The gag was taken out of her mouth and her cuffed wrists were set free.
She didn't know who took her or where she was. It was too dark to see. Tears burned her eyes;a knot lodged in her throat. She was unable to see as she took a small step forward and nearly staggered.
From the sounds of her shuffling it sounded as though she was indoors. But where? She couldn't remember a thing. Her brain was foggy and her senses were disoriented.
It was deathly cold and the thin garment of a dress she wore didn't help ward off the chill seeping through her skin.
"W-who's there?" She called out.
Goosebumps broke out on her chilled flesh. It was too quiet. As if an impending doom was upon her.
She stood there motionless as she tried to decipher which way to go. Was she even alone? But she didn't hear any movement. The silence was more terrifying than not being able to see.
The only thing she could hear was the pounding of her heart and her noisy breathing.
A fist slammed into her ribcage.
Shocked, she fell against a wall, wheezing as her legs gave out.
She couldn't breath from the impact, her teeth clenched together.
Another punch, this one to her face.
Then another to her stomach.
She fell to her side, groaning in agony. Lights exploded behind her eyes from the pain.
There wasn't a moment for her to recover when a hand snagged her hair.
She screamed.
With all the pain she was in, she clawed at it and jerked roughly to the side as she tried to force the hand to release her. But her arm was pinned awkwardly behind her back. Her head was pulled back and bent her neck at an unnatural angle.
Her head was raised and slammed into the hard concrete. Stars burst before her eyes; she could feel the hair ripping from her scalp.
Her eyes burned, feeling hair ripping from her scalp as she was forced to stand on her knees.
She was suddenly released.
Her knees and palms stung as they slapped the floor.
Tears were streaming free down her cheeks as she cried loudly. The pain was unbearable in her stomach and face. She tried to get back on her feet. She desperately struggled to get up but her feet wouldn't cooperate with her mind. Her body shook and her muscles trembled.
More tears poured down her face and throat.
She tripped and fell, and was dragged before she was able to gain her footing.
Her entire body throbbed as blood seeped from her mouth.
She gagged, choked, sputtered and finally vomited, but nothing came out but thick blood.
Why was this happening to her?
What had she done to deserve this?
Why was she being punished?
She was drained of energy and life. She could barely move. It was impossible to get up from the hard cold floor. Someone stood over her. She couldn't see them but sensed them.
Resisting the blackness, fighting to stay alive by a thread, it was slipping–nothing to hold on to. She couldn't feel her arms, couldn't move one finger, her body deadened from the neck down.
She was kicked in her middle once more and immediately curled into a ball of agony as she fought against the violence inflicted on her body.
"Nooooooo!"
She didn't care who captured her or what they did to her; all she wanted was to be free. One way or another, dead or alive, she wanted to be free of this nightmare.
"P-pleeease." She panted. "P-p-please s-st-t-op."
She didn't know why she pleaded. She was too weak not to.
Just when she thought she couldn't take anymore, and her entire body was being crushed beneath the torment engulfing her, a knife stabbed her stomach then her back, repeatedly sinking into her flesh, not allowing her to recover for even a second.
It felt like she was being stabbed by multiple people all over her back, front, legs, arms. . .
Whoever was killing her was remorseless. Sadistic.
Flames of heat licked through her veins. Her breaths came out in rapid pants as her throat swelled. Every bone in her body felt broken. Pain laced every recess of her body. Her insides burned.
Her heart hammered painfully in her chest. She was losing a lot of blood. It stammered, and then leapt into flow blown panic as fingers wrapped around her throat chocking the life from her.
Sobs stuck in her chest; fresh anguish twisted through her body.
This was her end. She was dying.
Still struggling, her heart started to beat in a sluggish rhythm. It ached to work to pump blood through her body as it leaked through her open wounds.
Her tears were cold against her already icy flesh. Sweat poured from her body, coated her skin and plastered the dress against her. Her entire body was numb with torturous pain. She laid in a pool of her own blood, her body convulsing erratically.
