Stockholm Syndrome

The Devil's Eyes

You came to slowly, the depth of your exhaustion your first waking thought. Your eyelids, as they fluttered languidly open, were as stiff and heavy as lead, and a horrible ache hammered against your skull with sharp, echoing jolts. You blinked hard, shrinking away from the piercing light which filtered out relentlessly from somewhere unseen. Splotches popped in a kaleidoscope of color in and out of existence and your vision swam in uncompromising protest. 

A groan rumbled like a stampede up your chapped throat, and when you shifted on the unyielding mattress you did so with the ease of someone trudging through wet concrete. Your brow furrowed dangerously at the ceiling above when it began to churn; you shot it glare dripping with venom.

The icing on the cake of this oh-so-lovely morning- if it was in fact a morning- was your inability to remember a single detail from the party last night. Nausea bubbled in your stomach and you squeezed your eyes shut tightly, content to stare at nothingness if it meant keeping your dinner down.

You lay still, waiting for the tumbling waves of dizziness to pass, and tried to hear beyond the shrill ringing in your ears.

Somewhere in the distance, through your dense haze, you heard the muffled rush of water plinking heavily against a sink. Your fingers flew to your temples and you crinkled your nose; you must have never even made it home from the party. There was no faucet close to your bedroom.

Reluctantly you blinked, squinting as blurry shapes and colors became coherent. Your darting eyes came to rest on the grainy wooden panels of a closed door. The only source of light seeped like an obnoxious beacon from underneath it, and you looked on with eyes wide in a stare of blank confusion; this certainly wasn't any room in your friend's house.

The mystery grew as you glanced at the floor and walls and noticed that they were made of adjacent planks, reminiscent of some sort of cabin. A deep frown tugged at your lips and your eyebrows knit together in sudden concern. What the hell had you been doing last night? What weren't you remembering?

As your mind trudged through hazy, distant memories, your hand absently wandered to the flesh of your neck. A sharp gasp escaped your lips; you drew back your fingers instantly. Red-hot pain flared furiously under your gentle embrace, the skin tender and raw to the touch. You could not stifle the cough rising from your agitated throat, and when you buried your mouth and rasped into your sleeve, a muscle-deep ache spasmed throughout entire body; even breathing hurt.

Breathing. You couldn't breathe.

Your breath hitched in your chest like a punch to the gut; you fell back against the wood of the bed frame, eyes growing wide in sudden panic. Clarity shone in searing beams through the fog of your memory and images assaulted your mind in a ghastly slideshow.

 All at once, you remembered suffocating, felt the ghost of that horrible vice-like grip at your neck, crushing your muscles as if they were fragile eggshells and squeezing the last gasp of air from your lungs. You had drowned there, in the blackness, sunken into icy oblivion at the hands of a monster. You were never at the party; your keys had never even made it into the ignition. By all accounts, you should be dead.

Dread seeped like the coldest ice water into your bones. It swept in a rising symphony of shrieking and pounding until it was screaming in your ears, and you obeyed its shrill orders like a puppet on a string, turning to stare in dumb shock at the searing light clawing desperately from underneath the door. The clashing swelled to a deafening crescendo of frantic hysteria and a sudden, horrible realization echoed through your body: