The Beauty and the Shadows

'Is someone out there?! I've…I seem to…I think I've been locked in,' she was panting. She was trying to get hold of her breath. 'Mr. Thompson! Mr. Thompson! The door!' Her breathing was so heavy it echoed through the room. She leaned her back against the door.

The room was pitch-black. She squinted hard to try and catch a glimpse of anything. Anything at all. The windows emitted very little light. Just a foggy glimmer. Her eyes could only make out the outlines of objects in the room. They continued to scour; past the windows, past the desk edges, the indistinct chair legs. Her eyes finally rested on a peculiar object in the far right corner of the room. She focused her eyes a little harder, the best she could. It looked like a shadow sitting on a desk. Her fear told her it was facing her direction.

She tried the door again. 'Mr….Mr. Thompson! The door..!' Fear was choking the air out of her lungs, aided by her discordant heart rate. She felt like she was suffocating. She looked over her shoulder, to the far corner of the room again. The shadow-like figure was still sitting there, on top of the desk. She pressed her back against the door again. 'Is that someone?' she directed her question to the corner of the room. 'If it's someone I…' she pointed over her shoulder, '…I think I've been locked in here.' There was no reply. 'Do you have the keys?' she asked. Still, there was no answer.

Miss Bale began to breathe even more heavily than before. She made sure to keep her eyes in the far corner of the room, at the shadow, in case it made any movement. 'Can you help me get home?' Still, no answer. 'Is it you, Mr. Thompson?' The shadow seemed to be stubborn. Tears swelled up in her eyes. 'Please! Can you help me get home?' It moved. The shadow moved its head, a bit. Or did it? It had looked like a nod. Or did it shake its head? Or did it move a few inches closer? At this point, Miss Bale thought she was losing her mind. Her head was spinning. Was this all in her head? Tears fell freely from her eyes.

'Oh, please,' she whispered, 'I can't die here.' She rubbed the tears from her eyes. She looked again. The shadow was gone. She pulled her back from the door. Her neck was dangerously twisting and turning on her shoulders, thoroughly searching the room for the shadow. She spent about a minute searching until she saw it again. It was now sitting on a desk in the opposite corner. The left side of the room. To her, it looked like it had grown a little taller.

'Whoever you are, please, show me compassion. I just want to go home.' The shadow stayed mute. She finally decided to make a move. She began to walk backwards. The objective was her desk. She was determined not to let the shadow out of her sight this time.

Her pace was slow but she was willing to take her time. The shadow was still in the same spot. The shadow slightly edged forward. As it moved, she heard a brief sound on the floor. It sounded like metal. Terrified, she screamed and she fell backwards. The back of her head struck the floor with a thump. 'No, no!' she quickly sat up. Her eyes returned to the left corner of the room. The shadow was gone. She turned to the right. It wasn't there either. She cupped her hands over her mouth. 'I don't want to die…I don't want to die…' she whispered over and over again.

Using her hands, she began to drag her buttocks backwards on the floor. If she could reach the window…if she could only reach the window. Her eyes were still hunting for the familiar shadow. She knew she was no longer far from the desk. As soon as your back touches the desk, open that window and run, Brittany, she thought to herself. Get out and run and don't dare look back.

She continued her mission. She knew she was very close now. She boldly closed her eyes. Forget the shadow, forget the damned shadow. Just get through the window and run, Brittany! Just run!

Her back bumped into something. She fearfully groped behind her. She breathed a very heavy sigh of relief. It was the foot of the desk. Her left hand joined in and groped around too. They latched onto something. This wasn't wood. That's when her heart failed her. It resumed its race. She felt the object a bit more. Her eyes swelled open. A leg! She yelled in her head. It was a leg! A human leg! She looked up. All she saw was a shadow standing above her.

She yelped and got to her knees. She decided to crawl to the back of the room. She managed two metres on her knees when she felt something heavy dig into her spine. The pain was extremely excruciating. Intense. She had never felt such. Yelling helplessly, she attempted to crawl away. The same heavy pain befell her right forearm. She employed her left. It tried to grab onto anything it could. It grabbed onto a chair leg but it only slid the chair towards herself. She tried something heavier. She grabbed the foot of a desk. Her left forearm suffered the same fate. She could no longer move. All she felt was the heavy, sharp intensity repeatedly fall on her limbs one by one. It was cold, like metal, and it was very heavy. This was far from the paper-cuts and blisters she was accustomed to. This was indescribable pain. This was the definition of hell.

She wished for death as she heard her own body be hacked over and over and over again. All she could do was lie there, screaming for help as she felt the ruthless weapon strike different parts of her body. She had heard the sound at a butchery. The sound of machetes and cleavers hewing meat when she was a little girl. She immediately thought of her father. And her mother; holding barely onto her daughter as her last hope. "The saviour of the family" her mother had told her as she lay in her sick bed. Hoping at the end of the month her daughter would continue to keep her alive. Who would pay for her cancer treatment now?

Here she was, feeling like meat. Food for the hungry. A somewhat familiar feeling. Her eyes began to fade, catching brief glances of dark liquid spouting from her back and the relentless weapon persisting in its torture. She had given up screaming. She allowed her eyes to close. She tried her best to smile. She finally became silent, but the weapon did not. It continued. It hacked and hacked and hacked away.

Sineas woke up with a start. He looked around, trying to find the swarm of bees that had been chasing him. He was relieved to see that it was just his phone ringing. He rubbed his eyes some more before he reached for his cellphone from the top of the cupboard beside his bed. It was Clarissa. He wondered what she could possibly want at eleven o'clock at night.

'Clarissa; you are aware of the time, right?' he asked her rhetorically.

'Seriously, Sineas? Seriously?! Are you telling me you're not watching the news right now?'

'Why?'

'So you don't know what happened this evening?'

He breathed drowsily into the phone. 'I don't think I will until you tell me.'

'They found him, Sin! They found him! The police found Justin's body!'