Everything was dark. Darker than night, darker than the mottled dark of a forbidding crawlspace. Dark as the grave

Maria was aware of faint movement through the haze of unconsciousness. As her eyelids fluttered open she noticed the tire-muted pitch and bounce of wheels going over a gravel road. She heard the crunch of rock under tires, and the engine’s grumbles and sputters. The sound told her that the car needed a new fuel pump.

Such a benign thought cutting through the worry only increased her panic. She looked around with furtive, wide-eyed glances for any detail, any semblance of texture, but there was none, only a perfect sheen of velvety shadow.

Oh, Christ! I’m blind!

She remembered falling, and the ache in the back of her head only confirmed her worst, heart-rending fears. She couldn’t see a thing. She was blinder than a bat!

The car seemed to pick up off of the ground, thudding back onto the road moments later. She felt the floor lift with her before slamming back down to send jarring pains throughout her entire aching body. Her ribs throbbed, and she was almost certain at least one was broken. Through the pain she noticed that the jarring impact had loosened something. A faint crack of light appeared at what looked like a seam over her prone figure.

She could see! The relief flooded over her for a flitting instant, instantly dampening at the next thought that trailed through her fog-laden mind:

Where am I?

She tried to sit up only to be met by a solid pain. A shooting pain shot through her head on the impact, joining her throbbing agony and sending sparkles of light dancing throughout the pure darkness.

Once she regained her senses, she tried to spread out her arms, gingerly this time. Reaching out about six inches from her side her hands were met by the same hard barrier that had throttled her head moments before. She ran her stinging palms along the edge of her prison, feeling the hard, wooden edges, and the sharp angles where wood plank met wood plank.

She was in a box, a crate of some kind. Her touch test revealed that it seemed to be made of polished wood, smooth to the touch, like a seamless mahogany or oaken table. The crate was wider at the shoulders, narrowing steadily towards her ankles.

A coffin?

Her throat began to close off as panic gripped her. She was lying in a coffin, traveling to an unknown destination. Am I dead? she couldn’t help but wonder. A faint sob eked out of her lungs. She wanted to scream, to thrash, to rage, but a flash of memory showed her the gaunt face of the shaggy-haired driver as he stared out of her bedroom window with hunger in his eyes and menace in his heart.

What if he took me?

The car (for she was certain she was in a car) pitched again, tossing her against the unforgiving wood paneling to her right. She gritted her teeth as a faint moan escaped her lips. Her breathing grew faster, her heart racing at a maddened, frenetic pace. She tried to push up on the lid of the coffin, but the latch held fast. A faint trickle of light managed to seep into her shadowed prison, but nothing else.

How long until someone realizes I’m missing? Maria wondered.  

It couldn’t take that long for someone to notice. Sure, she didn’t call her parents as often as she should, and sure, her good-for-nothing brother only called when he needed money for bail or weed, but someone was bound to notice. Mercy! Mercy would know she was missing. Maria was certain of that, trying to ignore that her best friend’s visits had grown fewer in recent months. Fewer since the funeral. She shoved off the terrible thoughts and reminded herself that they called each other daily. It wasn’t impossible for one day to slip by, but a second? No, Mercy would realize something was wrong.

Mercy would come looking.

But would Mercy find her?

Maria bit her lip and tried to drive the demons that came with the shadows away. The horrible images of that fateful night, the tear stained nights that followed, the gnawing aching guilt that accompanied her agony. All her worst nightmares and memories came to curl up alongside her in her untimely tomb, to keep her warm in the shadow.

With gradual certainty, she began to acclimate to the pitching of the car and the constant crunching of the tires. As those sound faded from the forefront, she became aware of other noises, distinct clues to her whereabouts. She heard the faint babble of sports-talk radio ebbing from the radio in static-filled bursts. A flat toned announcer was talking about how the Colorado Avalanche might have a real shot this year. She ignored the radio and listened harder. Outside the vehicle, she could make out the plaintive cries of vultures circling above, searching for carrion left dead and discarded on the side of the road.

An image flashed in Maria’s mind: the back of the woman’s head exploding. Blood and brains painting the dull-brown of the prairie in a brilliant crimson, vultures circling overhead. Vultures landing to peck at the slick mess, pulling scraps of flesh from the hollowed out cavity of the skull.

The tears filled Maria’s eyes, breaking the dams to form a steady trickle. She held in her trembling sobs, terrified of letting the man in the driver’s seat hear her. Her captor was silent, save for an occasional sniff. A constant reminder of his looming presence.

She heard the creaking squeal of a hand crank rolling down the window, followed by the hiss of wind forcing its way through the crack. The temperature of the car – hearse, she reminded herself – dropped about twenty degrees, sending lancing icicles down her spine. She wished that she had been kidnapped in a jacket.

