The End (Red) > Chapter Six: Drowning
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” –Sydney Smith
The silence and the dark overwhelmed Sam’s delicate senses. She couldn’t tell the difference between having her eyes open or shut. Around her, the scent of rain, rust and ink began to smell more like blood than either of those three. If it was paranoia, speaking from her previous encounters with her neighbors and the vile creatures outside, she had no way of proving it, and the unknowing was far worse than any truth. The one classic fear she managed to avoid throughout her life was claustrophobia, and now it was doing its best to add itself to her list. The lack of visuals suggested that she had moved, somehow, out of the street. Even that assumption was dangerous. Perhaps the world had just gone dark for the final time instead. If the bloody remains of the creature she had slain lay just inches from her own body, she would never know.
She had killed it. There could be no denial, and no excuse would make the act any less of a sin. She wanted to cry, and apologize, and beg for forgiveness now that the deed was done, but her heart and mind refused to give in. Whatever twisted menace came upon her, it was not just another innocent life. It was an abomination, a filthy abstraction of the truth that governed nature, and it deserved to die. That was the only possible answer left. If another beast attacked her, it would die too. The rules, in her mind, had changed forever, and they were far simpler than any of her previous rules. For once, she thought perhaps less thinking might be beneficial to her continued survival.
With false bravado, she lifted her hand to begin exploring her surroundings, and failed. Her wrists were bound, and the rest of her as well. She lay prone, unable to move more than an inch or two in any direction. Her mouth, too, was bound, and the unforgettable taste of rancid leather became apparent as soon as she realized it. More straps, more confinement, more delay in the progression toward her freedom. What deranged mind demanded that she remain in this place? One step forward, two steps back, and the world around her was turning black. The words, to her mind, sounded funny, but she couldn’t laugh. Was she back in her room, again, then? Or had she visited some new hell, instead?
The silence around her ended with an echoing flurry of heavy pounding beats that made the slab beneath her tremble. It repeated itself again, followed by a third and fourth time. It took her until the end of the third to realize what it was: knocking, or pounding might have been more accurate. Someone, or something, wanted access to her, and it wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. The vibrations echoing off the walls seemed to suggest a space no larger or smaller than her previous room; she was almost certain that she had somehow returned to her original location, strapped into her bed like the worst kind of mental patient. She couldn’t even deny that the treatment might very well be what she deserved.
The yelling began in the spaces between the thuds of the fourth pounding sequence. Sam did not need to think for long on its source. “Sam? Goddamn it, Sam, I know you’re in there, I saw you go in. Stop shitting me and open the door. I know you hate me, but I need to show you something, it’s important. I think it might be a way out.”
Out? Sam’s body tried to sit bolt upright, and it tried hard enough to make the bonds restraining her cut into her skin. If Miles had found a way out, she had to take the chance! Every wasted minute was one more that she didn’t have to suffer! Then, over the elation of renewed hope, came the realization of his other exclamations. He had seen Sam enter the room and shut the door. If this was her apartment, as she had thought, then the first creature she had encountered had broken the lock. If Miles couldn’t get in, then that implied a new, perhaps stronger, lock. Yet another way to hold her back and keep her from leaving! Whatever wanted her to remain had options at its disposal. Might it even know that Miles succeeded in finding a way past its defenses, and was acting to counter his newfound wisdom?
Sam felt a growl rising in her throat. She had never understood religion; she was unprepared to face the possibility that all of her countless flaws were deliberate acts by a careless deity. At the same time, she had begun to think of the twisting world around her as having a host; a puppeteer, playing at invisible strings that moved her where they pleased. It was too well planned, too detailed to just be a handful of coincidences. The marks of fear that could only trigger her unique psyche were too deliberate. That puppeteer was a sick man, a monumental bastard, and she had killed once, already. It was not so hard to think of doing it again, if it meant she could find her way back to reality. Be it a God of something wicked and vile, the God that lived in churches, or just a man or a beast, she could end it. She would end it. She would go home.
First, she had to get up. Miles, of course, held the key to her door, if her previous play for freedom was any indication. He had forgotten that, and instead assumed that she was capable of opening her own door. He said he saw her go in, but that was impossible – after her violent encounter in the street, she had lost consciousness, and regained it only after the door was already locked! What, then, had he seen? A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach reminded her of the other traumatic experience she had had while traversing the streets outside her apartment. There had indeed been a creature, but there had been someone else, too. Poe, and the unexplainable mirror image of herself. If the other Sam had brought her here and locked her inside, it would explain everything.
The fact remained that the real Sam couldn’t move. The strap serving as a gag prevented her from speaking. She couldn’t reach Miles, and couldn’t yell back for help. It was infuriating enough to be trapped there, like some kind of rat in an unwashed cage, but to know that help, and freedom, were just beyond her reach, made her crazy. On top of that, the knowledge that she would have no choice but to reach out for help beyond her own hands pushed the limits of what she believed she was capable of.
