The Dead Tracks

This is the Beginning

She had a mattress and two blankets for when she slept. An hour after his second visit of the day, when he would throw down the liquid for her face and the cotton wool to apply it with, the lights would go out, plunging the room into total darkness. The lights would come on again the next day, for the first visit, when he came with her food. With the lights out, all she had was silence.

Some nights, early on, she would yell at the top of her voice, trying to get someone to hear her. When a week passed, she started trying to reason with him when he came in. At ten days, she told him the mattress was uncomfortable. Finally, at two weeks, she changed tactics when he came in with her food.

'I'm going to kill you, you bastard!'

She only tried once.

After she screamed at him, he paused. Straightened. Looked down at her. A smile broke out on his face; a thin line, like a slash from a knife. As it formed, his mouth peeling open, she realized it wasn't a smile at all. It was a warning. He was telling her that, even if she never slept again, she wouldn't see him approach. He'd do what he wanted to her, come for her when he needed her.

And all she would see was a flicker in the darkness.

Sona woke. It was pitch black; the middle of the night. She rolled over on the mattress, springs popping beneath her, and pulled the blanket up to her neck. As she did, she heard something beyond the silence for the first time since she'd been taken: the gentle patter of rain. It was coming down somewhere distantly, softly, consistently. When she shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on the noise, it sounded like it was hitting a metal grate.

pffffffff

Her eyes snapped open.

The hole was bricked in dark colours all the way up, so there was no definition to her surroundings. No chinks of light. She couldn't even see her own hand in front of her face. Everything vanished in the darkness, and all that remained was sound: a very gentle rumble now, reverberating through the floor of the room above and down the walls of the hole; and the rhythmic beat of the rain.

She lay there with her eyes open. As she counted the time in her head - thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes, five minutes — the rain started to get harder. At ten minutes, she could feel herself getting tired again. Her eyes drifted closer together. She opened them and stared into the darkness for another sixty seconds. Then she closed them, too tired now to fight the onset of sleep.

pffffffff

She moved quickly, sitting up on the mattress. What was that? The sound had been closer this time. She expected to be able to see something, maybe just the smallest mark against the darkness. But there was nothing. No light. No shapes. Everything was black. She reached out in front of her, to where the sound had come from. Leaned a little way forward. Pressed her other hand against the floor for support.

And then it came to her.

She realized what the sound had been.

Static.

Torchlight erupted from the corner of the hole, blinding her briefly. She brought a hand to her eyes, automatically reacting, but a leg kicked her supporting arm out from under her and she fell forward, hitting her face against the floor. It dazed her for a moment, white dots flashing in front of her. When she rolled on to her back, he was standing above her, a foot either side of her body, a smile cutting across his face.

Behind him, propped against the wall, was a ladder.

He'd come down, into the hole, and she hadn't even heard him.

She tried to wriggle away from him, getting as far as she could, but he placed a boot on her throat and pinned her to the floor. Static from the speakers in the room above.

'This is the beginning,' he said.

Even up close, it was hard to make out his features clearly. He'd turned the torch away from himself, shining it to the left. Shadows cut across him, little pieces of the night clinging to every fold and crease in his face.

This is where you give me my life back.'

In the blink of an eye, the man took his foot off her throat and lifted her up off the floor of the hole. She went to fight him, went to kick or punch or bite, but he was too quick. He punched her in the side of the head — a fast, efficient jab, right at the corner of the eye - almost hissing at her as he moved.

And then she toppled sideways on to the mattress and blacked out.