New Game

Like speakers in a dance club

(No Mike in this chapter.)

Aisha awoke with a moan, her head throbbing like speakers in a dance club. The scent of mildew assaulted her nose and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. The floor beneath her was as cold as ice and harder than a rock. She groaned again, massaging her aching temples and opening her eyes weakly and attempted to take in her surroundings. She saw nothing but darkness. Surely she had just opened her eyes, right? She rubbed her eyes furiously and opened them again to find nothing but blackness enveloping her.

Aisha reached down tentatively, feeling around her hands. She gasped when her hand came in contact with some sort of metal on her fingers on both hands. She continued to trace the outline of the contraptions. Large metal rings encased the base of her fingers making it a bit hard to move them.

Aisha tried to piece together the night before. She had been out with Ida at the bar when they had fought. She had gone outside to get some air when... Oh my God! The shadowy man! He must have done something to her. Aisha began to panic, rising quickly to her feet and feeling around in the darkness for any semblance of a structure. Where the heck was she?

Her leg connected with something metal and it clanged loudly against the ground. Aisha yelped in surprise, before regaining her composure. She reached out cautiously and felt the outline of a bucket, lifting it up off the ground to examine it. The bucket itself was empty, but it smelled atrocious and she threw it aside with a bang as it crashed into what she could only imagine was a wall of some sort.

Aisha spent the next few minutes feeling her way around her new surroundings. She concluded that she was in some kind of circular room with bricked-in walls. She bit her lip and sat down on the cold ground. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself by meditating.

She sat in the darkness, thinking. As if on cue, an old memory floated to the surface of her mind. A few months ago, Ida had been insistent on sharing the details of a particular case with her. Usually, Ida did not like to involve Aisha in such morbid business and she was only too happy to oblige, after all, blood and guts were far from ladylike. However, this time her girlfriend has stood firm, claiming the case involved her.

Ida told her about a serial killer who was abducting and murdering mostly woman, cutting off their fingers in the process. There were absolutely no clues as to the identity or location of this mysterious person. He was known only as of the Finger Fetcher. Oh dear God...

She started to scream.