Defiant

In Chains

In Chains

Slowly, ever so slowly, I opened my eyes only to snap them shut against the harsh light blinding me. I tried to open them once more, my eyes squinting and watering from the intensity of light. Gradually my eyes adjusted and I could see my surroundings. Except my surroundings made no sense to my sleep addled brain.

I was in a small room with the bare rocks used to build it exposed. The wall opposite me had a rotting, but solid, wooden door fixed in the right hand corner. As I turned my head to inspect it my head felt unnaturally light. There was a small grate as wide as my hand and it was fixed in the centre of the wall opposite me, near the top, it was where the offending light was coming from. I was in a cell.

A cell complete with chains and manacles for my wrists I realised a while later when I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I gave the chains an experimental tug and was not surprised when it did not budge. I moved my head out of the rays of the sun and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Chains. Everywhere. They were pairs of them fixed to nearly every available wall space. They were made of lots of different materials. Mine were made of iron, I could tell because of the huge amounts of r      ust covering the links. But there were others, some were really shiny and I assumed they were either polished stainless steel or silver. I went with silver. No-one would bother to polish chains for prisoners.

Prisoner. That’s what I was, I realised. Idly I wondered why it took me longer than normal to figure out something so glaringly obvious. A single thought swam through my foggy head. I had been drugged. Heavily.

It could have been an hour or minute later but time keeping wasn’t one of my strong points even when I hadn’t been drugged out of my mind. But it was some time later when I heard footsteps echo from outside the room probably along a corridor leading to the cell. My head didn’t feel like it had been stuffed with cotton wool anymore and I felt now I could at least take part in conversation with my captor.

Rightly I should have been scared out of my mind but the drugs swimming through my blood only let me feel an idle curiosity at the events transpiring around me. The footsteps slowed as they approached the door. Something began nagging me. Something didn’t make sense but I wouldn’t be able to work it out in my current state.

A small slat in the door at head height was removed and I could see the green eyes of my captor. He swept his eyes over the room probably to determine I hadn’t hidden a weapon in the corners. He glanced at my chains probably to check I hadn’t slipped out of them. I didn’t know how I knew this but it felt second nature to me, assessing the enemy and his actions.

The door wasn’t thrown open, it didn’t creak open either. It just…opened. No dramatic entrance, no creepy evil music, no maniacal laugh. The evil people in the real world weren’t as glaringly obvious as Disney made them out to be. My captor was tall, with black hair peppered with white. His green eyes didn’t twinkle evilly, they just stared at me. He looked around 40 but I only thought that because of his white hair. His expression I just couldn’t place, not because it was blank, he was definitely feeling something but I felt it was more my fault then his that I couldn’t place his expression.

He walked forward and crouched down several feet in front of me. Clever. He was out of my kicking range. And spitting range.

We observed each other silently for a few seconds. He opened his mouth to speak but abruptly shut it a few moments later when nothing came out. We resumed our staring match. This time it looked like he had something concrete, something solid to say. He opened his mouth and the first words out were, “I’m sorry, Verity.”

Not what I was expecting. Not at all. There was something I was missing here but first there was something urgent I needed answering.

“Who’s Verity?”