In Stone

4: "My name is Caspain."

4: “My name is Caspain.”

Fear had its talons sharp in Caia's heart. She was flailing against the floor, against the chair that was keeping her prisoner. It was useless though. She wasn't getting anywhere. Her legs weren't too tightly tangled, but she was too afraid to calm down enough to pull them out.

Smoke still filled the room, but it was starting to settle. Her twitching and turning was only kicking it up again though. It was very fine, she could feel it sticking to her lungs. That wasn't helping the fear at all.

She could see rays of light struggling to cut through the dust from the high windows against the far wall. She could no longer hear the vibrating, but she was still struggling to get away from her work bench. For all she knew, this smoke was poisonous and she was going to die because of some kind of new, strange chemical bomb.

Soft coughing from her side had Caia freezing, her heart stopping dead in her chest.

There was no one in her house. There was never anyone in her house. She was always alone. That she could hear coughing meant someone was in her house! And knowing that an unknown person was in her domain filled her with a primal fear.

She began kicking her feet in a desperate attempt to free herself from her chair while promising herself that if she lived through this she was buying one without any of those extra bars between the legs. She hurt herself more than the chair, she could feel the wood damaging her flesh even as she finally managed to wiggle free.

“W-Wait...”

The short scream Caia released was involuntary.

A man.

There was a man in her house!

What was a man doing in her house?! How did he get in here? What was he going to do to her? Was he responsible for the smoke?

The questions ran so quickly though her mind that she didn't bother to give any of them even a passing thought. She was busy scrambling to her feet, hoping she could find her door through this dense smoke when she couldn't even see her own body.

The hand that touched her shoulder drew another scream from her throat and she began twisting and flailing her limbs wildly. She couldn't fight, this was the only thing she knew how to do. She promised to buy herself some self defense lessons to go with her new chair.

The hand released her and she felt herself hitting a pair of arms instead, blocking her wild – and rather weak – attack easily.

“Will you-” the voice cut off as another coughing fit took him over.

Caia was certain that this meant the smoke was poisonous and it was killing her attacker and that she was most definitely about to die too. And because she was so sure that the smoke was killing her, and this strange man was about to kill her, she didn't notice that he wasn't even trying to touch her. She was the one who kept trying to hit him.

Finally, he could take no more and when her hands came at him again he grabbed hold of her wrists, stopping her. His hands were so big that they wrapped around them completely, shutting tight and strong like a pair of manacles.

And Caia was sure that he was going to rape and murder her now and she began screaming at the top of her lungs for help. Her screech was so loud and sudden that she felt the man flinch through his grip on her. That only encouraged her to shriek through another octave.

“Stop!”

His hand slammed over her mouth in a desperate attempt to shut her up. It also freed one of her hands that she immediately put to use scratching and slapping at his face. Her elaborately decorated and polished nails didn't even scratch him.