She had been in the dark for a long time.
The concrete beneath her was rough with dirt and pebbles, it bit into her side as she lay, trembling, too scared to move. The flesh of her chest had almost entirely healed, it felt bumpy against her trembling fingers, thin scabs beginning to peel leaving a rubbery, translucent, skin underneath. The air was thick, humid, and the quiet dripping some ways away never ceased. Over the days it seemed to have been getting louder, leaving a pounding behind Scarlet's tired eyes.
It had been two days in the cells. No communication, no food, no water. She breathed in the dusty, humid, air and struggled to stop her coughing as her body attempted to reject it. Her tongue was sand in her mouth and her stomach was practically eating itself; her body trembled she was so cold, no matter how tightly she balled herself in the corner of her small cell, she could never maintain warmth. She stayed near the concrete wall, it was her friend, her confidante. As she rested next to it, what little body heat she produced radiated to that small area she leaned on, and she used that as her source. Her source to keep her from freezing to death when she needed to roll over as the pebbles she lay on cut into her skin and popped into her flesh. She stared at the bars across from her. Rusty, black, the paint coating them chipping and revealing the glinting silver beneath. Her chest burned with fear.
Silver, coated in paint mixed with wolfsbane.
It would weaken the strongest wolves, and it had weakened Scarlet many, many, times before.
They threw her down here when she did things deemed extremely punishable. Nothing simple, not dropping a glass, not messing up a meal. When she did things that the Alphas feel are rebellious. Talking back, she could feel the memories touching at the edges of her mind. A child's voice, standing up for herself before she was throw against the metal until her sobs kept her from speaking. Her legs as a child running through tall grass as she attempted to flee from the territory that had condemned her to live this life, she had felt free for a moment as the wind flew through her hair, before the wolf caught her by the arm. These cells had assisted in her changing her tone, in her becoming silent, in more ways than just accidentally leaning against them. She had discovered that being at the end of any punishment was easier than being thrown down here again.
Yet, here she was.
Terror shook her body, her flesh twitched with every drop of water in the distance, she didn't understand. She had shoveled the driveway, she had delivered the meals, she had tended to the garden and the pack members, as well, at their every beck and call. What had she done to deserve to be attacked, slammed into glass containers, her flesh boiled in gravy and oil? What had she done to be thrown into the cells, cold and alone with nothing but a leaky pipe to help her keep time? Her mind was frantic with anxiety, racing through her actions the entire day before she was put in the cage.
What had she done? What had she done!
Her heart throbbed with panic, stomach turning with sickness- no longer starving, she felt she might instead throw up bile in her corner in the tiny cell she was trapped in. She had been curled in a ball for two days, waiting for someone to come down and tell her her crimes. Waiting to tell her of her stupidity and sling names at her frail body like knives. Tell her of her insubordination, assign her the skin splitting, bone breaking punishment she would have no choice but to silence herself about and receive without complaint. Tears rolled hot down her cheeks as her shaky breaths echoed in the dark building.
She had only ever seen one other person in these cells in her history in the Malkún pack. He had been old, and skinny, his flesh was smeared with dirt and a long drip of blood was dried to his side, where a thin, rubbery scar had formed. His ash colored beard reaching to his belly and long, wintery, leaf filled hair showed he had lived wild for some time. She stared at that dried blood, those some years ago, that stuck to his side before she could garner the courage to raise her watery eyes to his. His black orbs dropped her stomach to the floor and she fought her gasp before dropping her gaze.
Scarlet had been told the cells were for wolves that were dangerous, wolves who had gone mad with life and death entwined in one. They were for wolves that came to their territory to murder and pillage, to rape their women and piss on their soil. Ones that wanted to take over their land and ruin their people. Confusion colored the corners of her brain as she had taken another peek at the old man, he stared at the wall ahead of him, quiet and calm.
Instead it housed a slave and an old Rogue.
He never said anything to her, he just silently stared. After hours of her observing him, his head slowly turned to observe her. His eyes on her naked arms, her skinny legs, tracing over her scars and bruises with a calculated gaze. His eyes soon met her face, she could see them out of the corner of her eyes trailing through her hair, resting over the sunken flesh of her cheeks and neck. Her scars, her bruises.
She was marked as a 'hated'.
He could see it on her flesh, smell it in her skin, just like Apollo said!
They came for her then, the tall, muscular, guards of the cells all those years ago. They dragged her down the steep, sharp, concrete steps to the next level. Her flesh tore as they dragged her over the rough ground and she knew to bite back her cries. She went silently, her teeth tearing into the flesh of her lips until blood touched the tip of her tongue. She had hidden in a crawl space from Asher, the soon-to-be Gamma taking his fathers place. He told her to meet him in his room, and Asher had never given Scarlet a good feeling in her stomach. She felt if she went, she might receive a punishment she never had before.
One that made her tighten her legs together.
He told Apollo, made up some story of him asking her to turn down his room and her refusing outright. He told Apollo she had cussed, she had thrown something and pitched a fit like a child in a tantrum. They threw her down here for punishment- disobeying the hierarchy. Disobeying a direct order, they didn't question how out of character that sounded for the mute woman that had served them for so long.