Painfully so, she sobbed silently, moans of agony muffled in her throat.
Suddenly, hands seized hold of her and roughly lifted her. Nausea swamped her despite her pain. A groan escaped her as they hauled her forward, dragging her limp body. Her head spun as her legs were dragged behind her, the blood seeping from her skin creating a slick surface.
She listened as the doors opened and closed.
Voices. She heard voices.
But she couldn't understand a word.
She couldn't see, her eyes swollen shut from the blows to her face, the fluorescent lights on the ceiling burning through her closed eyes. The cool air chilled the blood coating her body.
Heavy footsteps echoed off the walls. They weren't hers.
Blood spilled passed her lips as she coughed, choking on her blood.
It wasn't much longer. It was a slow agonizing death. Excruciating.
I don't want to die, she thought.
Despite the fog and the dull sounds bouncing off her eardrums, she heard what was said clearly, just before she lost the fight to stay alive.
"Dispose of her."
She sucked in a breath of air and then everything faded to black.
Hope woke up gasping for air clutching at her chest desperately. The intense urge to cry overwhelmed her senses.
It was a few minutes or it could have been hours before she regulated her breathing. She opened her eyes, seeing nothing but utter blackness.
A sudden terror gripped her tightly, swallowing a scream.
Disoriented, she glanced around blindly as she reached out with her fingers, realizing immediately that she lay on a freezing floor, someplace void of light and sound.
It came rushing back all at once.
She was running from Colin. The last thing she saw was his fist coming towards her. She tried to sit up, her body aching with every movement. Her broken rib ached as she breathed and her body was bruised and swollen. Her head felt as though it was splitting from the stabbing pain.
Hope shuddered from the dampness, the extreme cold, swallowing heavily and repeatedly, trying to wet her parched throat and sore, chapped, cracked lips.
She tasted dried blood.
It was hours or days, she couldn't tell. Her mouth drier than a desert. She would give anything for some water. But she had a very strong feeling she would not be alive long enough with only her misery and discomfort, two of which did not require water.
The thought of being kept prisoner, being trapped by her imposter husband was enough to make her scream in horror. But she couldn't even speak let alone scream. If she had to guess, with no source of light, she was trapped underground, surrounded by darkness, dirt, and muggy air.
It was the overwhelming stench of the dirt that acutely reminded her of death. She wanted to gag and cover her nose to block it out. She might as well have been buried alive.
She turned her head to the side, taking short breaths through her mouth, fighting to stay relaxed, to calm her galloping heart. It was difficult to breath feeling like a vise clenching her chest. The pressure in her chest in addition to the lack of fresh air, she could barely breathe through the panic threatening to crush her. Panting for breath, and fighting back the hot wash of tears flooding her eyes, she felt on the verge of closing her eyes and giving up.
Moaning miserably all she had left was determination. To endure. To survive. To keep going.
Ever since she became Hope all she did was live in fear. There was never a moment she felt normal. Every breath she took poisoned the very air she breathed.
Strength. She needed strength to stay brave.
Then it materialized before her. Gripped by the strong image of Zayn's face swimming before her.
She was paralyzed by grief reaching for him.
"Zayn." She said in a whisper of agony. "I need you." Her tears cold against her icy flesh.
Try as she may to remain brave, her soul felt shattered, far more than she had ever experienced. She had suffered a disturbed life but this by far was the worst.
The perverse gleam in Colin's eyes replaced Zayn's. But what stood out of her mind the most was the nightmare before she regained consciousness.
Or was it?
It was worse than all others. It felt real. She remembered every kick, punch and stab. She remembered feeling endless pain, weakness, broken bones, all the blood. . .Her mind could not be playing tricks with her. Was it the last memory she had before she died?
Dispose of her.
Those three words she remembered clearly and the voice. The voice was very much real. Every fiber in her body knew it was. The ruthless tone, the evil she sensed emitting from them as they hauled her lifeless, broken body against the stone floor.