A hiss of a lighter being struck was followed by a crackling noise. Then the sickening smell of burning tobacco filled the enclosed space, forcing its way into her small prison. She stifled a cough and wrinkled her nose. She hated that smell, she hated it as a child, she hated it on Brian when he had come home from the bars, and she hated it now.

“Don’t give me that look,” the man grumbled.

“I know you hate the smell, but I don’t give a shit right now. I just killed two cops. For you! I think I deserve a smoke.”

There was a long pause, as if the driver were listening to some unheard response.

“No. No. No. You do not get to complain about that. There weren’t no way in hell I’m going hunting after that fiasco. Hell no, Mother-”

“Don’t you tell me to watch my language! Not now!”

Another pause.

When the man spoke next he carried a strange contrition in his voice, “Look, alright. I’m sorry. I’m just a bit rattled, that’s all… Yes, I know she’s not your choice but right now beggars can’t be choosers.”

He listened, then loosed an exasperated sigh, “Look, you try her out. If you hate it, we can always find another when the heat dies down. Okay?”

A pause.

“Okay?”

“Thank you!” he shouted, his annoyance palpable.

Christ! Maria gasped, He’s schitzo! Maria’s mother would have shaken her head and crossed her breast at such a brazenly vain taking of the Lord’s name, but something about it seemed appropriate considering the circumstances.

“I love you too, Mother,” the man said. “Now rest, we’ll be home soon.”

With those final words the cab fell silent. The cold air clutched Maria in its bony grip, sending shivers coursing through her entire being. The smell of tobacco wrought havoc on her stomach, sending it into churning cartwheels and making her sick. For a fleeting instant, she wished that the fall had killed her. She found herself wondering if what was in store for her was so heinous that death would pale in comparison.

Have the police found the cruiser yet? Did they see that my door was open?

She could hope, but she knew better than to count on it. No, by all accounts and purposes, Maria Martinez was on her own.

She had heard the man say “We’ll be home soon.”

But where was home?

#

After a few more frozen minutes the window rolled up. Maria breathed a sigh of relief despite the fact she was marinating in the overpowering stench of smoke, at least it was a warm stench. The blasting heaters in the hearse quickly brought the surrounding temperature back up, and soon she was sweating.

The bumping of gravel gave way to the smooth glide of pavement, telling Maria they had rejoined the main thoroughfares. The only question was which road were they on now? The vehicle’s wheels slid over the pavement like a skate gliding on ice. Their speed seemed to pick up and she could hear the wind whistling through the poorly insulated windows.

We have to be on the freeway, she thought, and then asked if they were traveling north to Wyoming, or south towards Denver. She hoped for the bustle of Denver, teeming with people, and brimming with possibilities of escape. The more rational side of her brain told her that they were headed for Wyoming, dead, desolate, and barren Wyoming.

Her heart sank.      

The brakes squealed, the rush of wind faltering. The steady glide grew into a jerky halt and go, and Maria knew they had hit an obstruction.

“Shit,” murmured the driver.

“Well, Mother, I’m guessing it’s an accident or something… What do you want me to do about it? Gun it along the median? Do you want to get pulled over? Do you want us caught? IS that it?”

He groaned like a spoiled child, “No. I’m not sassing you…”

An accident! Maria thought, a trembling smile forming. If I scream… maybe they’ll hear me! Maybe they’ll save me!

She had to try. She steeled herself, then loosed a blood-curdling scream. Her bellows echoed throughout her coffin, carrying crisp through the cold winter’s air.

The driver’s palm slammed down atop her wooden prison. Several loud thuds cut over her screams and she heard him hiss, “Listen here, Missy. You keep up that racket and there’ll be hell to pay.”

She paid his threat no heed. Her lungs ached from her continued howls, but she showed no signs of relenting. She expended every ounce of air in her tired lungs and then kept screaming.

The palm banged down again.

“I don’t reckon I made myself clear, girl.” The voice was strange, different. Wicked and dripping with malice, foreign. “I don’t mean I’ll shoot you. I mean I will shoot anyone who decides your screams are worth sticking their dirty noses into. You’ve seen what I did to those cops. Well, I will do worse to whomever comes next, just to teach you a lesson. Now, are you going to shut your mouth, or are you going to make me teach you a lesson?”

Maria stopped. Her lungs trembled and heaved with exhaustion. She curled into the fetal position with her knocking knees pinched hard against the wood panel. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her scant vision, welling up before breaking loose. Warm, salty trickled wound down her cheeks and pooled by her cheek, but she stayed silent, not allowing her sobs to be heard.

