Fox Paws

Chapter 6 - Monster

"Where...are you...?" Gwen mumbled to herself in her sleep as she began to stir. "Ma..."

"Maria!"

Suddenly she shot up, wide awake, and immediately regretted the speed at which she had done so. Leaning over, she gingerly held her midriff.

Her whole body ached. She groaned in discomfort and slowly sat back up before looking down at her torso where she had been hurt earlier in her fight with the boy named Johnson. Miraculously, she didn't seem to have any wounds.

Aside from the one on her leg, anyway - she still very much had that one. The bandage that had previously covered it, however, was mysteriously absent.

"Where...?" Looking all around her, Gwen found herself in what seemed to be a very dimly lit prison cell made of solid stone. It was rather compact, being so small that she could probably touch both walls if she were to outstretch her arms. That is, she might be able to if she weren't currently sporting a pair of manacles that chained her wrists together. Such movement was currently impossible.

She was sitting in a dirty pile of hay that had a coarse piece of fabric draped over it so as to create the facsimile of a bed, but there was little else in the way of comfort in the tiny room. There was not even so much as a window to allow some sunlight in to create a nice warm spot for a nap.

"Hello? Anyone there?" She called out to the thick iron bars of the door at the far end of the cell, then waited a moment for a response.

As she did not receive one, it was probably safe to assume wherever she was, she was alone.

Slowly getting to her feet, she approached the bars to see if there was anything of interest on the other side of them.

The room seemed to be a fair bit bigger than her cell, large enough to fit at least two more cells on either side of her, even if she couldn't see them. The bars themselves were odd, though, in that they seemed to connect the walls of the entire room rather than those of each individual cell. A simple chair sat by the heavy looking wooden door that she assumed was the only entrance to this place, and hanging near it on the wall was a keyring that currently held one key.

The walls were otherwise bare, save for a few cobwebs and a single torch that was flickering in the sconce on the wall opposite her cell.

Though the room was made of rough-hewn stone, the walls that currently surrounded her on either side were completely solid and flat. It was certainly a strange choice to separate each cell in such a way rather than simply using more bars or walls that would match the rest of the room, but that was the least of her concerns right now.

Gwen shivered in the cold, and her stomach grumbled. She had no idea when the last time she had eaten was - certainly not in the last day or so. Those strawberries Maria had promised her sounded awful tasty right about now.

With a sigh, she flopped back down on the "bed" she had awoken in, and wrapped herself in both her tail as well as the rough tarp on which she sat.

Her breath fogged up the air when she exhaled. Again the air had become strangely chilly, it seemed.

As she held her only source of warmth tighter around her, she heard a thunk on the other side of the door, which then slowly creaked open.

From the darkness of the hallway behind it emerged a man, dressed in the same uniform as the other guards she had seen earlier that day. His short, black hair was slicked back, and the thin mustache he sported did little to mask how displeased he was to be here.

He briefly looked around the room before closing the door behind him and setting his gaze on Gwen. A disgusted scowl crept to his lips, and he suddenly thrust his arm towards her.