The dread she felt, the fear, being attacked and beaten to death.
That was real.
She was certain those were the last moments before she. . .
Her mind was clear, coming together, suddenly she knew.
She recognized the voice. She'd heard it before. But she could not place a face to the voice.
In the darkness she could not think straight. It was too overwhelming.
Through the quick breaths and a racing heart, she squeezed her eyes shut, quickly crawling, moving on all fours, her hand outstretched until it touched something solid. A wall. Still moving blindly along the wall, her hand stuck on something moist, startling her as she stopped. Then she felt the crawling on her skin and she realized she's struck a web and released spiders.
Hope screamed. Terror filled her before she panicked, and she sprang away from the wall, shaking out her dress, her hair, feeling the creatures on her skin, the web on her face. Sheer panic seized her as she screamed again, swatting away the spiders, shaking, brushing them off as best she could.
Her breaths were coming out heavy and loud. She tried to move away, to the other side, where she'd been lying earlier but the blinding blackness left her confused and feeling completely helpless.
Please God, help me!
Curling herself into a ball, she hugged her dress around her knees covering as much of her bare body as possible as tears flowed down her cheeks.
"Zayn." She sobbed, from deep within her soul. "Find me please. Help me."
"No one will help you."
A scratchy sounding voice declared.
Instantly, Hope stopped crying, her body stiffening. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
Ears on high alert she tried to listen closely. Did she imagine the voice?
There were no sounds of movement. Her gaze flitted in the darkness as she tried to pinpoint the source of the voice.
"Who are you?"
The voice again.
Her heart began pounding heavily.
Hope's mouth dropped open and she nearly jumped out of her skin as she backed away from the source of the voice, her eyes landing in the far corner of the dark space.
Confusion swirled through her.
"Who's there?" She managed to choke out, glancing around as she tried to understand exactly what was going on.
"My name is Lily."
A cold chill washed through her.
"Lily?"
"I. . .have been trapped in here for some time . . .by husband Colin and his brother Jack."
A shudder tore through her as a pair of eyes burned into her.
Lily.
Her accent was crisply British although hoarse. It sounded like she hadn't used her voice in years.
Could she truly still be alive after all this time?
Colin had shared she died by suicide. It must have been another lie. They were endless. She began to understand Colin and Jack were truly crazy.
There were endless possibilities about what her presence here meant, and none of them were good.
"How do you know Colin? Who are you?" She repeats.
"M-my name is Hope." She whispered, a tremble in her voice.
Hope dropped her head as she began to rock back and forth trying to keep her wits about her through the confusion and horror.
She wanted to deny it, that she was having a bad nightmare again or she was going crazy, but she knew this was very real, and they were in a lot of trouble.
"Why are you here?" She asked, but then she went into a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
A very bad, rib-shaking cough.
It sounded horrible to Hope's ears. The woman was very ill.
"The same reason as you I suppose." Hope managed to say.
"But why?" And then she broke off and coughed again. It was becoming harder for her to stop.
"You need to be seen by a doctor. It sounds like a chest infection."
Hope desperately wanted to crawl over to her and help her.
"I will be fine." She wheezed between coughing fits. "Tell me why you are here."
"I was left dead until Jack transformed my face to look like you and Colin used my lost memories and had me believe I was you. Once I found out what they did, Colin threw me down here." Hope paused for a moment. "He said you were dead."
Lily releases a bitter laugh. "Yes, left to rot until I die. He does drop food down here once, sometimes twice a day if he's feeling generous, but it is not enough. I cannot hold on much longer. My health is deteriorating."
Hope listened to the wheezing coming from the woman's chest with every breath she took.
"I do not understand any of this." Hope's fingers dug into her arms as she tried to keep herself under control.
"I do not know why either. I'd rather they have killed me than suffer as I have."
"Have you tried finding a way out of this place? Where are we?"
"Under the structure of the manor. . . And no, there's no chance of escape. I've tried everything." She answered.
Hope could feel her blood run cold.