“Thank you,” came original voice from the driver’s seat. It sounded relieved, as if he had been saved from a terrible fate.

Eventually, the obstruction was passed and the speed picked up. The whistle of wind returned to mute the quiet babble of the radio. The hearse continued towards its unknown destination.

Towards home.

#

Brakes whined out a metallic protest as the hearse jerked to an abrupt halt. Maria’s head smacked against the top wall of the coffin, the jarring impact pulsating down her aching spine.

Shaking her head to clear the dancing stars from her eyes she listened with careful scrutiny. The radio clicked off, allowing the permeating silence of the desert air to creep into the coffin, not a crow called, nor a coyote howled. The world sat in a perfect silence that was fit for the dead.

The squealing of the driver’s door being opened cut through the air, profaning the perfect silence as a blasphemer in church.

A grumble from the driver was followed by, “Yes, Mother. I’m going to get your wheelchair, then I’ll take care of it… Yes, I will!”

Heavy footfalls shuffled around the back of the car, crunching on gravel underfoot. The back hatch of the hearse was pulled open, making the distinct imitation of nails on a chalkboard. The cold pushed and shoved its way back into her coffin, wasting no time burrowing back into her bones. Maria shivered as she heard something heavy – that had been sitting directly to her right – being drug from the hearse. The deafening screech of metal on metal howled unforgiving in her ears, followed by a low thunk as the object dropped to the gravel bellow. There was a furtive scuffling as the man assembled the wheelchair’s frame, undercut by the occasional muttered curse.

“I’m coming!” the man shouted. “Don’t get antsy, okay?”

A few more scuffles and the wheels squeaked, crying out for oil as he pushed the chair around the passenger’s side. Maria heard the side door open and the man grunt as he lifted the dead weight of the passenger. The wheelchair groaned as the weight settled on its heavy frame, and the jarring smack of the man slapping his palms together filled the air. She could almost picture the satisfied look on his cadaverous face as he rubbed his hands together the way someone does after accomplishing a feat of manual labor.

“Comfortable?” He asked, then paused for a response, a response Maria knew would not come. “Good,” the man said.

The wheels squeaking began again, moving past Maria and fading into the distance. Maria held her breath, hoping against hope that the driver had forgotten her. She prayed that he would leave her in the coffin to fend for herself. She pleaded that-

“Don’t worry, Missy. I’ll be right back for you as soon as Mother gets situated,” his voice called back. He sounded almost cheery, glib and welcoming, like a host rather than a kidnapper. To her, the cheer in his voice was almost more bone-chilling than the menace when he threatened her.

Her eyes were dry now, the tears long expended. She trembled more from her heart-rending terror than from the icy, winter’s chill that crept through her body and clung to the marrow of her bones. She heard the wind lashing the bleak desert outside, rustling the dead grasses of the plain.

Pushing upwards with aching arms, Maria managed to crack the lid of the casket over so slightly. The light was dimmer than before as dusk closed around the daylight like the steady tightening of a noose. She had been taken in the late morning, eleven-thirty or just after, sunset was at five, so that meant they had been driving for four, maybe five hours. Home was a pinprick in the distance, and in an indeterminate direction. Even if Mercy had arrived already, if she had called the cops that instant, there was no way they could find her now. Maria knew she had to be three-hundred miles from home. Lost, completely.

Her heart shattered at that realization. Resignation reared its ugly head and threatened to drag her down into the pits of eternal despair. She longed for sunlight, for freedom, she longed to break free from the casket which had begun to grow smaller by the second. She pined to feel the brittle, dead grass underfoot as she made a mad dash across the windswept plains of desert.

The heavy boots crunching their incessant return across the gravel drive took her dreams and crumpled them in a tiny, easily-discarded ball. Her captor was back, and her imprisonment continued. The sound of four smaller wheels squealed alongside his footfalls, the rolling of a gurney.

“Alright, then, Missy. Hold on tight… There might be a bit of a bump.”

She felt her casket lifted as if it weighed nothing to the large man. For a strange, fleeting moment Maria felt weightless. The moment passed with jarring certainty, as the casket was slammed down upon the metal gurney. She wanted to cry out as her bones and sinew cried out their bitter protest, but she gritted her teeth and locked her jaw. She would not give him the satisfaction.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “My grip just got away from me. Are you alright?”

Alright?! she wanted to scream. I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in a coffin. And I don’t know where in Hell I am!

Instead, she bit her tongue and maintained her silence.

The man did not seem to feel a need to press the issue for moments later she was rolling forward, pitching and dipping on the uneven gravel. The driver whistled as he pushed the gurney. It was an old, haunting lullaby that Maria could not recognize. All Maria knew was that she would never sing something so disturbingly melancholic to her child – should she ever get the chance to have a child of her own.