She hadn't been back to the room since then, she hadn't felt it's pebbly floor or smelt the scent of blood that forever stained the air no matter how many times it had been cleaned. And she never saw that old man again, she hoped his silent nature had allowed for him to have been removed without injury, but she knew Malkún. She knew he was most likely dead, tortured for stumbling across their territory, most likely his only crime despite the tales they had told her of Rogues traveling their land.
Scarlet wished she could die.
The thought traveled so quickly through her mind, she didn't have time to regret it. Death terrified Scarlet- though, so did living. She would never be able to leave for another pack, she would be killed before she could reach the tree line; yet, she would never find happiness in her life at Malkún. Was it better to live, and be tortured, or to die, and be free?
Is there an afterlife?
Werewolves were so devoted to their Goddess, their maker, but did she exist? Was she there to welcome you with open arms and endless wilderness, when your heart no longer beat, and your eyes no longer saw? Was there peace when your lungs stopped working? Or was it a burning pain as your brain slowly suffocated, as your cells slowly lit themselves on fire and died in the inferno? Was that what the mundanes called hell, the pain of true death?
Scarlet wasn't so sure.
She had prayed to the Goddess her whole life, sending hope for help and rescue. Someone to take her away from this pain and misery, from the beatings and scars, to love her. To hold her while she drowned in a pool of her own tears, until she could no longer remember her life here at Malkún, until she no longer remembered the people of Townsend all together. She had never received an answer, and at first, as a child, she thought, 'of course she wouldn't, the Goddess would never answer prayers directly.' Though, as she waited for a sign, a showing that she had been heard (maybe the birds in the trees, maybe whispers of the wind blowing, even searching through the clouds of a storm) she found her hope deflating in her chest as the tears passed on. Her prayers became short, and then few, and then history. She no longer searched for hidden messages, for meaningful looks or souls in the forest calling her name. She no longer cared to give herself hope only to have the flame extinguished every night as she shivered herself to sleep.
They had defeated Scarlet.
She had no hope of freedom, she no longer let her brain run wild with imaginings of a better life. She took joy in the small things; like the rain, and the heat of the laundry room. She did as she was told, when she was told, unless her animalistic fear got the best of her. Her instinct, though they liked to tell her she didn't, she knew she had a wolf in her spirit, and she knew that when that wolf was present, she was to listen. She could feel its heartbeat in her own, it's taste on her tongue, it's fear in her fear. It was an echo, milliseconds after her actions, that gave her a feeling of comfort.
The cells were freezing, her flesh of her body would have been tinged pink if she could see it, she was sure. Tears lightly led a course down Scarlets cheeks. Her face was hot as sobs racked her body, her trembling limbs the only noise in the dark. Her pounding behind her eyes only increased with the pressure of her crying, and she could feel her lids swelling as snot clogged her nose. She knew she wasn't a pretty crier, though with no one to see her in such a light, what did it matter?
She cried in fear, not understanding what she had done, not understanding the need for the cells. Confusion forced her into a tighter ball as she rocked lightly from side to side, her attempt at a soothing motion that never fully worked. The hairs along her arms and legs stood to attention as her trepidation doubled and tripled, she knew the weapon they would use. They like to flash it at her, give her the occasional lick with it, building the suspense until her fear, just at the thought of it, debilitated her. The whip.
The tip a sharpened spear of silver, the rope soaked in wolfsbane, the holder of the item had to wear gloves when handling it.
It had seen Scarlets flesh and given her majority of the scars along her back and buttocks. Thick, purple, bubbly whip markings that wrapped around her shoulders, settling in the backs of her arms, long across her ribs and spine- it could kill her any time she was subjected to it, and yet, it never had. What it had done, on the other hand, was make Scarlet so terrified of the cells, she couldn't breathe imagining the thick brown item closed tightly in a bucket of water and wolfsbane. She knew she was going to get it, she didn't know what she had done, but she knew she was going to receive the whip.
With a heavy screech, the door at the end of the hall opened and light flooded the dark room Scarlet had been trapped in for days. She choked on her scream, her bleary eyes filled with tears able to see the broad bodies of the werewolves come to take her to the room. They would drag her down those concrete steps, her flesh would rip, and she would be thrown on the floor that smelled of so many's bloody punishments. Her heart hammered and her ball tightened as they stopped outside her cell door. The keys chimes as they unlocked her cell, the screech of the door swinging open causing her to jump. The guards gloves protected him from the silver and wolfsbane, and her tears fell harder as she remembered the gloves the carrier of the whip would have to use. They lifted her from the ground, each grabbing a wrist and pulling her light body from her ball. The man to her left held her tight in both hands while the man to the right moved to rip her thin dress down the middle, her body exposed to the world as the worn fabric fell to the dirty ground. She fought to cover her modesty, only to have her wrists grabbed again while they marched down the long hallway to the stairs that led to the floor below.
Plea's and sobs bubbled with saliva off of her lips, tears rolling hot and fast down her cheeks and past her ears as she hung her head back and dug her feet into the stone floor like a pitiful infant. She felt weak like an child, and the rock sinking in her stomach did nothing to weigh her down in the arms of her captors.
She wanted to beg 'please don't take me, please don't hurt me!' But she hadn't spoken in so long it just came out as whimpers and hisses of air escaping her mouth as they dragged her down the stone steps while her heart beat out of her chest.
The abnormal rhythm was so loud, she could feel it pounding in her ears.
She weighed so little, it must have been easy for them to move her to the death room. Would they hear her screams? Or would her heart beat drown them out?