earth. It was midnight; it was quiet while the house slept. There was a black cat clock on the wall that made a small ticking noise with every passing second that went by. Kassy sat up in the bed, wide awake at the peak of midnight. She placed her palm to her forehead and began to knead her temple, trying to rid herself of the splitting headache that had greeted her when she woke up. Looking around the room had only blurred her vision worse than it was already. To get away, she knew she had to get out of the room first. She forced her legs to move. Searing pain, more than she’d ever felt in her entire life, shot up her body with the small millimeter of movement from her legs. Her teeth bit down on her lower lip. With too much force, the delicate flesh tore and blood slowly dripped down from her lips like a small stream about ready to dry up. The doors shot open. There was a figure of a man standing in the doorway. He was a skinny, slender man with a much too dark smile and eyes that seemed to glow in the darkened room.

He stepped forward. Walking towards the girl, he greeted her. “Hello, dear Kassy. Quite a fine night it is. Lucky you got to see this, now aren’t you?” The man let out a small chuckled laugh. He sat on the edge of the bed where Kassy lay. “Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oooooh. What magnificence is this?” His fingers dove into her hair and flipped a strand in his fingers. Then he grabbed her cheeks in both hands, rubbing them together as hard as he could. “Oh, humble Kassy, I’ve never seen such pure and utter fear as this! It positively and most absolutely makes you stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful tonight under this crescent moon.”

Kassy tried to swat his hands from her cheeks, but the man was quicker. He pinned her hands down with only one hand. Contrary to his slim physique, he held a much more stronger strength. “Why can’t I move my legs?” she hissed at him, jerking and squirming her upper body to try to break free of the man’s grip, but extremely cautious not to move her lower body.

“Oh, you poor child; you poor, unknowledgeable child you.” He moved his hand slowly down the woman's thigh over the thin, purple sheet sending small shots of pain up her body. “You looked like you wanted to stay here ever so badly, so I gave you a shot in both your leg muscles that won’t allow you to walk for at least another three days.” His face darkened but the amused smile remained. “Try to move them and you’ll be in hell deep shit of pain.” The man blew a kiss at her before he skipped out of the room, closing the door so she was once again in complete darkness.

She head-dived the pillow underneath her, slamming her head hard against the feathers.

The door cracked open, a small ray of light floating above the skinny butler’s head that poked its way into the crack. “And, Kassy,” he said, “you do want to be quiet. You don’t want to be noisy and fear waking ‘her’ up, because if you do, there will be consequences to pay. Trust me, you will pay dearly for it. ‘She’ likes her beauty sleep.” Then, just as quickly as he popped in, he closed the door and was gone again.

There were no sounds, nobody up to help or hear her—though, she knew she could possibly wake someone up with her screams, but she wouldn’t take that chance with the warning she had already received. Kassy laid in bed, and, without being able to move her legs without antagonizing pain, she was stuck. However, she knew she couldn’t stay there forever at their mercy. She had to find her brother somehow, if he was still alive, and get out as fast as they could.

Her voice shook with the tears, she began to wail softly, “I... don’t know what to do anymore. I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.” Her tears ran down her face like a river in rain, pouring off her chin like Niagara Falls, and into her cut lip that, with the mixture of her salty tears, soared with flaming hot pain. “James!” she cried, her tears lulling her to sleep.

.

It was the kind of pain like you got when you went to the doctor to get a flu shot that Kassie felt. Her eyes shot open with a pulse of pain throughout her face, jolting her body up. Before she could get an inch off the bed, her body was pushed back down with two large hands that grabbed her shoulders. The large, muscular butler held her down with his arms, looming darkly over her bed, while the other butler—the slender, younger one—sat at the edge of her bed as he held a small bag of ice to her lip where she had bit it last night. He had a displeased look on his face—his lips pouted, his eyes narrowed, and his brows curved.

“Ma’am,” he said in an unhappy monotone. “If you could, please don’t move. It will only hurt more for you—and I mean it will become more difficult for me if you don’t.” He pressed the ice bag down harder on her lips. The pain increased and her tears began to fall.

With the ice bag blocking her mouth, her body bobbed up and down as she cried with the pain increasing more and more. There came to a point where she wasn’t able to take all the pain and crying and the bobbing movement of her body all at once. She shot up quicker than the muscular butler was prepared for, shoved the slender butler’s hand off of her, and puked all over the bed sheets. 

The slender butler grabbed her arms and pushed her to the side of the bed. “Well don’t just stand there!” he screamed at the other butler. “Go get something to clean this mess up with and a bucket in case she decides to puke again. And hurry!” The other butler turned around and walked out of the room with no haste whatsoever which caused the slender butler to click his tongue in frustration at his co-worker. “What’s he good for except for laborious jobs?! I’m better off just doing things myself around here!” He released Kassy’s hand and ran out of the room, in a haste to get everything he needed. 

Kassy was still a sobbing mess. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what was going on, and to top it all off, she was sick to her stomach. Still, she found an incentive to continue forward. She tried once again to lift her legs, knowing it might only hurt her worse, but, much to her pleasant surprise, she noticed her legs hurt much less than they did the first time. The medicine must be wearing off, Kassy thought to herself. Thinking that this might be a good time to try to escape by possibly crawling to another room before the butler returned, Kassy hauled herself off the bed. Once her feet make it to the floor, her body slid off the bed. She held back her scream as her body toppled to the floor. The impact had made a large banging sound that echoed throughout the house. Kassy was frantic, hopping with all her might that anyone in the house was much too busy to hear something like that. Still with hope inside of her, Kassy crawled to the nearest dresser. It was located on the side wall closest to the door. Using the handles as support, Kassy forced her body up, however, when she tried to reach for the top of the dresser, she hit the vase as the side of the dresser with her hand. It fell over. Unlike a normal vase, this vase doesn’t fall off of the dresser—only to its side—or leak water, which caught Kassy’s attention. The vase, as noted by Kassy, was attached to the dresser with hinges, which were what held the vase to the dresser. There was a clicking sound as the vase was pulled back upright by some kind of mechanics system inside the dresser. Kassy, with curiosity afloat, leaned over the top of the dresser, for support, and touched the flowers. As she had thought, they were in fact fake flowers, but upon her touch, the three flowers that were sticking up above the rest of the vase, slid back down in place with the rest of the other artificially made flowers. Wondering what the noise was, Kassy tilted her head the the left. The carpet next to the dresser had moved to reveal a hidden staircase.

Footsteps rapidly approached the room from down the hall. Kassy pushed herself off of the dresser and let her body once again fall to the floor. An even worse pulse of pain shot up her body. She tried to hold in her scream, but a low moan escaped her mouth. Tears started to form in her eyes but were gone in seconds as she blinked them away. As soon as she could, she crawled down the stairs. The carpet recovered the stairs just in the nick of time. The slender butler walked back in the room. A panic stricken expression flashed across his face when he saw that Kassy wasn’t in her bed where he had left her. His first reaction was to run to the vase and examine the flowers. He shook his head when he saw that none of the flowers were sticking out of the vase. Then, he ran out of the room and down the hall again, this time in complete and utter panic.