Promises of Oblivion

Thump. Thump. Thump. That’s all that Jane can hear. The world around her is dark and silent. She can only hear her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. She tries her best to hear the world around her but there is only silence. Jane isn’t sure where she is or how she came to be where she is. The more she tries to remember what could have happened the more freaked out she gets. Before she can calm down she begins to hyperventilate then eventually passes out.

When she wakes some time later she is distressed to find that she is still alone in the darkness. “It had not been a dream, or rather a nightmare.” She thinks sadly. While she thinks this there is a tiny part of her that prays that this is still a dream of some sort. It’s a very tiny part of her and truthfully a rather silly part of her. She knows this is not a dream it never had been no matter how she wished it was.

Wherever she is she must be deep underground there can be no other reason for it to be so dark and so quiet. Knowing this doesn’t make things better but it does calm her racing heart a little. She no longer hears the thump, thump of her heart pounding in her ears. She tries to stand but feels herself get dizzy as she sits up. She waits until her head stops spinning before she attempts to move to her knees. With each movement she feels the pins and needles in her legs. She must have been laying on at least one of her arms because it seems that her left hand had fallen asleep. The painful tingling of her hand trying to wake up lasts only a moment or two but it is the silence and darkness that are getting to her. She can feel them weigh her down, dragging her down into the depths of despair.

She gives herself a good shake to try and calm herself down. After she catches her breath and the tingling stops Jane begins walking forward in hopes that she would come to a wall that she could follow and see just how big her prison actually is. It takes her longer than she had thought for her to find a wall but when she finally does she discovers that the wall is cement and cold to the touch. It’s then that the scent of damp, sour earth fills her nose, as if she were in a root cellar. She can’t help the giggle that escapes her at the thought that she couldn’t remember the last time she was in a root cellar. The smell must have just stuck in her mind from however long ago. At one time she loved the smell of the rain-soaked earth but this is different. This is the smell of mold and mildew like a grave. As she walks with her hand on the wall she tries to remember if the floor had been dirt but she’s pretty sure she felt concrete on her back while she had been laying down and on her hands and knees when she had been trying to stand.

A little further she finally comes to the corner where the walls meet then turns to follow that wall a bit. She’s surprised when the wall meets with the next after only a few moments. When she turns again realizes that the room is pretty long but not very wide, like a massive coffin. “Damn it! Why had she thought that?” She can feel the air growing tight as if the walls are closing in on her. She berates herself for comparing her current location with a coffin. It will do her no good to think such things. So she just keeps her thoughts inside and keeps walking the walls.

As she comes to the last corner she hears a click. Not the click of a lock or opening door but it sounds like the click of an open mic. She turns towards the center of her prison and tries to see through the darkness to where the sound could have come from. As she stands racing the center of the room she hears a voice that sounded both raspy and mechanical at the same time, “It’s so good of you to join us Janey. I was concerned that you would leave us before it was your time.” The voice pauses as if it expected a response from Jane but she merely stood there listening. Whoever this person was they had taken her against her will so she refused to give the pleasure of begging and crying for her life. She hears the click again which is followed by a chuckle then the person says, “Good I do love a strong willed woman. They are so much more fun to break. You will remain with us until we are finished with our work. At which point you will no longer be of any use to us. Pray that time does not come too soon. You do not want to find out what will happen to you when you are no longer of any use.” Then there is nothing but silence.

Jane stands rooted to the spot fear in full control of her body. She is pretty sure she’s never been this scared in her whole life. She does her best to not let her fear show on her face because she has a feeling that whoever is holding her here is watching her somehow. She decides to see if she can find somewhere to sit beside the cold floor. Holding her hands out in front of her and walking very slowly she searches the center of the room as best she can. She only stops when she runs into something. At that exact moment light rushes into the room blindingly bright.

When her eyes finally adjust to the sudden introduction of light Jane looks down and laying in front of her is a bed but it’s not the bed that causes her to scream. There, laying on top of the bed, surrounded by dried, crusted vomit and stains of a slow death, lays a body that looks like it has been dead for some time. Jane doesn’t want to look at the body any longer but she can’t seem to look away. All she can tell about the body laying on the bed is that it was once a young woman with long ebony colored hair. Jane’s heart breaks at the knowledge that this poor girl will not be able to grow older, have children then grandchildren. Her future was ripped from her by the monster that is now keeping her captive. She is even more scared than she had been before because she realizes that this is more than likely her future.

What Jane doesn’t know is that this is not her future. What she doesn’t know is that this girl had been his first, his most precious conquest. The future Jane faces is far from this. Her future is going to be very painful followed by nothingness. She will not be kept in a room to rot away. She will either be dumped alongside a roadway or in pieces in a landfill. Only the first and most precious of her captors conquests did not or will not face that future.

After a few days of being tortured time stopped registering for her. The click of the speaker, the raspy mechanical voice taunting her, followed by the squeak of the door hinges each and every time he comes to torture her makes thing bleed together. Her days begin with waking up. Verbal and physical torture and degradation. Until she’d finally pass out from the pain. Then she’d wake up just to start it all over again. Truthfully once death finally came for her she was more than ready and definitely relieved. She had passed out after being tortured for the umpteenth time and had not woken up again.

He had left her in her prison laying on the cold cement floor where she had died. She lay there for days until he was ready. As he looked down at his latest conquest he saw not the mangled broken body before him but the sweet agony that had been etched in her skin and the fear that had danced in her eyes. She had been more than he had hoped she would be but like the others she had not lasted near long enough. He places her on the metal table he had been picked up from a mortuary that had closed down. He lovingly strokes Jane’s battered face and limbs before getting his saw so he can cut her up in more manageable pieces.

After he dismembers her he places her pieces in a big plastic tube, takes her out of her prison and into his car. It is the middle of the night as he drives along the dark, deserted interstate. As he drives his favorite band’s CD is playing through the speakers. He loves the deep guttural sound of the death metal bouncing around the confines of his car. It settles him on some level. Smiling as he drives he looks for the perfect spots to dispose of her body. When he finds the perfect spots he flings pieces of her body out his window as he goes down the interstate.

She was never found. She was barely even missed.

After her death her ghost thankfully is not tethered to her last moments on earth or the prison where she had suffered so much but to the stretch of road where her body had been disposed of. She wakes every night to walk along the edge of the road to search for the one thing he kept, the one thing she needs the most. Her heart. However, no matter the time of the year she searches she only feels the coldness and longing of death. In the heat of summer she is a shivering shadow in your rearview mirror and in the dead of winter she shimmers among the snow flakes as they fall. He had kept her heart with the other hearts he had taken. He keeps these trophies along the walls of his special room he built off his bedroom. There in the room he lovingly places Jane’s heart among the dozens of other hearts he has taken from dozens of other innocent women. Each heart is in its own jar filled with a viscous liquid to preserve it. The hearts that have been in the liquid have taken on a somewhat greenish yellow tinge. As if they were placed in pickle juice. There she sits, with the others, the most important part of her body being held captive forever by the monster that killed her.

From the moment Jane “wakes” to search for her heart each night she can hear it calling to her. Thump. “Come get me.” Thump. “Come get me.” Thump. Thump. Thump. It calls to her and calls to her but no matter how hard she tries to find it she can’t seem to find it. She can only hear it call to her. Promising her peace. Promising her eternal rest. Promising her oblivion. Full of promises it can’t fulfill.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Forever. Every moment of every day and night.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.