Bound by Hellfire

Chapter 8

I have never felt a greater fear in my life. The feeling of staring back at a predator as it decides whether you're worth the kill. My body was frozen. The thudding of my heart had stopped as I tried to decide whether to challenge the monster's gaze or give in and be consumed by it.

Red illuminated my face as its eyes grew wider and wider. They were like slits in its shadowy skull. Knife wounds that gushed pools of light as they breathed together. Then as if the monster didn't already have a good look at me, it crouched closer. Two more slits formed in its makeshift head as they too breathed with the others.

There was no feeling. The cold had vanished. My arm which rang with pain at my fall now stood numb. I felt nothing--- because I was nothing. Nothing more than a pig staring at his butcher.

I was entranced. Its eyes pulsed hypnotically as I memorized the inner carvings of its irises, endlessly falling into them.

Then without warning the monster stood back to its feet. Its second pair of eyes closed like healing scars as it returned to the staircase.

A long flowing cloak hid the rest of the beast like clouds hiding a full moon. It made no noises as it glided back up the stairs. No thudding, no scraping, just silence to accompany the darkness as my eyes tried to adjust after being reset from the blinding red light. Then it was gone, and my heart, my pain, my self, all came back to me.

"What the hell was that?" Andrew called from across the hallway.

His words snapped me out of my daze. Once again my heart was beating uncontrollably. My fingers were frozen numb by the cold wet stone I had been laying on. I couldn't think straight. Every logical thought I had ever known was thrown out the window. My brain tried to wrap around it. The idea that I had just stared into the face of something beyond our comprehension, beyond our world... a monster.

"Did you guys answer and I just forgot? Or were you not listening?" Andrew called again.

Diana turned around in her cell and explained to him what we knew so far, which was very little. None of our questions had been answered and the longer we stayed here, the more questions we came up with.

"Are you ok?" Ethan whispered to me.

I slowly turned my head to look at him. He was nothing more than a shadow, but the worriedness in his face showed through in his voice.

The light that had been streaming in from the crack in the ceiling seemed dimmer now.

"I think so," I replied, unsure. "I'm just--- I'm just a little shaken up."

Ethan was still staring at the staircase as he slid toward the back of the cell.

"So what do we do now?" he shuddered, gripping himself in a fetal position.

Another unanswerable question. But one that needed to be answered with haste.

I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms. It was getting colder, and every passing minute sealed our fate that much more.

"We need a plan. There has to be another way out of here." I shivered.

Diana's face appeared at the bars once again as she looked over at Ethan and me.

"Plan? I heard you say plan. Please say we have a plan." she questioned anxiously.

"A plan," I thought to myself. Never had I thought that a one-syllable word could be so difficult to produce. The monster definitely complicated things. We couldn't even be sure that something so otherworldly would be so careless as to let us leave. But Diana wanted an answer, so an answer was given.