Luciferian Lullabies 2

The second part of my story... my writing seems so depressing :o

"You're very nosy."

A voice, raspy from disuse yet cultured with the faintest hint of a Spanish accent, pierced the silence along with a well timed bolt of lighting, the combination of which causing me to flinch. A large thud accompanied his sudden appearance, which I soon realized was the dropping of an iron ball. He'd lifted the massive contraption and carried it back with him, in an effort to catch me off guard. The smirk on his mostly shrouded face told me he was pleased with the results.

"You're very disgusting," I replied, in a wasted effort to conceal my horror. My voice shook despite myself.

"Am I? Or are you just faint at heart, pequena rata?" His gold eyes held a mocking glimmer as he reached threw the bars and at my face. His hands were slender and delicate, with an almost regal guise, until the lightning revealed a more sinister reddish tint. I moved to swat him away and instead he caught my wrist, his face contorting with disgust. Panicked, I threw my weight back against him and in turn he pulled me forward, my face colliding with the cell bars mere inches away from his own.

 

“I was beginning to think you had a thing for me, the way you were watching me. You seem to be a fan of my work.”

 

“F****n psycho,” I spat at him, and quickly realized I had just stoked a fire that needed no provoking. In the next instant I was being propelled back against the cell wall, the impact knocking the wind out of me. I heard the cell doors retract with an angry screech, and I hit the ground, my muscles tensing in anticipation of the struggle I knew was about to ensue.

 

Several painful seconds passed before I looked up to find my cell empty. That ominous rattle of ball and chain receded into the darkness, and I realized the cell door, whose bars were now warped and mangled, remained open.

 

“I’m not playing your pointless games! If you’re going to kill me just do it!”

 

My instincts screamed at me that this was just a game of cat and mouse. If I left what little safety my cell provided, I would be vulnerable to whatever traps or contraptions he had laid out for me. Better to die with some dignity, then to scurry around his little maze like an easily squashed rodent.

 

“The game of life is never pointless. Ven a jugar, mi rata,” he taunted, his voice echoing so that I couldn’t pinpoint which direction it was coming from. I decided to take comfort in the fact that it sounded as though he was moving away, as my mind raced with what to do next. In my panic, I barely caught sight of a silhouette, much too small to be my captor’s, passing mere feet away. It groaned what sounded like Spanish for help in a meek female voice. I quickly decided two injured women wouldn’t stand a chance in hell against him, and silently willed her not to draw attention to herself.

 

The cell was absolutely barren, save for myself and the scraps of clothing I’d managed to retain, though I recalled most inmates being stripped completely nude. I also began to remember a man; someone I had been brought in with, when the sound of bone striking metal drew my attention. To my dismay, the woman had collapsed at the bars of my cell, eyes wide with the surprise of death as blood poured from her gaping mouth. A strange realization suddenly hit me; I had seen the dead woman’s face before. In fact everyone in the country had seen the woman’s face, being that she was all over the news and her name in everyone’s mouth. They called her La Madrina, one of the most reviled and affluent drug smugglersSpain had ever seen.

 

It was then another realization hit me, along with a feeling of dread that came like a dagger in the stomach. If La Madrina truly was the emaciated woman that lay there dead, then I had somehow managed to get sentenced to El Inferno, a prison reserved for those who deserved a nice bit of torture before death. Definitely not the sort of place a person ever expects to end up, or ever leave alive.

 

Even, perhaps, worse than that, was the fact that La Madrina had been known to be just as cunning as she was brutal. As a woman, she had fought her way up the ranks through a barrage of gender discrimination, leaving in her wake an unmistakable trail of blood and destruction. Nothing now remained of the revered La Madina, but a stripped corpse whose skin seemed stretched over protruding bones and littered with odd shaped scars. A wave of repulsion and fear caught my throat and shuddered to think what events had led to her demise, when the corpse seemed to twitch in response to my thoughts. I spotted a pale hand, unmistakably slender, wrap itself in La Madrina’s dark, blood-drenched mane of curls. Her dread stricken face began to sink into the darkness, and I realized I’d just been afforded an opportunity. The stealthy viper was no doubt carrying his iron ball restraint in one hand, and with the other now occupied with La Madrina, I sparred no time in wrenching free one of the more crippled bars of the cell door, and connecting a solid blow with what I hoped was his face.

 

A wretched sound escaped the being as I repositioned to land a more bone-shattering blow, when I felt the ground suddenly leave my feet. He’d somehow managed a death grip on my throat, slowly choking the air from my already tired lungs. I dug my nails deep into his forearm desperately searching for a weapon or escape route. The only thing close enough to see in the darkness was La Madrina’s contorted corpse, her dulled emerald eyes frozen in a pleading stare. I suddenly felt a strange sensation, the pain in my neck dulled, and the being threatening my life no longer existed. I was somewhere near the equator, the humidity suddenly sticking to me along with the pungent smell of over-ripened fruit. There stood a young female, shirtless, about the age of 13. She was covered in a light layer of dust, which dulled the ringlets of her long ebony hair. Her emerald eyes stood out like gems against her darker features, she was the spitting image of La Madrina encapsulated in a young child. She was poised in a rebellious stance, her eyes burning like hot coals into my own, as a band of other little miscreants came into view behind her, a small army lounging on shabby looking rooftops and fences. In either one of her filthy, brown hands was a figurine. One was a long ivory snake and the other a poorly crafted wooden fox. She held them out to me, questioningly, the other children glaring impatiently down at us. The snake, a rich combination of smooth ivory and lovely gold accents, beckoned to me and I cautiously reached for it, when the viper suddenly twitched to life. In an instant it recoiled and lashed back at my outstretched hand, its slender white fangs piercing my skin. I yelled out in shock, the sound suddenly melding into reality and with a much louder, more masculine yell. I was suddenly back in that rank dungeon, lying mere inches from La Madrinas face. To my horror, her expression seemed to have changed from shock, to a more sinister look of gratification, her mouth twitching to form a smile, despite rigor mortis.

 

“Eres bruja muerta,” yelled my captor, sounding both enraged and horrified. It sounded as though he was stumbling somewhere in the darkness, things either being knocked down or thrown in his frustration. Pushing La Madrinas ghastly visage as far away as possible, I ran into the darkness, neither understanding nor wanting to understand what had just occurred. The dungeon erupted into a frenzy of wails and cursing, groping hands reaching out for me as I collided with inhabited cells. Somehow, after prying myself away from pleading hands and feeling my way through the complete blackness, I stumbled across a door.