Questions began to flood her mind, a certain and all-encompassing tide. She wanted to cry out and beg for answers, she wanted to plead with her captor – if not for immediate release – at least for the knowledge of why she was here.

She had seen the man kill those two cops, but that did not seem to warrant being taken prisoner. Shot? Sure, but not abducted. For that matter, what was the hunt the man had spoken of? What was he hunting, and why? She wanted to scream out and plead for the answers, but she knew better. It was better to bite her tongue, it was better to remain silent, to remain silent was to remain alive. Or at least that is what she hoped.

“I am sorry we didn’t meet under better circumstances, but I’m still hoping we can find our way onto the right foot,” the driver crooned. “Y’see, Mother and me, we love guests!”

A pause before, “Do you like magic, Missy?”

He waited, but Maria offered no response. What was she supposed to say? Some terrible foreboding told her that no matter what she said he would find a way to twist it, to use it to worsen her predicament.

The gurney stopped rolling. Concern seemed to fill the man’s words, “Are you okay in there, Missy?”

She waited, holding her breath.

After what felt like an eternity, he called out again, his voice carrying a plaintive, terrified note, “Miss?”

Maria’s lungs burned but there was a glimmer of hope crystalizing in her chest. If he thought she was dead, maybe – just maybe – he would open the lid to check. Maybe – just maybe – she could surprise him, and maybe – just maybe – she could escape. She didn’t like her odds, but they were improved – marginally – over what they had been moments before.

“Shit,” the man hissed.

“I think she’s dead, Mother!” he cried.

A pause.

“You don’t want me to check?”

Another pause.

“Alrighty then, I’ll take it to the crematorium.”

The gurney started moving faster, bumping and bouncing over each irregular chunk of gravel on the pathway. Maria trembled, but kept playing her luck. She felt the scream rising up within her throat, begging to be let out. A crematorium?! she marveled, but bit down on her rising anguish. She could only hope that the driver would open the lid. She could only hope he would try to lay her body upon a cold, metal conveyor to keep the casket for later. She hoped, but another part of her howled that he was going to put her, still in the clammy casket, onto the cold steel conveyor, and she would die in fiery darkness, writhing in agony as her flesh seared from her bones.

Stick it out, she told herself. It’s your best shot. Your only shot.

So she bit back her terror and waited. She clenched her fists into tight balls and kept clenching until she felt pins-and-needles taking over her forearms. She didn’t budge for fear of rocking the casket and blowing her ruse. She determined that she would wait until the second that she heard the casket’s latch click, then she’d kick with all her might. She’d fight, she’d bite, and she’d use every dirty trick in the book until she was free. If she was lucky she’d even get a chance to throw the flat-cap wearing ass-hat into the fiery maw of his own crematorium. That’d be a gas!

The ride grew smoother as they hit the pavement. The smooth, easy ride was interrupted by the occasional bump as one concrete slab met another. There was a jarring thump as they hit a pair of double doors, and then the ride was smooth, even smoother than the pavement. She could hear the thin rubber tires beneath squealing against a waxed floor. Linoleum? Where could I be… What kind of house has a crematorium? She began to put the clues together, realizing that the only semi-rational possibility would be that she was in a morgue of some kind.

Her heart jumped out her throat and she wondered, Am I dead after all?

Her skin was crawling with ants, a million tiny itches that she daren’t scratch. She wanted to sneeze, but knew that one alleviating burst would blow her entire plan. She couldn’t help but wonder why whenever one had to remain perfectly still, that was when all the itches and sneezes reared their inevitable heads.

“I don’t know what happened!” he shouted, as if to someone in a different room.

“I know she was screaming, I was the one who told her to shut it, wasn’t I?” he yelled. “I don’t know, maybe she had an aneurism or something… It was a heck of a fall she took… Well, I don’t fucking know, Mother! I ain’t a doctor, am I…? Sorry, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have said that, I’m just… I’m worried, that’s all.”

The gurney came to an abrupt halt, the wheels skidding on the waxed floor. She heard the man sigh.

“I know, I know the clock’s ticking but I can’t bring her back from the dead... No, we can’t go back there, not now. Every cop in that town will be looking for us, and… Maybe we’ll try that small town, the one fifty miles east... No not there, that’s too close. We’ll go east, and it’ll all be okay.”

She felt his weight lean against the top of her casket. She clenched her jaw shut, holding her aching breath in tighter. When he spoke next, it was a mere whimper, “I’m trying, Mother. I really am.”

He sighed again.

“I love you too, Ma. We’ll talk about this when I get back, okay?”