Miles had helped her by mistake the first time, and she had been willing to accept that. This time, it would be asking him to help her; asking him to go out of his way for her. Knowing he was interested in being more than just friends, knowing that his child might be forever lost, never mind the state of his own health, only added fuel to the fire. She wanted to break something; to scream, to destroy, to lash out as she had that day at her psychologist’s office. Something, or someone, had to pay for stranding her here, in the arms of people she could not – or would not – trust. She would rather have lived in the filth and decay forever than reached out for another’s aid. It was too much. It was beyond too much.
Fury took her, then, and she couldn’t quite remember what she did next until after it happened and the red-tinged haze of rage subsided. She set her jaw and clamped her teeth down like a wild thing possessed, twisting and grinding and tearing all at once. The taste was magnified five hundred times, and she could swear she tasted blood – her own, or something else’s, she could not be sure – but she bore down, relentless in her pursuit. She lacked the strength to tear free of her other bonds; it would have to be this one, if she wanted to go home. There was only one chance, and necessity, Sam was discovering, was the mother of insanity as well as invention. Her jaw ached with the pressure, and her mouth filled with unspeakable thick liquid, but she held on as if that strap were her last remaining hold on life. As far as she was concerned, it was.
Just when she thought she could hold on no longer, and her jaw muscles began to tremble and weaken, the strap snapped. In the span of a split second, it divided and sprang apart, tearing itself from her mouth and flailing across her face. She could feel the ends slap her, and the raised lines that formed in their wake, but that was a secondary concern. Her first concern was ridding herself of the unspeakable fluid in her mouth, which she did between gasps and chokes of fear and disgust.
“Sam? What’s going on in there? Are you all right? Look, just open the door, please, I’m begging you!” Miles had heard her. “I’ll get you out of this, just let me help you this once more. You’ll never have to see me again.”
Her voice cracked and failed twice before she got the words out. “I’m here.” She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. Even if she hadn’t been fighting nausea, she wouldn’t have managed. “I’m tied down.”
“Tied down?” Miles paused a moment. “Like before? How did you…” She imagined him shaking his head in confusion. “That’s funny, Sam. I could have sworn you locked yourself in there. I heard the key in the lock.” Another pause. “So, if you tied yourself down, maybe, I dunno, maybe you should untie yourself and get the hell out here?”
The irritation was clear in his voice. Sam had never liked angry people. Her temper flared in kind before she even meant it to. “Think what you want. The fact remains that I can’t get up. Either you go back and let me out, or we sit here until we die. Your choice. I can’t…” She choked on the threat, but managed to get it out anyway. “I can’t go out for drinks if I’m dead, you know.”
The sigh from behind the door was loud enough that she could hear it without trying. Miles didn’t respond; he stomped off into the distance, which was also loud enough for her to hear for the first few steps. Then, she was alone again in silence. Had he stormed off to let her die? She wouldn’t put it past him, after how nasty she’d been, and how she’d left him alone to rush after a foolish attempt at escape. She hadn’t even given a second thought to helping him get to Melissa. Yet, a part of her wanted more than anything to trust him; he hadn’t abandoned her, despite everything. If he loved her, he wouldn’t walk away and leave her to the creatures of the night. But maybe he didn’t love her. Maybe he just thought he did, like most of the boys that had tried to get into her pants over the years. The quiet ones never said no, or so they thought. It hurt her twice to have to hit them.
Without warning, lights from overhead flickered on, then sputtered and dimmed, almost fading again into full darkness. Sam flinched, expecting the worst; from somewhere down the hallway she heard a thud and a very coarse word shouted loud enough to wake every creature in the entire world. It seemed that Miles had hit the wrong lever. It was a useful mistake, however, and she took the opportunity to look around. As expected, she was in the twisted Nightmare variant of her apartment, and very little had changed. The things that did change, however, left her breathless.
The night sky outside the broken window was pitch black, as if a thunderhead had managed to press itself up against her window. It did not shed a single bit of light into the room, the way a normal night sky would. That was the minor problem. The major problem was at her feet, and growing more complicated with every minute that passed.
Beneath her disgusting bed lay a pool of dampening filth. The ink, rain and rust she had found so overwhelming had good reason to bother her; it was growing. No longer draining into mysterious grates that she could not find, it instead rose up the walls of her room. An inch, she guessed by sight, already covered the floor. She watched it run down the walls and into the pool in a kind of trance, unable to believe what she was seeing. If Miles didn’t hurry up and find the right lever to free her, she would find herself in over her head.
