Beloved Evil

THREE

Someone screamed, another voice begged, but Tara couldn't open her eyes just yet, not even when more voices began to come alive around her. It was as if her eyes were sewed shut. She tried to move, but her limps were too heavy. She tried to speak, but her throat was too dry. So she just laid there in her own, personal darkness, flying in and out of consciousness while her neck howled at her in pain.

She didn't know how much time had passed when her eyelids finally began to flutter. She looked around, but it was too dark to see anything. She tried to move her fingers and her toes and sighed in relief when they complied. She had a hard time lifting her head off the ground though. It was as if her neck had turned limb. She took a deep breath, a strange, cold air filling her lungs, before using all her strength to sit up. The ground was wet and cold beneath her and she realized that she was violently shivering.

People were still screaming around her. Some of the voices had died down, but they had quickly been replaced by new ones. Tara's heart started to pick up speed in her chest, and she suddenly wished that she hadn't awoken.

"Oh, dear God, please forgive me for my sins," a man that sounded close to her begged.

She blinked a couple of times, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness. At first, she could only see the ground beneath her, but the more she looked, the more things formed in front of her. She was in a cell, she realized. It was small, just long enough for her to lie down in. She looked towards the pleading voice, and a dreadful feeling grasped her, when she saw it was a man, sitting in his own cell beside her. She whipped her head to the other side, and as expected, saw another cell with a figure sitting inside of it as well.

"This is not happening," she said to herself as she began crawling towards the metal bars. She wrapped her shaking hands around them, but almost jumped back when she saw more cells in front of her. There was a narrow corridor between them, so she couldn't see if there were people inside of them as well. But she had an awful feeling there were.

"Help!" she screamed, but her voice got lost among the others. Her grip around the bars tightened, as if they were the only thing holding her body up.

"Help!" she tried again, but to no use. She had to think. She had to find a way out of there. What had happened?

Tara saw Nettie standing in front of her with her bag swung over her shoulder, ready to leave the restaurant. She then saw Cal sitting behind his desk before moving closer, forcing his lips upon hers.

Had Cal kidnapped her? No, it didn't seem right, it didn't fit the unsolved puzzle in her brain. She thought harder, thought until her brain ached and pleaded her to stop, but only stopped once she had dug up the memory she was looking for.

Tara saw herself running down the empty street. She saw the bus disappearing in front of her. Then she saw a figure standing at the bus stop. He took a step forward and Tara gasped inside the cell.

The man. She remembered now how she had turned to run, but he had appeared in front of her with speed she had never seen before in her life. He had apologized again and then...

Nothing. Blackness.

Tara began to shake. Her fingers loosened around the bars and she fell back and hit the cold ground. She had to wake up, she thought to herself, this couldn't be happening. She had to work tomorrow, she had to see Nettie, she had to live the rest of her life.

"This is not the end, don't worry, my child."

Tara turned her head towards the voice but couldn't see anything other than a dark figure slumped up against their shared bars.

"Who are you? Where are we?" she asked, almost stumbling over her own words.

The man kept looking forward.