Chained and Damned

When I came to, my head felt like a cinderblock strapped to the top of my neck and I had never been so dizzy in my life. Every slight movement brought with it a surge of nausea. Not that I could move very much. When I tried to ease myself up out of the hard wooden chair, I couldn’t stand. I realised that I was bound to the chair by chains, the links chafed where they rubbed on bare skin. To my horror, I realised handcuffs were tight around my wrists. They were so tight they cut into my skin, I could feel the faint ooze of blood around metal edges. I was pretty sure my ankles were similarly bound. I could feel something fuzzy like a hand towel rolled up and jammed into my mouth. It felt like that fuzziness was being transferred to my tongue.

Everything I determined through a fuzzy, sluggish sense of touch. Some sort of cloth or fabric was tied almost as tightly as my chains, wrapped around the top of my head. I could see nothing beyond it. Not even a faint light. I was bound to a wooden chair by chains and handcuffs and left in the dark.

I felt my heart pound in my chest, each beat hard like it was trying to rip through my skin like a scene from Alien. Panic set in and I instinctively struggled against my bindings, but I obviously could not free myself. All I did was make the panic worse. My breaths started coming harder and quicker, and it was hard to bring in enough air through the gag that way. Each breath also brought with it another wave of nausea. I began to fear I’d throw up and choke on my own vomit because of the gag. 

Where was I? Who had done this? My memory was a haze. I wondered if I screamed if anyone would hear me. I wondered if it was safe to do so without attracting the attention of my abductor. 

Am I going to die like this? The thought came unbidden to my mind and I felt even more frightened, even though another voice was telling me that this would be better than staying tied up and gagged like this. Why me?

“I see you’re awake,” a raspy voice said. 

Instinctively, I tried to leap up out of the seat. The chains pulled against me and the chair rocked perilously for several moments before giving up and tipping over. My head slammed into the floor, the chair sandwiching me between itself and what felt like cement. The fact that it hurt didn’t even register until after the sense of vertigo from the abrupt, violent movement left me. Then it hurt quite a lot. My captor made no immediate move to stand me back up either.

“Oh dear, that wasn’t very smart. Then again, you never were as clever as you thought.” He chuckled.

I was so wrapped up in the spinning sensation in my head and the discomfort of being stuck in the chair that I didn’t even notice at first that the person who was speaking talked as if he knew me.

“Are you done struggling then?”

I tried to yell at him, to ask him who he was and why he was doing this to me. All that came out was a pained, muffled sound.

“Wondering why this is happening to you?” Despite the unintelligible sound that I made through my gag, he spoke as though he knew exactly what I was asking. It was like he was hearing my thoughts. I got the feeling he only made it a question to rub my inability to speak in my face.

“Surely you can figure it out. Your memory can’t be that foggy.”

I tried to steady my breathing and focused on his voice. I was struggling to piece together my memories. I wasn’t sure what time it was or where I was being kept. I strained to put my memories in their proper order but the more I pushed, the harder it got to remember.

The one thing that kept coming back was sitting on my couch with someone, eating while a movie played. When was that? Was it days ago? Years? Was that what I was doing right before I ended up like this? Was the friend I was sitting on the couch with the person who did this to me?

Now that I thought of it, there was a familiarity to the voice lurking behind me. But it was wrong too. I didn’t know anyone who spoke with a rasp like that.

Even as these thoughts came to mind, I felt the chair yanked back up with a force that implied it wasn’t difficult. There was enough momentum that it sent everything spinning all over again and I had to fight the nausea it brought with it.

“Let’s get you upright again before all the blood rushes to your head and you pass out. You wouldn’t be a very good conversation partner if you were unconscious.”  His voice seemed bestial, almost demonic. It dripped with satisfaction in my suffering. Everything he said was like a private joke to himself. 

I felt a hand close around my neck from behind me. A hand that felt entirely too small to have yanked me up with such force. He squeezed, not enough to choke me, but putting enough pressure into it to show me how easily could. I could feel the tips of his nails pricking into the soft skin of my throat. They were pointed like claws.

“Yes, we can’t have you sleeping. You’d miss all the best parts.”

That sentence alone sent more alarm bells ringing in my head then even waking up chained to the chair had. I ignored the vertigo. I ignored the risk of falling over again. I ignored the nausea. I screamed. I struggled. The chair rocked traitorously again and I continued, feeling the blood flowing down my wrists as I pulled against my handcuffs. The chains rattled and bit into me. Nothing budged. Nothing broke.

The owner of that terrifying voice squeezed a little bit tighter and I stopped struggling. I became like stone. But I wasn’t stone. I was flesh. Weak, feeble flesh.

I felt the tip of something sharp on the top of my thigh. Then, with a disturbing ease, I felt the blade cut through my jeans and slice into the leg beneath, peeling away a ribbon of skin as it dragged towards my knee.

I screamed.

He laughed. “Welcome to hell. You’re going to be staying here for a while.”