My Butcher Has Black Hair

I've just gotten off work and I have found myself rushing home through the snow hoping to make it home in time for my little sisters birthday, with her present in hand. I don't have a car so I get to walk the whole frigid way.
I turn the corner, I wasn't paying attention. You never think something like a bat would jump out and hit you. But I did get hit in the face with a bat. I grab my nose feeling the blood gush out onto my snow white hands causing them to chill more than they already were with the wind whipping around me. "Your pretty resilient most people pass out in one hit, your going to be fun." I can't see his face but his voice is nauseating. He hits me again and again with his bat blood splattering the untouched snow beneath us turning its beautiful white an angry and unrelenting red. I cry hoping that soon I'll just pass out from the pain rather than endure it any longer knowing that I didn'twant to keep feeling like this. "I will break you, then I will kill you and add you to my collection. I'm thinking a pretty bride exhibit." He whispers in my ear causing me to whimper.

It is now when I finally pass out. I had assessed myself though, three broken ribs...that's all I could feel in this moment and the pain was begging for me to find sleep and I do.

I woke up with one eye swollen shut and my whole body screaming at me to stay as still as possible but my adrenaline is telling me ro get up and get out - my fight or flight kicked in and right now I wanted to chose flight. I sit up with help from someone behind me startled by their sudden touch. "You okay? You really took a beating didn't you...?" I turn to the voice quickly jarring my body and causing pain throughout it. "Wow, it's okay I'm not going to hurt you." A man tells me his hands flying up in surrender. "Who are you? Where are we?" I ask frantically my voice cracking as my tears threaten to fall. "We're in his house, in the basement." He tells me looking around the metal cage we're in. "Who is he?" I ask.

"A butcher." he tells me in a deep and forboding tone and I know that he means by that and I still ask the question...

"Ours?" I ask.

He doesn't respond but his silence is loud enough for me. "Is there a way out?" I ask. "The door opens every night and he gives us a chance to run, every night since I got here I have run and I have been caught and brought right back here." 

"Why doesn't he just kill us outright?" I ask.

"Didn't he tell you when he took you? He's going to break us before we die. Giving us false hope then crushing our hope of ever leaving this place." he says sitting at arms length away not wanting to be too close but also knowing I need to know this before any more time passes.

"When I came here, there were three others with me..." he says before wrapping his arms around himself and going silent a tear runs down his dirty face and he leaves it, there is no wiping it away.

"Names Jack by the way." he tells me sitting up straight and sniffling a bit.

"I'm Erin." I say then the door to our cage swings open with a loud teeth grinding screech causing me to startle for the second time since waking up. "Let's go." Jack says taking my hand and leading me out of the cage gingerly walking towards the door.

"There are things you won't want to see. But he's put them there for that reason." Jack tells me before taking off down a long dark hallway the lights flickering at the far end I can see his face when he looks back and me and I see the fear...no terrorin them. "He'll be waiting at the end...in the woods. He'll grab us all."

"All? How many people are here?" I ask not wanting to think about his terror filled eyes.

"Ten at any given time, he puts us in different rooms and cells, he picks us up from around the area, I was a mild manner office worker. No wife, no friends, no future prospects. We're the ones who go missing, us random inconsequential people who go unnoticed. With him keeping the bodies, we simply go into cold case files after a few weeks. They won't find us...Of that I am certain." He tells me.