The thought of being body deep in the muck was horrific enough, but a new fear began to override that more obvious one. Sam couldn’t swim. She had refused all lessons as a child, fearing the chemicals, the other children, and the potential for said children adding their own “personal” brand of chemicals to the deal. Her mother was mortified at having to rescue her squalling child from a group of peers laughing and splashing away. Her father wasn’t surprised. She had wanted to learn, as an adult, but the fear still lingered, and the chance was never safe or good enough to take. Countless teachers and college professors had promised to go with her, for moral support, but each time she found some excuse not to go. She had not expected to need such skills in the defense of her own life! Even at the beach, she stayed well clear of the water.
“Miles?” Sam’s distracted mind allowed her to form the name for the first time out of necessity. “The water’s rising.”
Silence greeted her shout. As far down the hallway as he was, even her loudest scream might go unnoticed, and he was so focused on his task that her chances of success were even lower. Fearing the worst, Sam’s mind jumped to her one remaining secret weapon: the Stone of Promise. She might be able to use it to save her life, but there were so very many reasons why that was unlikely to work. She could, at least, try and see what happened. After all, she was the writer; why shouldn’t she be able to break the rules any time she pleased? If a figment of her imagination existed where it should not, then how much further down the path of madness did she have to be to assume she could affect it, somehow? It was a risk, a foolish one, but unless she took it, she might not survive long enough to try later.
Gritting her teeth, Sam realized that she would have to be able to reach the Stone to use it. Her back pocket was the single most impossible location on her body for her to reach. She had put her entire effort into freeing her mouth to ask Miles for aid, but she had not considered what she would do if he could not, or would not, help her. Now the weight of that decision threatened to crush her. Miles couldn’t be trusted; nothing in this forsaken world could! Wherever he was, he couldn’t save her now, and she lacked so much of what she needed. Her keys were in her backpack, which of course was across the room; she lacked the long nails that so many of her fellow students wore, and she was no contortionist, to be able to bend down and chew through her other bonds. There had to be some way to get to the Stone! Her previous faith in action over thought was starting to dwindle.
At last she seized on an idea, and began to make tiny shifts of her body up and down in her bonds. The Stone might come out of its own accord if she did things right; her bonds would serve as an aid in pressing the Stone up and out of her pocket. Never the athletic type, and forced into making awkward movements, she found herself tiring almost before she began. No matter how hard she tried, there was always something ready to push back; to slow or stop her every move.
As Sam’s body began to falter and fail beneath her struggle, a thought registered in her mind. Her attempt to get to the Stone was a good one, she still believed that very much. But there was a certain lack of weight in her back pocket that she had not noticed before; there was no lump pressing into the back of her butt the way there should have been as she lay on a hard surface. Instead, the same cold slab that stood in place of a bed sent its chill beneath her jeans and into her skin without interruption.
Her last hope was gone. Somewhere, during the trials and tribulations of her flight from the apartment, she had lost the Stone. Was it while she was fighting the creature? Or while she had been sick at the deaths of her neighbors? Or had she lost it in the room, in the midst of her thrashing about, and hadn’t noticed? A quick search of the floor put that thought to rest with ease, unless the Stone had already been covered by the running filth – which had risen another inch since her struggle began. Somehow, deep in her gut, she knew that it wasn’t just out of reach; she would have noticed if it had splashed to the floor below! That alone sealed her fate. Unless Miles returned, she would die a miserable death, drowned by the foul rising liquid that was anything but mere water.
Panic took her, then, as it had not before. Being faced with her own inevitable death was more than her overwrought mind could handle, but death by something she feared as much as drowning was beyond cruel. She would rather have been torn to pieces by creatures; at least the pain would end. Now, she would have to feel the air being wrenched from her lungs, feel her body begin to struggle for more that it had no chance at receiving, and at last, the moments where she did not have enough, and her body shutting down one cell at a time. It was better to scream for Miles, better to kill herself fighting her bonds, than it would be to suffer that kind of end.
Tears ran down her cheeks and fell away, joining the rising muck beneath her, as she began to scream for Miles at the top of her lungs. Whether she liked it or not, he was her last chance at salvation. There was no time to think of regrets; she could have been kinder, and she could have stayed to help him, and she could have done more than walked away when faced with the admission of his love, but none of that could be changed now. Maybe he would think she had a change of heart only to save her own skin. She deserved that. But she was a fool, and she had known it all her life; these were not the first mistakes she had made, nor would they be her last. She hated herself for them, wanted as few of them as possible, but they were as much a part of her as her name and her face. Death, to pay for them, was appropriate, but she wanted a chance to set things right. As young as she was, she had a whole lifetime to change, and grow, and learn – but only if she survived.
Between sobs of fear and terror, and screams of the name she had only earlier found too uncomfortable to say aloud, Sam found the words that she had wanted to say all along in a whisper too soft for any ears but her own.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The knowledge of the missing Stone continued to haunt her as she begged for her life. The very real possibility that she had taken it from herself was all the more reason to get free of this place as soon as possible, and get home to the few things and places that did make sense. Only then would the confusion and pain cease at last.
Loading ...