Narcissus

Chapter Thirty-Five

A/N - Cover pic gives me Emma vibes.
I wrote this on a beach in North Wales about four glasses of wine deep. Take from it what you will ;)

--

The pounding at the back of my head was relentless.

Incessant and so incredibly painful, it paired itself with my throbbing temples in a wicked cocktail as I slowly regained consciousness. My eyes opened to a dimly lit room, where I sat upright on the cold stone floor. Everything was blurry, and my hands felt numb and heavy, nausea settling horribly in my stomach - the hangover was kicking in. A considerable amount of time must have passed since the taxi first came to a halt. The last thing I remembered was a cloth with a horrible stench of chemicals being smashed aggressively against my face, and after reaching up to my cheek with a hand, I realised the skin was still tender.

"Elise?" I croaked, deducing that anyone who intended to kidnap either of us probably already knew we weren't really Elizabeth Brown and Sophia Hart. We didn't hide it very well.

Silence followed. That meant that I was alone here. It was dark and cold, and the walls felt clammy as I huddled in the corner and allowed my eyes to adjust to the dim light. All of a sudden, I noticed a flat lump of black mass in the corner that I initially regarded with trepidation until I realised just what, or who, it was.

It was Elise.

My surroundings brightened a fragment as I released a breath I hadn't realised I was holding and scrambled on all fours to the other end of what I realised was some sort of cell. Elise lay flat on a low bed with a coarse blanket draped over her, and I shook her lightly to awaken her.

"Elise," I whispered, hoping that hearing her real name would bring her to some sort of consciousness, "Elise, it's me."

"Oh, hello," Elise whispered blearily, "Why have you awoken me? I was sleeping rather well. Is it Isla? Is something wrong?"

"Uh, hate to break it to you my love, but we appear to have been kidnapped."

"Oh," Elise lay back down and closed her eyes for a moment before flashing them wide open again, "Wait, what!?"

"Yeah," I giggled now, at the absurdity of it all. My eyes were adjusted enough now that I could make out the principal features of the room. A wet stone floor with coordinating walls, a metal bed frame, a concave hole in the ground that I prayed wasn't the toilet and a barred window facing the door. The walls were jutting and jagged, and I used a rock as leverage to lift my body high enough to peek out of the cross-shaped window. Our 'room' backed onto a dark corridor lined with flaming torches, our only source of light, giving the impression that we were surrounded on all sides by an endless maze of corridors.

"Well, this is very unfortunate," Elise sighed.

"Unfortunate!?" I exclaimed, feeling incredibly fed up, "Elise, this could be it for us, you know that? We could die down here, and all you have to say is that its fucking unfortunate?"

Even in the dim light, I could see Elise roll her eyes, "You always did have a flair for the dramatics, didn't you, Emma?"

"Flair for the -" Seething, I stood up unsteadily and began to pace the length of the room, "You're crazy, bat shit fucking crazy. It's the only explanation."

"Only for you," She drawled sarcastically.

"I can barely remember what happened!  One minute we were in a taxi and the next we're in some labyrinth?"

"What?"

"What?" I echoed, blinking into the darkness.

"What did you just say?" Elise questioned.