One final sigh, but this time there was a palpable relief. A loosening of tension. They began to move again, the squealing wheels running over the laminate flooring. Maria listened to each and every sound, trying to memorize each blind turn they took through the corridors of the house – or mortuary, or both. She pined for a chance to glimpse out the crack in the lid, anything to give her some visual cues to maintain bearing, but she knew it was a risk she could not take. She couldn’t do anything that would clue the man into the fact she was still drawing breath.

They stopped again. The weight on the back of the gurney lifted and heavy footfalls rounded her casket, then stopped. There was a faint click of a button being pressed, followed by the rumbling and squawking pulleys of an elevator. The weight returned to the back of the gurney and waited.

There was no question any longer. They were in a morgue or mortuary of some kind. No house would have an elevator, no house would have a gurney, or a crematorium. No, she had been kidnapped by some deranged undertaker who spoke to ghosts. That had to be it.

Just my luck, she thought and felt the tears creeping back. She refused her tears, biting down on her tongue until she tasted the iron tinge of blood in her mouth.

With a distinctive bing the doors slid open. The man pushed the casket into the enclosed space and pressed a second button. Instants later another bing pieced the air and the doors slid back into place. Maria heard a heavy hand slap down atop the casket and resisted an overwhelming urge to flinch away.

“Sad day, Missy,” he said, and the tremble in his voice told her that he meant it. “I weren’t planning on hurting you. It is really too bad…”

His rough hand rubbed along the top of the wood, sensuously, “You were a pretty little thing too. It’s a damn, crying shame…”

He grunted under his breath and she heard a rustling. She wondered what the man was doing, but then thought that it was perhaps better she did not know. He murmured something that she couldn’t quite make out, but she could have sworn he said: she would have looked good inside of you.

A sigh was followed by, “Well, one look won’t hurt none. What Mother don’t know won’t hurt her. Our secret, alright?” A dark chuckle pierced the air, a bone-chilling sound that sent lances of revulsion down Maria’s already trembling body.

The calloused hand slid across the roof of the coffin, like a love stripping away linen sheets, then stopped. Maria listened close, hearing the metallic grind of the latch being pulled aside.

She tensed, waiting. She wanted to drive her knees up into the lid and let it fly, but she knew better. What if there was a second latch? What if she had waited so long – holding her breath until her lungs screamed in fiery agony – all to waste it by blowing her load too soon?

No. Patience. After all, what is ten seconds more?

She waited until she saw fingers slip through the crack in the wood. A blinding gust of white light seeped into her prison.

She kicked, shoving out both legs with all her might, loosing a warrior’s scream as she did.

The lid flew up, catching the unsuspecting driver under the chin. His skin split and blood gushed down his neck. His head snapped back, sending his ragged flat-cap spiraling off his shaggy head. He staggered backwards, towards the elevators closed doors.

A bing split the air and the doors slid open. The large man tumbled through, landing hard.

Maria heard the back of his skull crack against the hard, marbled linoleum of the basement floor, blood spattering.

She leapt from the casket knocking over the gurney. It hit the ground with a metallic clattering as the frame collapsed. She hit the solid, laminate floor hard feeling the impact shake through her body. She blinked rapidly, trying to adjust her throbbing eyes to the newfound glow. Her surroundings seemed cast in a white haze, searing pain shooting through her retinas.

Maria looked over at the driver, his eyes glazed and a look of shock covering his lined face. She wished he was dead, but she’d have to settle for stunned.

The ache in her bones had grown into a maelstrom but she forced it from her mind. She scrabbled forward on hands and knees, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and-

A claw-like hand wrapped around her ankle, yanking her backwards.

With a yelp she skidded across the waxed floor, rolling over to look the wild-eyed kidnapper in the face. His gray eyes were bloodshot and his lips pulled back in a smiling grimace.

“Ain’t you a smart one, Missy?” he asked through clenched teeth. 

She responded with a boot rather than words. Blood spattered as his nose shattered.

A second, equally merciless kick split open his cheek.

It took three more vicious assaults before his hand went slack. She tore her boot from his grip and scrambled to her feet.

The elevator was her only guaranteed way back to the surface, but there was her kidnapper, lying stunned – but for how long? Too risky, she decided and bolted down the hallway.

She was running blind with no idea if she was headed towards freedom, or towards a fiery dead-end. Still, it was better than being trapped in that god-awful casket.

Long florescent bulbs flickered overhead, casting the wood-paneled hallway in dancing shadows. The paneling had fallen into disrepair, cracked with the relentless march of age and disuse. The furnishings – a few scattered chairs and end tables – along with the paneling screamed ‘nineteen-seventies’ and it looked like they hadn’t been used since then either.

