“You,” she heard. ‘You’ It has a nice ring to it. She thought. For some reason she, though, was surprised, wasn’t scared. Knowing her task instead relaxed her. The Goosebumps which had finally found a reason to touch her skin came and went- like a firecracker, bringing a second of excitement –in her case, dread- before letting the normal settle down.
“Me,” she whispered with a drawn breath. “Why me?” She spoke, asking no one. The relaxation and comfort she had thought would remain with her soon started wearing, leaving her discomforted first, then stunned. Her thoughts paused for a second before the situation attacked her in earnest.
“You are going to eat me.” She mumbled, gulping.
Her sight widened at the realization, her pupils expanding. The light hadn’t been blinding. The table wasn’t once unapproachable. The croc, though not her friend, hadn’t been the scariest thing down the sewer either. It’s funny really, how easily a single word had converted the role of light and darkness. Ria pushed with her legs, leaning back into her chair. She felt exposed in the light. So naked she felt. If only she could jump into the darkness and bind for time. But could she even try that? She didn’t have time and no amount of darkness would have saved her. She had found the Croc in the darkness. Or maybe It had found her instead. She couldn’t contemplate. She was alone and, she was finally coming to understand the disparity of her position.
The square dinner table had four chairs in total. Ria and the croc occupied two of them. The chair to her left was empty, and the other had fallen over. The chairs themselves weren’t the most comfortable pieces of furniture there. With no cushion at either the seat or the back which was just a wooden board- flat and straight, however, the polished surface of the chair left to her gleamed dark brown under the candlelight, while the other chair –the one which had fallen over- held a wet gleam to it; like a fire- doused, yet, red and smoldering.
Ria’s own chair was similar to the dark brown chair but with an angled back and no armrests. And similarly had no pieces of brutalized ropes dangling from the armrests either. There was an empty plate to her right, positioned in front of the chair now fallen and hidden under the darkness. Besides these, there was an old weighing machine sitting right in front of Ria’s plate, whose one side was weighed down by a stone slightly smaller than a baby fist.
Ria looked closely and found out that the stone was in fact a real baby’s mummified fist. The Croc smiled at her discovery; while watching her shy away into the back of her chair, it fished for something in its coats left pocket. Maintaining eye contact, it pulled the find out of the pocket and threw it toward Ria who gasped, leaning further back into her chair. The thing tumbled toward her on the table and clanged to a stop atop her plate. It was a knife. Not a steel knife, but a knife with a yellow colored blade, housing an extremely sharp edge, and polished bone handle.
Ria stared at the knife in a daze.
“Jou have to feed me a pound of your meat if jou wants to leabe here’. Jou has an’ hour.” The Croc said, but Ria stayed silent.
“I’m sorry. Don’t try to run. Once the hour ends, I’ll have to hunt Jou down, and jou will lose much more than a few pounds if it came to that.” It continued. Ria still stayed silent, staring at him.
The Croc looked at her, squinting, giving her time to ask questions. “Don’t try to cut Jost whole hand or jost boob. I have seen people die that way.” It added and thumped an hour-glass on the table. “Jost time starts now.”
Ria stood up and looked around. She was hesitant, but not frantic. Her body though shivered. The temperature had dropped without her knowing, and it was still dropping. There was nothing around the table other than emptiness, and a small mound.
“I can run.” The thought came hopelessly to her mind, with the sound of water flowing in the background. I can jump and get away from here, even if it’s a croc. She thought, rubbing her hands together. The temperature was really dropping now. She could see her breath fogging. Tapping her foot, she leaned on the table and picked the candle stand. A single glance showed her the croc’s indifference and she walked away from them both- the table and its occupant.
She walked blind. Although her path lightened under the flame's light, the overall emptiness of her surrounding didn’t decrease. It only grew on her the longer she walked. She didn’t know what she was looking for. She wasn’t trying to run or hide. She simply wanted to find a piece of hope lying around. She had one hour and wanted to make the best of it.
But her mindless tracking came to a stop when she stepped on something hard and it broke with a loud and echoing crunch. She had stopped paying attention some while ago without noticing. It is safe to say she had started losing her mind. She looked down and found herself stepping on the femur, grayed and broken. Inhaling sharply, she stepped to the side and another crunch sounded out. This one was louder than the one previous to it.
