A Touch of Hope

Chapter 8 - Imprisoned

Her remaining skin was rubbed raw by the shackles that bound her wrists to the wall. She'd fallen as far as it was possible to fall, from the giddy heights of assistant to Ragant to being shackled to a wall in the bowels of the beast, due to be hung from the neck until dead. No trial. There hadn't been a trial for many years, even if there had there was no chance it would be a fair one, not under the police state. She sat slumped against the wall all traces of her make up long since gone along with any illusion of loyalty to Ragant. The nail had been forced out of the wall. The eerie silence of her thoughts was broken only by the resonating splash of a leaky pipe. The dripping of the water washed around her thoughts, draining her of all fight, of all hope. It had eroded the last of her life, the way it forces the might of stone to erode into nothingness. The nail had been forced out of the wall. She felt no pain throughout her body; she had long since passed pain and was through to numbness. Pain on this scale had not been felt by her since the dawn of the police state, the one day that had driven her to seek vengeance. The emptiness consumed her inside. The name that she had lived by for many years, promised to avenge taunted her despair. She had failed. Failed to bring down the police state. Failed to kill Ragant. Failed to make right the death of Annabelle. The nail had been forced out of the wall. Amelia snapped back. The nail had been forced out of the wall. One of the 6 nails that held her shackles in place had be forced out from the wall when she had been thrown across the floor, kicked by enhanced boots and beaten bloody by the lethal tool. Amelia flopped a hand over towards the nail dejectedly as it slid neatly into her palm. Cocking her head to one side she stared intently at the nail she now held in her hand. Still holding the nail in her left hand, she shifted her gazed to her right wrist where the lethal tool had ripped a straight cut stretching from her palm down to her elbow, right through to the bone. Amelia's eyes kept dropping in and out of focus as her face lit up with a wolfish smile, her eyes wide. Moving the nail slowly with the precision of a surgeon, she slipped the rusted tip deep into the cut and hooked it under her tendons. With a sharp tug and the ripping of flesh, the tendons were pulled out of her arm with a spray of blood that coated the walls and her face. Lifting her head with a now clownish grin, Amelia let out a cackle that chased the guards down the hall to give them nightmares for many years. Amelia returned to her gruesome task.