There were doors inset into the walls, with tall and narrow windows to give Maria glimpses into the derelict offices and cobwebbed cleaning closets. Each door was labeled, but the letters were falling off. The labels she could make out each politely informed her that the contents of the doors were useless to her.

Her rubbery legs carried her down the hallway at an erratic mad dash. She felt weak, unsure if the fall or the hours in a cramped coffin had left her so lightheaded. She steeled herself against the pain in her legs and the steady cry in her back, forcing herself onward.

She hoped that her assailant was out cold. Or dead – dead would be preferable – but she knew better than to gamble. She had to move, and second he could awaken with the Devil’s fury.

As if on cue, she heard the pained shriek behind her. “She fucked my face! Mother! She fucked my face up real bad!”

Maria didn’t dare turn to look. She kept up her pace, tearing down the flickering hallway on wavering legs. A sign on the wall pictured a stick figure trying to outrace flames up a steep stairwell, her heart leapt at the sight.

She threw open the doorway, bolting into a concrete silo, reaching upwards. In one corner sat a heavy, steel door that reminded her of the entrance to a meat locker. More importantly, in the center of the room sat a rickety, metal structure that spiraled upwards, more akin to a scaffold than a stairwell.

Beggars can’t be choosers, she told herself, knowing that a beggar she most certainly was.

She started up the creaking structure, she wanted to take it slow but forced any hesitation from her mind. The spiraling metal seemed to sway underfoot, as if shaken by a strong breeze, and Maria felt her heart drop with each shuddering, rocking spasm.

The twisting metal seemed to rise about three floors from the basement morgue to the building above. Maria had made it halfway up when she heard the door to the silo smack against the concrete wall.

“Missy! Get back here!” screamed the driver.

“Fuck you,” Maria responded and stepped on the gas.

The man’s heavy boots clanged against the metal stairs in hot pursuit. She could hear his seething breath on the back of her neck, she could feel the fiery rage in his eyes boring down upon her neck. Her heart trembled in her breast as her legs relentlessly attacked the stairs.

She reached the top, pulling open a metal fire door and barreling through.

She slammed it shut behind her. She fumbled for any form of a lock, but the door was barren save its handle. She swore and slammed a fist into the door. Pain jolted up her arm, but she was no closer to finding a means of escape.

Her panicked eyes darted about the immediate vicinity looking for any tool she could use. Anything to block the driver’s egress, even for a moment.

She settled on a fire extinguisher, letting out a whoop of relief as she tore it from the baby-vomit green wall.

Maria had only just managed to shove the extinguisher through the large loop of the door’s handle, bracing it against the doorframe when the door buckled against the man. It buckled, but held.

The face of her kidnapper appeared in the wire-mesh of the door’s narrow window, his eyes ablaze. “Now you’re just pissing me off!”

Maria sneered then turned and took off down the long hallway. She wasn’t sure how long her makeshift barricade would hold, and she wasn’t keen to test it.

The upper half of the hallway’s walls were painted the same horrid shade of green, white wood paneling traveling to waist level. The flickering fluorescents of the basement were gone, replaced by chandeliers and lamps with warm, orange bulbs. Despite the worn, decaying surfaces and the grimy, smudged window it felt homier upstairs. The state of general disrepair continued onto the furnishings – a great many were mercilessly cracked and splintered – and the flooring which had been gnawed away by an unseen rat infestation.

The most frustrating thing about the hallways she found was the strange, maze-like quality. It seemed no matter which way she turned, or which corner she darted past, she always found herself weaving closer to the center of the house, rather than the exit. It seemed like the walls were moving, a breathing creature intent on keeping her prisoner. Conscious. Malignant. Her terror and frustration welled hand-in-hand, intercut by the regular slamming of the driver’s shoulder against the door.

She had to get out, and soon!

Turning a corner she entered a cluttered kitchen. The stench of rotting food filled the air. The stovetop was stained, the cabinets splitting, and the overloud refrigerator was speckled with mold. However it wasn’t the unsanitary conditions that drew her eye and held it in a vice-grip. No, what sat at the stained and splintered table in the center of the room grasped her and refused to relent.

An emaciated figure sat in an old wheelchair – the kind she had seen in movies from the fifties, set in an asylum. The figure wore a threadbare, floral dress with gray, thinning hair tied back in a severe bun, thin lips drawn in a grimace. Her skin was leathery and sagging, her fingers scarce more than talon-like bones.

Maria gasped, drawing back with sheer horror at the woman’s eyes, or – to be more accurate – the complete lack thereof.

