This week’s flash fiction is my take on a writing prompt I recently posted on Pinterest.
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Shauna opened her eyes to…nothing? Inky blackness met her gaze, and she shifted with a soft whine. Pain sparked through her arm, but she ignored it and forced herself to sit up anyway. Where was she? Cold stone met her palms and the backs of her thighs, and she winced. Not being able to see anything was unnerving.
She slid her fingers along the stone until they met empty air. Some sort of pedestal then. How far was it to the floor? She didn’t dare try to climb off this thing without knowing what lay beneath. Really, in this kind of darkness, the floor could be thousands of feet below her or some monster could lurk in the darkness. She’d seen enough to know the monster under the bed wasn’t always the result of an overactive imagination.
But she couldn’t sit here all day, either. Well, maybe not day. Too dark to know if it was day or night wherever she was. Either way, she couldn’t stay here. She felt down the side of the stone she sat on, inch by inch. Nothing snapped at her fingers, but she also couldn’t feel any other surfaces to step on just yet.
Her head ached with the motion, and her injured arm throbbed. While she quested for some indication of where she might be situated and how to escape, she occupied herself with trying to determine what might have happened to her. Had she been drugged? Given how her head felt, quite likely. She must have put up a fight to be injured like this unless whoever dragged her down here and been careless. Why, oh, why– Her fingers brushed against another solid surface.
Cheering mentally, she leaned over to feel along the cool surface. More stone, but it seemed to be more the sort flooring might be made out of. That was a good sign. Even better, it didn’t drop off that she could tell. She slipped her feet over the edge and eased onto the solid ground beneath the stone slab she’d been on. One step at a time, she felt her way along the new surface until she hit a wall.
Walls were good. They meant that, besides stairs, the floor probably didn’t just end somewhere. They also meant she was in a man-made structure of some sort, whether built entirely by hand or built into some sort of cave structure. At least she knew there would be some rhyme or reason to the building. She continued forward, shuffling along at a slow, steady pace.
The darkness in the space eased a bit at a time with each step she took. It felt like an eternity before it happened, but she took a turn with the wall and burst out into a dimly-lit hall. A door stood at the other end, and through the tiny pane of glass, she caught a glimpse of what appeared to be some kind of lab. Had they brought her here to be a guinea pig? If so, why leave her in the dark, unchained and free to roam whenever the drugs they’d given her wore off? Perhaps there was something more going on in that dark place. And just maybe she’d gotten out in the nick of time. She stopped at the door and peered in through the glass pane.
Her breath caught in her chest, and bile rose in her throat. There, on the screens mounted all over the room, was the unmistakable form of some giant creature on the infrared camera feeds. It must have been down in that place she’d come from or somewhere even deeper for whoever owned this place to use infrared cameras to keep an eye on it.
She cracked the door open and slipped inside the unoccupied room. Once inside, she simply stared at everything. The word Behemoth was written in bold red ink across a folder nearby and again in black print on the far wall. Behemoth. Was that the creature or the organization? She reached out and flipped the folder open with trembling fingers.
Pictures of twisted, torn bodies of young women spilled out across the metal table in disarray. She gasped and stepped back, her fingers going to her throat. What was this place? She turned away, stomach heaving, and took one step in the direction of the door.
Black, polished shoes reflected the fluorescent lights. Her gaze traveled up over black slacks, a white lab coat, and a neatly pressed grey shirt until it met a blue gaze as sterile as its owner’s clothing. She swallowed hard.
The man offered her a razor sharp smile. “I see Moth didn’t take you. Well, guess he’s judged you suitable for phase two, which means you’re all mine from here on out.”
A scream lodged itself in her throat.
“Oh, come now. You weren’t eaten alive. This part will be much better than that, I promise. I’m the much gentler side of Behemoth. The face it presents to the world. I won’t hurt you. Much.”
Now why didn’t she believe that? She took a shaky step back and snatched the first sharp object she saw off the table. A pen. How useful.
He eyed it with a bemused grin and slipped a syringe from his pocket. “I can see he chose well, little girl. When you wake up, it’ll all be much less frightening, I promise.”
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That was a little bit longer than the last few have been, but I hope you guys enjoyed it anyway! If you’re curious about what the prompt was or want to give it a try yourself, you can check it out on Pinterest. I post about two writing prompts a week on The Fantasy Nook Blog’s Pinterest page, so if you’re looking for inspiration, head on over and take a look. I also pin other people’s writing prompts when I find interesting ones, so there’s a little of something for everyone, I think.
