How in all of hell did
I end up here? Sara Buchan thought, flexing her arms, tentatively testing her strength against
the chains which held her fixed securely to the wall.
Her arms, secured as
they were in hardened steel manacles, held high above her head had gone numb
hours ago. She couldn’t feel her fingers; they were like dead weights on the
end of her hands. Sara had almost no sensation above her shoulders, which burnt
with fierce muscle cramps. No matter how much she wiggled her fingers in an
attempt to restore circulation the numbness quickly spread again, preceded by
vicious pins and needles.
Any reprieve from the
sensations was temporary, and almost worse than the numbness.
How long until one of
my fingers goes black and drops off, she wondered grimly.
Not the most positive
of thoughts, she grimaced, it was like having knives pierce her hands as she struggled to
move them.
How in the hell did I
end up here?
Shifting her weight,
she moved so that her bottom rested on the floor and stretched her back slightly.
The reprieve was only very slight, there was very little give in the chains. No
matter what position she put herself in, her back was spasming in agony.
Flecks of brick and
dust fell into her hair and her face as the ring which was bolted through the
flock wallpaper into the wall shifted slightly.
Sarah took no real
comfort from this, the bolts she knew were embedded deep in the wall. They were
secure, however crudely or recently they may have been put in. There was no way
on earth she would be able to pull them out, even if her arms weren't so numb.
What went wrong? It had after all
started off as a perfectly normal week.
Now, she was chained up
in the basement of a country house, miles from anywhere, next to a man who
seemed to be lost in his own misery, and hadn’t uttered a word since she had
been dragged down here hours ago.
Since she had been
dragged and dumped in this room with him.
He was curled up in the
corner, seemingly oblivious to her presence, and other than low breathing he
had not made any sound, he hadn’t spoken, sighed or even groaned.
That he could remain
silent, given his current situation was odd.
But, although his
silence was unusual but it was not the oddest thing about him.
Nor was the oddest
thing about him that he appeared to be, from the back at least, totally nude.
His body was strongly muscled and covered with hundreds of tiny scratches and
burns. She could see one long, deep cut which stretched all the way down his
back. To her uneducated gaze it looked like he'd been tortured and whipped.
Nor was the oddest
thing about him that he was not chained up like she was. For some reason she
didn’t understand, she’d been chained to the wall, but he was just lying in the
corner.
No, the oddest thing
about him was what was happening to all the scars, and cuts she could see. She
was sure that they were healing before her eyes. For a start the cut on his leg
was visibly shorter than it had been when she’d first noticed it. As she
watched she could almost see the skin knitting together, the flesh healing,
growing paler as the swelling decreased.
By her reckoning by the
time the sun sank, the cuts would be completely healed.
Sara moved her legs out
in front of her, trying, and failing to make herself comfortable, after only a
few minutes of respite she needed to move them again.
God this was maddening.
So now, once again she
pulled them underneath her, ignoring the complaints from her sore calves, and
knelt on the carpeted floor. The back of her legs moaned at her, sharp and
piercing as the circulation was once again restricted.
A line of fire ran
across her knees, running down her calves, it made her feel sick to her
stomach.
Every part of her body
hurt, every part felt constrained, restricted and agonizing.
The only light in the
room came from a small window opposite her which her captors had opened to give
a small amount of fresh air. It cast a
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