“Wha-” She stumbled backward as her foot stuck in a cavity of some kind and she fell to the ground screaming. Her arms flailed at her sides as the flickering light lightened large mounds around her. One look made her stunned, another left her tongue-tied.
She had stumbled on a skeleton and was staring at a mound made of bones. Bones stacked over and over and over, creating small hills which now loomed over her like fingers ready to catch her. Skulls, ribs, hips, spines, and femurs made the bulk of their mass. The sight paled her face. A few moments later, when the surprise vanished, she pushed herself up, and picking the only candle still burning, she started running the way she had come.
An hour, She thought. I only had an hour. How much time do I still have?
Somehow she found the table, now lit by another set of candles with the Croc sitting calmly at his seat. He looked at her, surprised. Ria was starting to understand his expressions. Maybe he was surprised she had come back or it was something else. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know and neither did she have the time.
Pulling her chair back she sat on it. Although there was no wind blowing, the temperature now was chilling enough to make her shiver. How does it even work? The thought distracted her, but she shook her head and hissed.
She looked at the Croc –who sat leaning- and rubbed her hands. “I-I can’t run… can I?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Are you a female?” she asked and it perked up in amusement. “No, no- I mean there is no exit, right?”
“Jou already know the answer.”
“Right- right,” Ria said now rubbing her shoulders which were turning stiff from the cold. Her eyes though were watching the sand slip inside the hourglass. Its sound weighted over like her like a mountain crumbling. Now, she couldn’t really cut her own flesh and feed it to the croc now, could she? Where was the sense in that? But how was she to survive then? What would happen to her once the one hour elapsed? She wasn’t surprised to imagine the Croc jumping on her and ripping her soul out of her body. Her crusader was a man-eating beast, after all. She had no doubt about that.
As she stared at the sharpened knife sitting on the silver plate, she noticed the difference between their seating. While the Croc had everything from different types of knives to a wine bottle and a napkin on its side, she only had a single knife to her, and even it was provided by her date.
I really did walk into this on my own, didn’t I? She harrumphed and smirked as a distant memory starting surfacing in her mind.
It was an old memory; one so old it arrived fragmented and blurred. But there it was, fizzing into existence from the dark recess of her past. In it she found a face, too young to be hers, being reflected back by the glass of water a youthful handheld. She heard music, but it was too distant, too fragmented to be clear. Was it even music? It certainly held a rhythmic beat to it, so maybe it was. She saw shadows, walking past her as broken silhouettes, and her companions strutting, while she sat distressed.
She looked up and saw a majestic chandelier hanging right above her, showering her in a rain of golden light. She looked down and noticed a carpet of white, stained with a patch of red, which flowed toward her like a living object, becoming of shapes too abstract and un-cohesive. Muffled sounds were all around her. Interested, she looked around. She saw figures of shadow pointing their fingers at her- some hissed, others watched in glee. She looked back and found herself sitting crouched on the carpet. Fingers now were trying to burn into her shoulder, trying to pry her away into the night. The spilled liquid of red had come to coat her fingers and a pair of dead eyes stared back ahead.
“NO!” Ria slammed her hands on the table. The tremor woke her from the dream. The same dull and emptiness surrounded her again. The croc sat in front of her looking at her with a dead pane stare.
“You should hurry.” It said.
A sharp pain was rising from her left hand. She looked down and found a slit bleeding blood from her left wrist. Surprised, she looked at the plate for the knife and found it held tightly in her hand, instead.
Her hand clenched the bone handle as tightly as it could. Her eyes burned red as she stared at her hands without blinking. She had just remembered something she didn’t want to remember any more. She didn’t.
She hoped tears would well in her eyes and make her sight hazy. Hoped that they would destroy the evidence of her deed and make her forget, but they refused to come. The burning desire, however, grew instead; while the sand slowly slipped.
“You only have half an hour remaining.” The croc reminded her.
Ria raised the knife above her head in one forceful sweep and held it there. The white cloth covering the table beneath her wrist distracted her for a second, reminding her of her dream.
Will it be stained in red if I cut my wrist? She thought, dangerous thoughts emerging in her mind.
“I advise Jou to cut your fingers, instead. If jou ration them properly, jou will be able to keep enough fingers to not impede your walking or holding.”
Hesitation waned as the voice fell on her ears, the knife dropped, and blood splattered, a scream echoed. The white table cloth really changed colors as blood seeped into its pores.