After a short pause she asked, "There is something gnawing at my mind. . .why did they transform you into me?"
"To become a con-artist. He had me continue the job. That is what you were, was it not?" Hope wondered if that part of Colin's story was at least true.
"Yes, until I decided I no longer wanted this kind of life." She admitted. "I wanted children. He promised me one last job before we'd try for a family. The Crown Jewels. I delivered them as promised. Soon afterwards, I learned Colin did not want a family. It was all a hoax, a lie to get me to do what he wanted. I became too emotional and defiant for Jack and Colin's tastes. Colin soon changed. For years, he was the sweetest man, the most considerate. He had pretended all along to care for me, love me. He played the amazing, supportive husband to the hilt. But that was just one of his many personalities." Lily went into a fit of coughs before she continued. "It was too late before I found out he was a monster with different faces. He enjoys watching others suffer. He's sick. Violent. Mentally ill. Psychotic, if you will."
Some bits and pieces of Colin's story had been true. Lily re-encountering the events leading her to imprisonment made more sense as the story came together. Everything she said about Colin was true. He was selfish, too opportunistic. All Colin cared about was Colin. Hope encountered it first hand.
"Soon after, I decided to end our marriage." She continued. "I demanded a divorce and declared it straight to his face although I was deathly frightened of him. Narcissists such as him do not like losing. It made him crazed with anger knowing I was about to leave him. He attacked me, nearly strangling me to death before throwing me in this pitch darkness I call hell."
Hope played out the image of her story in her mind as she retold it. Everything Lily said was true. She saw it. Even lived in parts of it.
"A fate worse than death." Hope said, her voice strained.
"Precisely."
"What about Jack?"
"He is Colin's accomplice in everything. Anything Jack did Colin approved and vice versa. Two peas in the same pod, you could say."
Hope shook her head. They were the true definition of toxic and evil. They lured her into believing them, grooming her to become someone she never was. It wasn't just her face they changed. They manipulated her entire life.
She would do anything she could to escape the madmen holding their lives hostage.
"What should we do?" Hope asked.
It would take a miracle finding a way to escape the horrendous situation they were in.
"We can do nothing but wait and see what they have planned now that you're here."
Hope had never felt so helpless and desperate.
****
Hope woke in darkness. The hardness of the floor beneath her face muffled the soft moan that escaped as she pushed herself into a sitting position. It took Hope a moment to realize where she was. Her memory returned in slow increments; the terror much faster.
She never noticed it before, but her arm burned, and she rubbed it, trying to make the pain go away. It probably wasn't more than a scratch, she thought. She had bigger problems to worry about than a mere scratch.
Hands seeking in front of her, she crawled–the strongest sense that did not require light or touch, her ears, were on high alert for any sounds from up above. However, the only sounds she heard were that of Lily. The poor woman's breathing was rapid and quick as her lungs desperately sought air.
She felt like a caged animal and despised feeling so helpless. She wished she was strong enough or could at least see so she could crawl free of the awful place she was in. There had to be a door somewhere above her that led to the manor's upper structure.
Where would she start? She couldn't see a single thing. Her only senses that did not require visibility were touch and hearing.
She distinctly heard a sound. Her overactive imagination was not in charge of her hearing. It was not Lily. She was motionless except for her ragged breathing.
It sounded frantic.
She listened for anything that might give away the nature of the noise. Then suddenly, there was a soft thump that gently shook the ceiling and made her heartbeat accelerate.
Hope was almost positive the sounds of footsteps were coming from somewhere above her.
Her heart did a little skip in her chest.
Muffled shouts echoed from above as the sound of running feet pounded over her. Hope's head followed the sounds.
She strained to hear.
At the same time apprehension swelled within her.
What was going on?
She felt her face turn pale.
They were coming for her.
____________________________________________________________________________
The real Lily is still alive. More twists and turns to come! Are you ready for it?
Thanks for everyone's support! Please comment, vote and share with others.
Until next Friday!
-Shaz