You Can't Run From The Dark

{Part 17}

~Dessa~

After her captors' footsteps receded, Dessa examined the dark cell that she had been locked away in. In one corner, there was a basin of water and a long strip of black fabric. She crawled over to it and scooped a small pool of the water in her hands. She did her best to wash the dried blood from her face. The gash still oozed, but the flow of blood streaming from it had slowed significantly. She eyed the fabric, realizing that it was meant to be used as a blindfold. She refused to oblige the urge to start crying again as she picked it up. Beholding her surroundings made her dizzy and her eyes ached terribly. She didn't want to believe what that monster/man had told her - that if she kept trying to see, she would lose her mind, that she could lose her ability to see anything ever again. But she was scared enough to put on the blindfold anyway, and once she had tied it on, her eyes finally stopped feeling like they would burst, and her brain stopped feeling like it was seconds away from melting and dripping out of her ears.

The absolute darkness that the blindfold offered her reminded her how at peace she had been in that short-lived moment that felt like death. She would choose that over being trapped in one of her nightmares - in a world filled with horrifying faeries. She would prefer that mercy over imprisonment and torture. What if she was in a coma now? Laying on her bathroom floor, stuck in this non-reality for longer than she ever had been before?

"No," Dessa sobbed brokenly.

She could only hope that Mr. Talon would send someone to check on her, when she didn't show up for work. But would that take hours or days? Would she survive that long? What if she was taken to the hospital and put on life support, and her coma lasted years or decades? That thought made her hope that her lack of health insurance would prevent that from happening. Certainly, they would pull the plug and end this miserable existence. Even with the blindfold, Dessa would surely go insane here. The longer that she remained in this cruel dreamscape, the less likely it was that she would come out of this as a functional human being. She would end up in a straitjacket, and perhaps she would belong in one. 

If only she had read more about lucid dreaming. She might have learned how to get herself out of these traps. She could snap her fingers and render this world to a pile of ash. At the very least, she could materialize someone who could help her in some way. Dessa wasn't sure if hours had passed since she had put on the blindfold or only minutes, when a small voice echoed from the other side of the bars.

"Psst!"

Dessa gasped and scrambled up to stand, holding her arms out to find one of the stone walls.

"Are you really an unbound mortal?" A girlish whisper asked her with an inflection of curiosity.

"I-I don't know," Dessa mumbled feebly, as her fingertips skimmed a wall. As she slid alongside it to get closer to the bars, she said, "I'm a human."

"You do not have a Mark," the tiny voice noted, sounding surprised. "I have never seen one like you before. I am not allowed to cross the Veil. My mama says I am too little."

Dessa's mind raced with a hundred thoughts of what to ask this keen little being that sounded like a girl.

"Wh-what is the Veil? Where are we?" Her words came out shaky, as she pressed her back against the wall and slid down to sit.