What Lies Beneath the Flesh

Chapter 1

              ~Macy~

    I'm woken up by the smell of rotten flesh.  The smell, so fowell, my eyes immediately teared up.  Through the tears which caused my vision to blur, I caught a glimpse of silver bars.  They were all around me except underneath me.  I slowly tried to sit up, but as soon as I moved my hand, a burning sensation shot into my wrist.  I hissed and moved my eyes to take a look at the affected area.  That's when I noticed the silver chains clinging onto my wrists and ankles.  While pain continued to shoot through my wrists, I forced myself up and leaned my head into my hands.

    My memory was fuzzy, but I tried to collect my thoughts.  "How did I get here?" I thought to myself as my head pounded with pain.  I took another look at my surroundings, noticing other women.  I looked through the bars in front of me at a woman with long ginger hair.  Her hair fell in curls down to her waist.  She had bruises and cuts everywhere from her face down to her feet.  The only clothing she had on was a sack that hung from her frail body.  Her head was leaned back and I saw tears streaming down her beautifully freckled face.

"Excuse me,"  My voice came out hoarse and shaky "do you know where we are?".  She looked at me while she sniffed and slightly nodded her head.  Then she continued to stare at me.  Curious as to why she wasn't telling me, I went on. "Are we on pack lands?"  She nodded again, this time a wheeze came out of her and she reached up to touch her neck.  I noticed she had a wide scar along her neck, but it didn't look like a fighting scar.  This scar was in a perfectly straight horizontal line, leading me to believe it had been surgical. 

    I looked at her with questionable eyes and asked "what happened to you?".  She responded with another tear and a hand motion that referred to slicing her throat.  I felt my eyes grow big and tears kept falling down her face.  "Can she not talk?" I thought to myself. 

    Another woman beside me spoke up, "Her name is Tilly".  I looked at the new woman and almost gasped at the sight of her.  She looked like she had recently been beaten.  Her dark skin shone in the dim light and I could see sweat collecting on her face.  Her left eye was a deep red and started to swell.  A silver chain clung to her neck, but she still managed to turn her head to look at me.  I nodded my head and she continued. 

"Those men up there sliced through her vocal cords when she refused to sing for them."  She spat out the word "men" as if it were poison in her mouth.  She then paused a moment and I waited for her to talk again. 

"She had the most amazing voice.  The best music I had ever listened to came from her."  She smiled as she said those last words. 

I looked over to Tilly and noticed she had stopped crying and was now blushing with a small smile creeping onto her lips.  "Are you two mates?" I slowly asked, curious from the way she spoke about Tilly. 

She nodded her head once and continued to watch over Tilly's every move.  "What's your name?"  I questioned, in which she replied with Gianna.  After that we stopped speaking for a while.  I noticed a few women laid down, struggling to breathe.  I watched as one's chest rose and fell slowly, until it came to a complete stop. 

I fought back tears and clenched my fists.  I wanted to help these poor girls, but I couldn't do that chained up.  I needed to get myself and everyone else out of here.  I looked all around the room, in hopes that there would be something that could help us, but nothing came up.  The only things in these cells were the chains that held us all here. 

But that's when a guard walked in.  In front of me stood a tall but scrawny man with long, shiny black hair.  He looked like he hadn't showered in a few days.  I couldn't smell him over the rotten corpse aroma, but I could tell from how dirty he looked that he didn't smell pleasant.