A New Fear

Blood spattered onto the cobblestone flooring, spraying from the split lip of a ragged-looking young woman. A coppery scent was buried in every nook and cranny of the room, smelling like bodily fluids that nobody had bothered to clean. The young woman pushed herself up from her slumped position against the ground to look her attacker in the eye, turning bruised wrists around in their rough bindings as if it would make the pain more tolerable. Both figures in the dingy room held each other’s gazes in a rage-filled stare-down. Neither wanted to give in, but one of them had a clear, unfair advantage.

It went on like this for several minutes, the two staring until the unbound one got tired of the other’s gaze and struck out at them. The divide between strikes got smaller and smaller as they quickly lost patience. They didn’t speak, they barely breathed, they just stared - stared, stared, stared, staredstaredstared until the young woman was going cock-eyed from the pain and had to drop her gaze. One could almost hear the energy and conviction leave her body as her head sunk lowly, eyes now transfixed on the ground. A malicious smile dug into the other’s face, grin ugly and filled with once holy intentions.

The man opposite the woman, the one whose hand had struck her face far too many times to leave her standing strong, spoke with a deep, gravely voice, the sound aching with many losses, but confident in having triumphed, “You know… This would be easier if you would just give me the information I need…” He ran a hand through his hair casually, as if torturing people for information was a daily habit of his, as if he didn’t care that the woman before him would probably not last the week under these conditions.

His unspoken offer rang tantalizingly in her ears, his unspoken offer to end the suffering now. She could taste the escape in his words, taste the freedom from pain, but she knew deep down that she would not be able to digest the consequences if she did what he asked. Her head lolled backwards, neck hardly able to support her anymore. Their eyes met just once more, tension increasing in the room ten-fold. The woman’s voice was powerful, livid, full of the energy she herself could not muster, “... Go to Hell, motherfucker.”

Her attacker’s face screwed up in unbridled rage, fist lashing out to deliver a blow to her temple that left his prisoner very nearly unconscious. He wiped the dried blood from his hands as he stepped around her tattered, fallen body in order to exit the gloomy chamber. “If you aren’t willing to cooperate with me, then…” The man trailed off lazily, hand poised on the doorknob. He turned his head to glance backwards at the bloodied figure lying on the floor, a mirthful, caustic smirk plastered to pale cheeks. “I’ll kill them when I find them. I’ll kill them all.”

Notes

Reposted and edited from the account "loserless". I was locked out and wanted to have all of my works on one account. Check out my other two stories if you like my writing and are interested in reading more! Leave a comment if you have the time.