The woman was no woman at all. She was a corpse. A mummified husk that had once contained a human soul. The thing’s teeth were long and decaying, stuck in an ever-present grimacing smile of death. The hollow sockets of the skull bore into Maria’s soul, and the sinking nose seemed to be pointed at Maria’s trembling breast.

Maria howled and staggered backwards, grasping for anything to steady herself against. The sounds of the house seemed to melt into nothingness. She could not hear the buzzing of flies as they darted off the decaying food in the heaping trash-bins. She could not hear the flickering bulb one room over, protesting with electric pops and sizzles.

More importantly, she could not hear the crash as the driver’s boot finally splintered the door to the stairs.

Maria screamed and shrunk against the doorframe. Tears streamed down her pallid cheeks. She wanted to look away, she wanted to retch, but she could not tear her eyes from the horrid relic sitting in an antique wheelchair.

Rough hands grasped her hair, and her head snapped. She drove sideways, feeling the splintering doorframe dig into her scalp and stars flash before her eyes.

She dropped to the ground, stunned. The world swam before her like a kaleidoscope, with dancing colors and strange, moving shapes.

“Ah, I see you’ve met Mother,” an all-too-familiar voice said behind her.

She felt the calloused hands grip her hair and tug. Her scalp was on fire, but she could not move as she was lifted from the floor and drug across the rough, splinter-filled wood.

Without ceremony, she was dropped into a chair, her body slammed down like a ragdoll. Her head lulled idly and her blurred vision meandered around the room. Her assailant stomped to a drawer in the dilapidated kitchen and rummaged about for something.

Half of her hoped it wasn’t a knife. Half of her hoped it was.

Blood trickled down her forehead, a warming ooze caressing her scalp. The cut itched but she could not find the strength to scratch it. She could not remember how to use her limbs, even as the steady drip flowed past her eyes to dye the world in an ethereal crimson.

She managed to turn her head a fraction of a rotation, coming face-to-face with the horrible visage of the wheelchair-bound corpse. She stared into the voids of Mother’s hollow eyes and felt sick, disgusted, disturbed. She wanted to move, she wanted to cry out, but every time she budged the world began to swim again.

“You have been a very, very naughty girl,” a cracking, aged voice chuckled. It was distinctly feminine and seemed to be emanating from the corpse. But that was impossible…

“Why did you do that to my Dennis?”

Maria stared with bug-eyed terror. Her mouth hung agape but the only sounds she could muster was a dry, chaffing moan.

The blood began to rush back to her limps and her vision began to clear. The large man – Dennis – turned, looking at Maria with deceptively kind eyes that stared out from his bloodied and mangled face.

“I’m sorry about this, Missy.”

In his hands were long, black zip-ties. Maria flinched, her heart turning to ice. She tried to rise and even managed a few feeble inches before collapsing back into her chair, world swimming. She struggled with her slow recovery, but it proved to be no contest. Rough hands gripped her wrists, binding them behind the back of the rickety, wooden chair.

“They ain’t too tight, are they?” he asked.

She nodded, unsure of what else to say. Or do.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “It’ll have to do for now.”

Dennis stood and stretched. He cracked a pain smile, pressing a ginger hand against the back of his head. “Y’got me pretty good, Missy.”

She did not speak, but inside she chuckled, Good.

Withdrawing his palm, he stared at the dried blood, crimson stains spreading across his white flesh. “Looks like the flow’s stopped, so that’s good. Let’s have a look at you.”

He knelt before her and reached for her chin. Maria flinched, shying away. He reached out insistently, eyes glimmering pools, entreating her to trust him. Yeah right.

His large, gentle fingers grasped her chin and turned her head towards him. His eyes probed at the deep cut on her scalp. “Yep, that’ll need stitches. Will you sit still for me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He laughed, it was gruff but not unpleasant. “You always got a choice, ma’am. But I’d suggest sitting tight. I’ll be back with the kit.”

The large man stood, towering over her bound figure. His shoulders were broad, and despite his bony, sinewy body he looked strong. Maria had the distinct feeling that he could snap her in two should the need arise. Already she was regretting trying to fight the behemoth in a man’s body, and dreading the fact she would have to try again.

A wicked cackle filled the room, sadistic, cruel, devilish. Maria looked around with wide-eyed horror, searching for the source.

As if drawn by a magnet, her eyes settled on the mummified corpse in the wheelchair.

“You can hear her?” Dennis gasped, confusion seeping from his voice.

“I… I don’t know what… I heard something,” Maria stammered, nearly mute.

“Get on with it boy,” the woman’s voice hissed, but the corpse’s lips hung open, unmoving.

