Darkness

He awakens to darkness. Pitch blackness. He rubs his head a bit. What the hell--and then he remembers. The bitch got the jump on him all right. "Fuck," he says, almost reflexively. Now what?

He scrambles to his hands and knees, and moves to get up, but he starts to get a head rush and falls back down to his knees. "OK, forget that. Where the hell am I?" He fumbles around with his hands and knees. Damp rock. He reaches a natural wall, and feels confident enough to try a second time.

This time he can stand up, and tries to get his bearings straight. No go: everything is still pure black. He's more awake now, and he can hear the steady sound of water dripping somewhere off in the distance. Steady, almost calming, the regularity: drip...drip...drip.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four...

He almost feels the velvet rope before she tightens it around his neck. Within a split second, it seems, his heart is pounding in his head. He reaches his hands up to his neck to loosen the rope, but it's no good, she has it wrapped too tight. She's very close to him--he can smell her perfume and feel her hot breath against the nape of his neck, and he tries to reach back and throw her.

It's no use; she's too quick, and in an instant she has him on his knees, and then she uses her knee to push his head down. For a moment he wavers between trying to stay up and clawing at the rope, but he falters and she is all over him, gripping the rope even tighter around his neck.

This is it, he thinks to himself, this is how I'm going to die. He feels himself giving out, musing even now about how strange it is to move from darkness to darkness. He doesn't even know who she is...

Without warning she loosens the rope, and leaves him slumped on the floor of the cavern, his echoing cough the only sound for minutes. Then she says, very quietly and calmly, "Oh no. I won't let you die that easily. I've got a lot more games I want to play with you, my pet." He heaves breath after breath, and when he has caught up, he finally turns around, and realizes that he can see something after all. A pair of amber, dully glowing eyes.

"Oh god..." he says, defeated, feeling the fear rise in his throat again, while she just laughs softly.