Burning Ashes

Arc 1: Chapter 4

"Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage." ~John F Kennedy

I drifted in and out of the darkness of consciousness but I couldn't tell how many times. Voices- screaming, crying. It was hard to tell whether it originated from inside my head or outside, but either way it terrified me. I heard a hoard of maniacal laughs from people higher than the sky and I was sure I was dreaming but then I was doused with a bucket of ice cold water and I knew the laughs were as solid as the ground I was lying on and reality hit me harder than the harshness of the ice thrown at me. Coming back to consciousness was about as painful as falling off the bed during a dream. It hit you hard in the face. Unconsciousness had been blissful but now far off screams of terrified children raped my ears repeatedly. It sent chills up my spine and I shied away from the sounds, but the ropes held me in place. Once my eyes had fully adjusted to the dark I spied a figure standing some yards away, holding the ultimate instrument of torture- a bucket. He seemed in his mid-thirties and for a moment I was afraid I would be abused in the way all parents warned their little girls about, but he simply stepped forward in one large stride, dropped the bucket and pulled me up till I was standing, and cut off my ropes with a blade that glinted like a wicked shark's teeth.

I suppose I had been waiting for him to say something- an evil guy monologue, perhaps? His mouth remained sealed as he dragged me away and out of the room. I was too petrified to say anything but I remember trying to dig my heels into the stone ground in a silent protest, but it fared little use apart from draining my energy. We exited the room and the sound of the screaming increased two-fold. Honestly, it scared the crap out of me. The hallways were dark, lit up by simple red LEDs and housed dark stone floors. It definitely was no Marriott. Despite the dark, I managed to get a good look at my captor's face. He was surprisingly clean shaven and looked well educated- definitely not the long-bearded terrorist I had expected.

I was being braver than I felt. Father had told me to have faith in God when something was wrong, and I was trying to do that like hell. Help me, help me, help me was repeating itself in my mind like a mantra. Please God, I'll offer my prayers five times a day, just please let me get out of this in one piece. I'll feed the poor, I'll fast in Ramadan...just don't let them scoop my intestines out.

The not-terrorist pushed me into a room on the far side of the corridor. The door closed and the screams died along with it, but they plagued my mind anyway. I tried thinking of rainbows and unicorns- like the ones I had painted on the walls of my room, but the unicorns kept bleeding and the storm hid the rainbows in it's winds. I was strapped onto a metal table and a woman made her way to me. She looked like a nurse, dressed in blue scrubs like the ones found at the hospital and I thought that maybe I had been injured in some way and this was just a kind of clinic that the injured were brought to. Maybe someone had saved me from the kidnapper from before and brought me here. I wondered if father knew where I was and whether he would be coming for me. He would, right?

"0-3-3-3-7-6-9-4-7-2-4." I recited an eleven-digit phone number out of the blue. 

A man inspecting medical instruments turned to look at me. He seemed surprised about what I had said, and then he seemed surprised about the fact that I had done something to surprise him.

"What?"

"That's my father's number. You should tell him where I am so he won't be worried. I thought you'd need it."

The man was dressed in scrubs much like the nurse but he had a more steely glint in his eye and those very eyes seemed to show that he had seen much more gore than the nurse had too. He examined the scalpel with as much objectivity as a person regards a toothbrush.