Trapped

Where am I? that was the first thought that came to Sarah’s mind. There were chains all around her, tight chains which nearly strangled her. They covered every inch of her with the exception of her face. Big and silvery, every single chain link caused her more pain then she had ever imagined before. It was if they were biting her, nipping at her soft skin, pinching her tender areas. When she tried to move, she found that she was unable to do so; Sarah was trapped in three powerful ways: her unresponsive body, the painful chain and… well, of course, her surroundings.

From her limited scope of view, Sarah could guess that her container was nothing more than a dark box (this was a very loose estimation as the only factor which helped her to see whatever she could was the soft light illuminating the backdrop). Perhaps a dungeon or maybe a shipping container. Most probably the former, she thought as she smelled mixed up whiffs of urine, alcohol, sweat and blood. This place smells so gross… ew!

And then, there were things that she could feel on the back of her head. Wriggling, wiggling, jiggling things that moved with such slickness, such stickiness, such sliminess that Sarah felt like screaming and tearing them off of her neck. She felt a creature, probably an insect crawling over her hair and stopping just over her ear. Get away, you bastard! Sarah tried to scream but found it impossible to produce even a squeak. And to her horror, she felt a stinging sensation on her ear and desperately, she tried to roll over her back to, maybe, fling the insect off. But she couldn’t and all that she could do was to somehow ignore the pain.

How did I get into this hell hole? Think, Sarah, come on. For heaven’s sake, THINK! She shouted inside her head. And as she strained her mind, the latest memories hit her forcefully, like slabs of solidified hydrogen. Sarah and three of her colleagues had been trying to track down a potentially subliminal criminal at midnight when something had gone pretty wrong…

They had tracked the thug’s trail to some sort of a forest. Suddenly, the company had been ambushed and the last thing Sarah saw before she passed out was the death of the rest of her group. They had all been killed, but due to some reason, the attackers had left Sarah alive… was it a sexual one? Sure, she was the only woman in the small group that night and she was extremely cute. There wasn’t any other reason as valid.

And it’s a pretty damn insulting one, too.

The sound of a latch being unlocked and a door being opened was audible inside the whole room. Further, Sarah deciphered the familiar sound of leather boots on a metal floor. The footsteps were growing more audible with each step until they stopped, apparently, right beside Sarah’s head. A second later she felt a needle pierce into her neck and she blacked out uncomfortably, once again.

***

The beeping of an electric machine was the first sound that Sarah heard when she recovered her consciousness.

This time she was in a completely different room. Some place which looked oddly familiar. Had she been in there before? Of course! It was a hospital room! Who in the world couldn’t recognize the white walls, the smell methanol and beeping machines?

I am safe, Sarah thought contently. The satisfaction sustained until the door opened.

It was the criminal who had ambushed her. He was a man of mid-thirties, slim and oddly vampire-ish. If not for the black hair, she would have guessed him to be an albino; after all, his eyes were pale red and his skin was white. Lips bright red, crooked nose and high cheekbones… the thug looked like a vampire. But somehow, he was very different from the vampires in movies. This man was creature-like, something about him made him very creature-like.

“So, my dear, how’re we doing?” he asked coldly.

“You’re a whore!!” Sarah screamed back.

The man stood his silence for a moment and smiled. Then said, “Did you think that I will rape you? If you did, then you are so very wrong. There’re a lot of other… things which might be so beneficial. But don’t think it out. I’ll just do a little tempering with your insides…”

He paused, enjoying the fear on the girl’s face.

“Really, we’ll take care of everything and I’ll be done with you after I’m done removing some… oh well, you’ll know soon. Just wait till I get my scythe from the corridor outside.”

And then he was gone.

***

Sarah had been hypnotized under the man’s – vampire’s – red gaze, but now, she was more herself. Her hands were not bound, so that was some relief.

Now that I’m free, where the do I go? She asked herself.

And at that precise moment, the door opened and in came the local sheriff, Anders. Oh how much Sarah felt relieved!

“Thank God you’re hear! There’s this creature out there…”

The sheriff broke through her sentence by a simple finger to his lips, the universal sign for ‘silence’. When Sarah looked questioningly, he shook his head and opened the door behind him. Leaning behind, he called,

“Are you ready yet?”

Sarah was now getting a really bad feeling… it was kind of strange – that feeling. It was a sensation which you only get when your stomach spasms and churns up. And what came next, confirmed her doubts.

The door opened.

And in came the vampire-ish criminal. Sarah tried to warn the sheriff, but the latter grinned gravely. The truth dawned upon Sarah then, at that moment of truth: the ambush couldn’t have succeeded in the jungle unless there were at least two people who were in the dark. Moreover, the boots she had heard in that horrible room were not of the criminal – he was far too thin to produce such pounding footstep noises – they were of the sheriff himself.

Lazily, the vampire moved forward, and shove the scythe gently into her stomach. Reaching to her ears, he whispered, “You should never have tried to trace me… but, what can I say, everybody has to DIE!” He shouted the last word and twisted the dagger.

The next – the last – fifteen minutes of Sarah’s life were the haziest. But, at last, she finally tasted the sweet flavor of death.

THE END