The crocodile walked at the front and Ria followed behind. Tension strewn between them, helplessness oozing, they traced the bricked floor leaving the flowing stream of sewer water behind. Ten minutes of silence drained Ria faster than the undying length of struggle she had performed before meeting the croc.
Flustered by the annoying silence, Ria spoke up.
“So,” she said, “Where are you taking me?” But her companion didn’t reply.
Ria tried to ask again, but she somehow found her voice gone. An invisible hand seemed to be constricting her throat. She choked as tears welled in her eyes and slide down her cheeks. A single human can only take so much in a short time frame. Stress was piling on her. Fear accumulating. Death wasn’t out of prospect. And now she was following a sewer crocodile. It’s not false to say that Ria was on the threshold of breaking mentally.
She hesitated. Rubbing her cheeks, eyes filtering sadness, head facing the floor, she watched her battered bare feet carrying her forward. They looked bad. Walking in the cold water had taken its toll from her feet. Wrinkled skin, white tone, patches of red, and blisters near the toes. Her feet were numb but they were slowly coming back to life. With warm air circulating around them, they were starting to hurt. Pain in Ria’s case wasn’t an accurate measure of her condition. However, her feet moved without stopping, carrying her forward. She had managed for this so long without falling. She wasn’t going to back down now.
I-I will go back alive. She thought and waited for the reply. Counting her footsteps to force back the silence and to keep her mind occupied, she followed behind the croc. Time passed very slowly. She only managed to count one hundred steps about four times before every breath she took started harassing her for questions and she couldn’t hold on any longer.
“At least tell me about the rules?” She screamed. She had wanted to speak softly, but it seems she was more frightened than she had imagined. The croc- stopped and looked back following her outrage. It gave her a ‘What do you want?’ look then started walking again.
A small crack and the dam holding her emotions in check broke. Relief followed as she emptied her mind and released everything stressing her.
“Tell me!” she said. “Or I am not going with you. You can leave me alone for all I care! What the fuck are you? Why can you talk? What is this place!?” and she was done screaming. Exhaustion came over her once the emotions settled down. Her mind relaxed and she felt peace. Calmness settled in the vacuum left behind by rage. Her outlook refreshed and even though the croc watched her contemplating its next step, she didn’t fear it anymore.
“I wasn’t excepting an outbreak from Jou, girl. That’s for sure. Jou deserves an explanation at the very least. I can do that.”
Ria’s face glowed red from shame and with excitement. She clenched her fist to bear through any bad news which might be coming her way. Images of her recent past flashed through her mind as she inhaled deeply and held her breath.
“This sewer,” The croc said scratching its chin with what one can call its index claw. “Jou can call it a prison. Well, it’s not a prison like Jou humans have. Ah, it’s something like that.” Ria’s face turned pale. She had been expecting… even she didn’t know what she was expecting, but she wasn’t expecting being in a prison. Something tugged her mind, bringing buried thoughts to the surface, but she ignored them for the time being. She was actually thinking along the lines of the story Alice and the wonderland, where she was this stories Alice and the sewer was her wonderland.
“Jou are technically caged, but not bound.” The Croc was still speaking and its next words flushed Ria’s face back with color. “And there is a way out. Now, I can’t exactly tell Jou where the exit is, being the very person placed to keep an eye on you. But I can still advise Jou to go deeper.”
“The only way out is down the sewer.” Ria whispered along with the croc-.
“So Jou do know. At least the old dog told didn’t forget to tell jou that. Alright, now follow me quietly. We are getting close.”
Their journey continued. A few thousand steps they walked, a few hundred thoughts Ria thought. She walked mindlessly watching her feet repeating the same motion over and over again. Eventually, she entered a daze. She kept counting her steps, the time continued to pass, the scenery refused to change and soon her counting reached six thousand six hundred steps when her companions suddenly stopped.
“We are here.” the croc said.
The voice brought her back into the reality. For the first time Ria recognized how gritty and irritating the Croc’s voice was. The feminine quality of its voice wasn’t easy on the ears either. If only, it didn’t speak with a heavy eastern accent, then there might have been some relief to have.
Ria looked up at the croc and then to her left following its head. There, in the depth of the tunnels dark entrails, at an immeasurable distance away, glowed a soft light, flickering like a candle flame. Eyebrows cocked, Ria looked at her… companion? Asking, ‘what’s that’ without speaking? It smiled in return. Jerking its large head toward the light -telling her to follow- it started walking again.
Ria did hesitate. Now that their destination was so close and the climax had finally arrived, the thoughts she had bared behind the excuse of exhaustion and fickleness once again bared their fangs at her. She couldn’t ignore them any longer. She remembered the goblin and his unusual demand. Lust caressed a tiny portion of her body before strength washed out of her limbs. She knew the croc was also not up to anything good. Although it had acted civil and hadn’t demanded anything from her, the goblin had also acted similarly. However there was one crutch which kept her sane. No matter how monsterish the goblins appearance was, he hadn’t attacked her. So, maybe, the croc won’t betray her either. This was the thing which gave her the strength to finish the last hundred or so meters of her journey remaining; this and her only clue out of the sewer.
“I’ll go down. I’ll go down.” She chanted continuously as the light grew brighter around her and so did a gurgling sound, coming from somewhere past the light.
She ignored the sound for now, but her face scrunched when she saw the light source. All the trouble she had faced, all the steps she had taken, the water she had swam through, the fear she had felt, all of that, just to reach a dining table. It was hilarious. She snickered. Unable to control the emotions juxtaposed inside her she laughed, crazily.
“Bah! I felt so much- I lost hope, I felt like dying, just for this?” She said, crying tears of laughter. She wasn’t happy though. No need to mistake her laughter for happiness. She was frustrated. She was angry. She didn’t know what she was thinking. Why had she followed the Croc, really? Was she hoping to be shown a door with an exit sign hanging above it and waved a happy farewell? Was that what she wanted? Well, she wasn’t after a reward. That’s for sure. She wasn’t a fool. She knew the Croc wouldn’t help her escape. Now that the truth was out, however, she was finding it very hard to digest.
It was a small square table covered in a clean white cloth. Five candles burned in their silver stand which was placed at the center of the table, lighting the table and its surroundings in a soft orange light.
“Sit,” The croc said, pulling the chair nearest to him looking expressionless. Ria sat at it, aghast. Color drained from her face as she looked at her reflection on the clean and polished silver plate sitting on the table right in front of her. The croc sat down on a chair on the opposite side of the table, facing her.
Ria looked up from her plate and across the table at the Croc- A bad feeling welling inside her heart. It looked at her in silence. She broke the eye contact and asked.
“What’s on the menu?” Ria said then jumped in surprise at her own words. Glancing back, she met the Croc’s eyes once again, a silent plea in her gaze. She was replied with silence until -this time- the Croc broke eye contact and sighed. It groaned, rhythmically tapping its claws on the table, before it looked back at her and said a single word, “You.”
