The Demon Within Shows Itself

Chapter 1

     She heard the noise again. Was it a drip? No, it was too high of an octave for that. Nails on a chalkboard? For one, it didn’t have that head-splitting quality that nails on chalkboard seemed to have. Secondly, she was in the room solitarily to the extent of her knowledge. She struggled against her confinements. A screech escaped from the female’s lips as a fur-covered specimen darted between her ankles and calves. Was it a rat? Were there bats in the room with her? Every time the noise sounded she would frantically struggle to try and pinpoint the location. She cursed her slow thinking as they faded to silence before she could finish finding the direction of the water source. She wasn’t scared of the dark. In fact, she loved the soothing silence that usually accompanied the expanse of darkness that went throughout her bedroom when she finally drifted off to sleep at night. Although, to her growing displeasure, there was a light approaching then retreating further away from her with each second that passed as a single grain of sand in the hourglass of time.
     The temperature fluctuated, seemingly boiling and then shudder-inducing, and settling on a middle ground mere moments before starting the agonizing cycle all over again. The maiden struggled to remember her name. She racked her mind for an answer, her frustration growing more and more before she screamed to release the steam building inside of her mind. What was her god-forsaken name? It hit her with a jolting clarity. Her name was Mira. She ceased her mindless and useless struggles against her bindings and strained her ears in the slight instinct that there was a sound that she was missing.

     There was a sound! A faint one, but it was there. A noise seemingly of the clicking of heels… That’s what it was. The click of boot heels on tile flooring. There was the scrape of a bladed weapon that made all of her senses shut down with the terror and shock of the noise’s clarity. The clicking abruptly disappeared, as if it were never there. Mira held in a scream from the feeling of a blade trailing up her spinal cord slowly. A chuckle sounded from some distance behind her. The clicking reappeared, seeming to echo around the quarters in which she had been confined. Her head slung from side to side, causing her to get whiplash as her captor hummed disorientingly behind her. Mira whimpered at a tap on her shoulder, her body shuddering heavily with the effects of anxiety, paranoia, and fear. She caught a whiff of a sweet smell… Was that perfume..? Was her captor female? If so, why? What had she done to anger anyone? She was a crime scene investigator, a supposedly unneeded operation of the police force.
     What had she ever done to anyone that wasn’t in prison? Her thoughts were cut short as her teeth clamped down on her lower lip, her yelp of pure fear escaping slightly, having been caused by a tap on her knee and the feeling of a blade slitting the fabric of her jeans. A single tear fell from her eye; the first of many to come. A deep but definite female voice spoke behind her, uncannily familiar. “Goodnight, my dear old friend.” With that, there was a flash of light that signified a blow to the head, and an unnatural darkness took over Mira’s conscious mind.

     As the hours passed and Mira slowly started to stir, her kidnapper sat watching her from the doorway, her lips parting and showing her teeth in an unsettling grin. “Oh dear Mira.. You don’t know how you betrayed me. You will soon though, you surely will soon.” The woman stood from the metal folding chair that she had set up in front of the door to Mira’s imprisonment. Her golden blonde hair shining in the light with bright red highlights as she spun on the heel of her boots and walked away, closing the door behind her. A mere moment later, Mira jerked to awareness with a scream that tore from her vocal cords, likely causing some irreversible damage. She coughed in pain, feeling a wetness slip from her lips and landing with a dark red spot on her jeans.
     Mira spoke in a pained whisper, “Where in the hell am I..?” She leaned forward slightly, her eyes closing to hold in her tears as she struggled to pull her wrists from the ropes that held her to the chair. Gasping in pain at the chafing that she’s caused from the amount of times she’s struggled, Mira leaned back against the chair and started to take deep breaths to focus herself on the task at hand. She started to rock back and forth in her chair, hearing the wood squeak in protest at the movement. That’s when the idea hit her. She could weaken the chair’s constructional bindings and somehow, hopefully, soon break it enough to be able to slip the rope over it and off of her wrists. Afterwards, she would be able to pull the wood from behind her legs with moderate ease.

     As she started to rock in the chair, she heard the clicking that indicated her captor returning. She sat still, trying to make it seem as if she was innocent in every sense of the word. All she saw before the door closed behind the woman who stole her freedom was a flash of golden blonde hair. Her chest seemed to tighten as she kept that image in her head. Who did she know that had golden blonde hair? Surely it couldn’t be.. No, it wouldn’t be. There was almost no way that her younger sister would do this to her.. Right..? Why would little Ann Marie (although 27 years old is hardly little) do this to her older sister? She shivered heavily as she listened to the sound of the other woman’s boots click around the room. Trying to speak, she winced at the soft squeak that came from her throat.
     “Annie..” She whispered quietly, hearing the clicking stop almost immediately. The other female’s deep voice sounded from the darkness, seemingly filled with pain and anger. “My name is not Annie, and it has not been for quite a while.” Mira sat even straighter than before, if that were possible, at the confirmation that it was in fact her younger sister that stole her freedom. “Annie.. Why..? Why did you do this..?!” Her voice slowly rose into a desperate scream that echoed back at her from all sides of the room.
     A blunt object slammed into the back of Mira’s head, causing colors and seemingly some of her life to flash before her eyes. “I said my name is no longer Annie!!” Her younger sister growled into her ear, seeming to be the voice of pure wrath. Mira swallowed a whimper of pain and nodded slightly in agreement, thinking silently that this girl was definitely not the sister that she remembered raising. The woman that seemed to replace her sister laughed harshly. “I’m cute, blonde, and largely psychopathic. My new name is Mal, largely considering the fact that I am finally showing to be smarter and more calculative than you are.” ‘Or her name’s Mal because she’s highly malevolent..’ Mira thought to herself as she stayed silent to allow this woman to finish her unpleasant and unneeded explanation.