Spin Me Sweet Tales

Chapter Three

Darkness, worse than a pitch-black night, encompasses me in a world of uncertainty and pain. Claws dig mercilessly into my torn flesh, and they usher me towards peril and pain. I kick with my free foot and knock my heel into the side of its head. Bristle fur rubs against my skin and the beast growls in anger. Then, in the abyss where I am blind, the creature grabs my other ankle and sinks its claws inside.

When I open my mouth and scream, the emptiness swallows the sound.

The descension is timeless and everlasting in the same breath. Time lasts forever and not at all. A clock ceases to tick because the future has halted or because it's moving too fast to hear. I try to gauge anything in the obsidian, but there is only confusion until my back brutally slams into the ground.

I'm no longer outside, my hands splattered upon a cemented ground. Gone are the familiar scents of the outside air, and the frigidness once encasing my body is replaced with warmth only delivered from inside four walls. I knew I wouldn't be in the same woods when the descension through the door ended, but I didn't expect to be inside a house. I thought maybe a cave, or the depths of a desert by the sandy scent of the creature, but not here.

Beastly claws impale themselves within my ankles, and the coppery tang of my blood overwhelms the dark room. It's all that I can smell, all that I feel. Blood escaping from my body in massive quantities, spilling onto the ground like a lake ready to swallow me whole.

My body is aching with each strangled breath, but I force myself to muster the strength to sit up. Aimlessly, I swing my hands in the air, hoping to reach flesh and gain a sliver of a chance. Yet, my hands hit nothingness and desperation clogs my lungs. I aim for the direction of the monster's grip on my ankles, and luck has finally appeared when the beast meets the fury of my opened palm.

The creature barely flinches from the act, but it still stumbles away. His claws retract from my ankle. The feeling of them sliding out of my skin is almost as painful as when they entered. I bite back a scream and instead pierce my teeth into my bottom lip to staunch the sound. In a room of darkness, I know noise is heightened, so silence is my only weapon.

Because of his breath, I know the beast is far enough away that I can stand. I wobble, the pain in my ankles excruciating, but I can't lay down and accept death. There is nothing surrounding me but looming doom, but I rise. The beast is still in the room, its haggard breathing intermingling with mine as the only noise in the abyss.

A low-accented, female voice staunches the silence. "Welcome to the first round," she says, her tongue curling over the hard consonants. "Defeat the serpopard and you'll survive the night."

The woman is talking to me, but I can't see her or the beast she called a serpopard. Even as her game begins, lights do not illuminate the room. She leaves me at a disadvantage, and as the subtle scraps of claws against the ground grow louder in advancement near me, I'm certain the beast knows I'm unprepared for the slaughter.

A lack of senses coldly surrounds me, delivering me no comfort but eons worth of agony. My eyes beg to see, to escape the obsidian that conceals my predator's presence, but there isn't a flicker of light. I stumble behind myself, trying with little avail to stay silent in a land where hearing is heightened to replace the loss of sight, but the limp on my most injured ankle and the consistent drip of my blood upon the ground is a beacon to the stealthy beast.

There is a nearly undetectable whipping sound in the air, one moving too fast for me to react to, before a tail smacks into my stomach with brutal force.

My back hits a wall, and I bite my tongue before a whimper of defeat can leave my lips. The pain scours up my spine and rests on the back of my head, which bounced off the wall. My body wants to fall, but I refuse to crumble. Quietly pressed against the wall, my fingers desperately search for anything that can help me escape from the creature silently prowling nearer. I hope for a doorknob to be reprieved from this unimaginable terror, but my thumb grazes upon a cylindrical, rigid piece of wood instead.