Building Monsters | WRITER'S AWARDS WINNER 2017

1. Zinnia

Chapter One

 THE MORNING SUN shone in my eyes through the splintering wood around me. I was in a shed, where they could keep me silent and chained up. It'd been a week since they kidnapped me. Being only five, I had no idea how to protect myself or what to do other than listen to what they tell me, and obey. They didn't hurt me though, not really. I had a few bumps and bruises laced on my arms and legs, but otherwise they hadn't done anything but chained me up and put the epitome of fear into my bones. Sleep hadn't come easy with the freezing shackles around my wrists and legs. Where did someone even get things like those?

I shivered. The winter chill began to claw at my skin as the hours ticked on. My stomach growled. I'd never known what hunger was up until this point of my life, never known what it meant to be completely and utterly alone. How would my mom ever think to look here—wherever I was?

The crunching of the ground outside the little shack made me jump and cower. They were coming back, and I couldn't stop them. There was nowhere to hide.

The door to the crumpled outside room swung open, the two men like shadows in the doorway as they stare down at me. I couldn't see their faces. In the left one's hand, he held a plate with something on it and thrusted it out toward me.

"Eat," he demanded, his voice gristly.

The plate dropped to the ground, the corner chipping off in a perfect little triangle. A single sliced red potato sat on the edge of the plate, about to fall off. My stomach, though hungry, turned.

"But I don't like—"

"Eat it!" the second one shouted, growing impatient.

I lurched forward and grabbed it with my mangled fingers. The warmth of the potato almost hurts the cuts and bruises I'd inflicted on myself trying to break free of the restraints.

Biting into the warm food, I made a face. My eyes drifted up to the men as I chewed, the disgusting food somehow tasting delicious. I hadn't eaten anything in days.

"Now you will sleep, little girl." The first man walked into the small space and squatted down. I could see the colors of his irises—red. Bright, glowing red. It startled me all over again. I didn't remember either of them having red eyes in Wal-Mart... Red eyes aren't even possible.

"Your eyes..." I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming.

The world began to grow hazy as my head became light as a feather.

"Sleep, little girl. But—before you do..." he waddled closer on his squatted legs. He reminded me of a duck. But the resemblance didn't make him any less terrifying. "Tell us your name..."

"Why?" I breathed, fading fast.

And then, darkness.

x X x

"You're so young, Zinnia. You don't have a monster just yet..."

The voice circled my mind, the familiarity scaring me as I sunk into full unconsciousness and into my dream.

My nightmare.

Creaking surrounded me as I opened my eyes. A strange orange light illuminated from my small body as I tried to look around. My eyes focused on a slab of wood a few inches from the tip of my nose, its surface rough and randomly stained with something dark. Another sat beneath the weight of my body and upright at either side of my shoulders, the ones by my head and my feet vibrating with noise as they completed the box. The dull sound creating the thudding was incomprehensible; I couldn't tell what it was.

And then the thudding shifted from dullness to clarity. I jumped out of my skin as the sound pounded at my eardrums. It reverberated throughout the elongated box I was trapped inside.

Louder.

Louder.

A chorus of the pounding made my body vibrate and shake inside the wood.

I lifted my arms and push. I push against the plank, afraid it will collapse on me. There was another slam against the wood from the other side, harder than before. I hit it back, not knowing what else to do.

The wood cracked open a tiny bit at the top, another pound making it split. A sliver of red light slipped through and collided with my eye, forcing my eyes to squint. Music exploded through it, detuned and eerie. It sounded like jewelry box music. Only the notes sound like a knife scraping against a chalkboard.

Flashes of shoe-soles appeared with each thump as they drifted across the hole, the sounds multiplying by the second. I pushed myself up to peer out of the slit to try and understand what's going on, but I couldn't see much.

A woman's heel slammed into my forehead, making my head hit the plank below me as warmth gushed onto my eyebrow. I cried out and touched my head, my hand coming away blood red. It started to drip into my eyes.

"Hello!"

The chilling voice came from the hole, I realized as my eyes snapped up. A pitch-black eye peeked through the slit, making my heart jump in my chest and quicken. My eyes locked on it, unable to move.

The music grew louder, seeming to get more and more off key as the thudding escalated to slamming to smashing against the plank keeping me from whatever is out there. It shuddered and danced with the sounds and forces of the blows.

I tried to press myself flat against the wood I lay on, trying to shrink away from the being, the warm blood trickling into my ear. Something warm and thick began to surround me as the orange light I illuminated and the noises increasing the fear inside me grew. The box I was trapped in fills with a metallic smell as I turned to see what the strange liquid is.

And then I realized, in horror, that it was my own blood pouring down from the wound on my forehead and past my eyes, into my ears and onto the wood below me.

I screamed.

The wood above me splits even more as the loudest bang I'd ever heard makes the box shake and the blood splash up to cover my body, my face. I take a deep breath, pushing away the liquid as it dared to enter my mouth and coat my lungs. The black eye now has a mouth, his sharp, white, glowing teeth smiling like a sinister Cheshire cat and sending panic through me like a forest fire.

"I'm coming for you, Zinnia."

The shifting voice scraped past his teeth.

It felt too familiar.

The planks below me break away as I drop into nothingness.