Author Games: Red Room

Task Six: Zion Contreras

Numbness was a thick, black void. It was a spiral staircase, extending downwards forever with each step a larger drop than the last—until you were falling. Falling. With no hope of ever touching solid ground. Of feeling the cold walls around you. Of feeling at all. Numbness was a void, but pain was something different entirely. Pain was climbing the same staircase, hands and knees scraped and bloody with each concrete step like a mountain in front of you. Pain was hands wrapped around your throat, yanking you forward on the chain of your own primal devotion until breathing was impossible and anguish was the coat that warmed your shivering skin.

Between teeth spitting blood and feet stumbling forward, Zion would have surrendered himself to the void if he believed even for a moment that it would deliver him to some form of salvation. But there was none to be found— not here, where the only guidance was rough hands forcing him forward and the burning of his own bare scalp against the fluorescent lights. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." The words slipped from his lips without recognition, mindless prayer in a world devoid of any semblance of god. "He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names."

The scent of sugar flooded his nostrils, suffocatingly thick as he heard the familiar snap of a bubble popped. When had the patterns left him? Why could he no longer find the prediction of future action in the world around him? Why did the feeling of a lipstick kiss pressed against his cheek, cold fingernails scraping over his cheek as a face he recognized pulled his attention forward.

"He sustains the humble," whispered a female voice in his ear. Eve. Zion felt blind, hands groping for anything that resembled sight. But although his eyes could see the face in front of him and the gun pressed into his hand, his brain could not comprehend. "But casts the wicked to the ground." He knew blue eyes. He knew the shape of the smile and the teeth behind it. "I told them you'd do well." She was petting his cheek, his scalp, tracing the outline of his skull with a single languid finger. "Go through there." With a tilt of her head, she gestured towards the closed door in front of them. Dark shapes moved through the frosted glass. "Don't prove me wrong."

Then it came. A click— a snap of focus. Zion's eyes found hers. Like the raging seas, his thoughts parted long enough for clarity to burn bright over the pain. "What have you done to me?" Only then could he hear the rasp in his voice, feel the dryness of his tongue as it moved slowly against each syllable. Eve smiled. Her eyes were ravenous.

"Kill one," she told him. "Or we kill both."

The weight of the gun in his hand doubled. "What have you done to me?" Zion repeated, but there would be no answer.

"You have sixty seconds."

Sixty seconds sounded like a lifetime. With her hand on his back, she shoved him towards the door, letting his body stumble and his lungs wheeze. Pain surged from between his aching ribs, a fresh trickle of blood dripping from the wound— cold against his burning flesh. Zion fumbled with the handle of the door, putting as much weight as he could manage on it as he entered the room.

Padded walls, stripped of most their cushion and streaked black with age, waited for him. On the far wall, a full-length mirror reflected his broken image back at him. Zion's eyes flickered to the floor, to anywhere but the gaze peering at him from in that reflection. Cold metal stiffened his fingers, the gun sending shivers through him as he looked between it and the bodies that sat in chairs in front of him. Their heads were rolled back, breathing slow and steady, but as he stepped forward they began to stir.

Behind him, a lock clicked into place. The timer began.

A heavy, aching groan rose from the lips of the figure closest to him. The hairs on the back of his neck began to rise as he watched it. Dark, glossy shoes scraped the floor. Black dress pants clothing legs he had watched march up stairs, a familiar red rosary around the stirring neck. His breath hitched, body tensing as they looked up at him, eyes wincing against the bright light before the settled on him. In an instant, it all came flooding back to him. The reason. The why. All it took was the meeting of their eyes, and Zion remembered.