Dennis stammered out an unintelligible affirmation and fled the room, casting a final, confused look at Maria. Once he was gone, the voice spoke again:

“He’s a good boy. Dumb as a bag of bricks, but a good boy. His heart, it’s too big…”

Maria’s vision began to steady again, the wave-like pulsations in her sight returning to the expected steadiness that she had grown accustomed to.

“… Me?” the voice continued. “I’d have snapped your spine if you tired that little stunt. I still might do just that, do you understand me?”

Maria did not respond. She could not find the words to respond if she wanted to, she had been reduced to only the basest understanding of the English language. She stared with wide-eye befuddlement, wonder, and gnawing terror. Her razor-thin grip on reality dimmed, and she wondered if she had finally gone mad.

“I said do you understand me? Nod if you do,” Mother asked with intense scrutiny, but the power behind the voice was fading, as if her batteries were failing.

Maria nodded, wondering if this was her making the conscious choice to release sanity.

“Good,” Mother said, the last syllable trailing off as her voice returned to the void.

Maria stared at the rotting corpse, slack-jawed. She tore her eyes from the body, the body that had just spoken to her, and turned her attention to the rotting kitchen. She eyed the dips and dents of the pockmarked countertops, tracing each weave in its irregular surface. She followed cracks in the worn-out cabinetry to find their source. She looked without purpose beyond keeping her darting gaze away from the mummified woman sitting beside her, boring into her with those hollow eyes.

Maria found herself wondering if the corpse would suddenly straighten. She wondered if the decaying hands would shoot out to grasp her own pale wrists. She wondered if the sagging, tooth-rotted jaw would start moving and uttering words as if possessed by some wretched presence. She cast a quick, sideways glance at the – thankfully – unmoving corpse and began to sob, tears following paths left from countless descents into despair since witnessing the mid-morning murders outside her house.

Dennis returned, a first aid kit clenched in gargantuan hands. With one look at Maria his face twisted with concern. “Shit, she didn’t scare you. Did she?”

“Who…?” Maria managed to stammer.

Dennis knelt down again and Maria resisted the urge to kick him over and take a second stab at a fight. With her hands bound she couldn’t stand a chance.

The large man opened the box and fished out Q-Tips and antiseptic. He swirled the cotton swabbed end in the ointment. As he worked, he spoke, “Mother… She can be scary sometimes, but she don’t mean to do you no harm, not so long as you’re good. She can even be real nice when you get to know her.”

“I’m sure,” Maria said, dripping venom.

“No, she’s just protective… of me. She’s pissed…” he glanced at the corpse, guilty. After a moment he turned back to Maria, “She’s pissed that you kicked me. I know those ain’t words I should be using around ladies, but it’s what I’ve got.

He pressed the antiseptic-soaked end of the Q-Tip against her cut. Maria felt the sharp sting race through her scalp, crawling under her skin. A wince scrunched her face and she drew a sharp breath between clenched teeth.

“Sorry, I know it hurts like a…” another glance at the corpse. “Well, I know it hurts real bad.” He pressed the Q-Tip a little firmer against her wound. He blinked quickly, his eyes rimmed with tears. Maria wasn’t sure what had moved him in such a way, but she knew better than to question crazy.

Nodding, Dennis returned the antiseptic to the first aid kit and dropped the used-up Q-Tip on the floor. He flinched away, as if listening to an unheard scream. “I know, Mother. I’ll clean it up when I’m...”

He shied away, as if from an unseen blow. “No! I didn’t mean no disrespect.”

He grabbed the Q-Tip with trembling hot-dog fingers and stood. He shuffled to the overflowing trash can, head hung like a whipped dog. “Yes, Mother. It won’t happen again.”

When he returned he looked guilty, “Sorry, Missy. It’s just that Mother is a real stickler for cleaning up after yourself.”

Maria felt a sneer welling up within her as she looked around the ramshackle, decaying room. Seems like she is, Maria thought but kept the words burrowed inside. Not now.

Dennis retrieved a thin needle and a spool of surgical wire. Maria could not help but wonder how many times he had done this before? She watched as he threaded the needle like an old nurse, a veteran of the Emergency Room.

“Why?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Failing.

“Not now, right now I need you quiet,” he said, offering her a crooked, almost sweet smile.

The sharp pinch of a needle piercing her forehead was the final punctuation to their conversation. The pinch returned at steady intervals, intercut by the unpleasant tingle of thread being pulled through the miniscule hole left in her flesh. Her eye twitched faintly with discomfort, but she didn’t dare budge.

As he worked, the large man whistled. It was a soft chanting version of the song he had hummed as he took her to the crematorium. The tune was a far cry from the chipper tunes she remembered singing on the playgrounds at a younger, innocent age. It was far from the songs that she’d sing while skipping rope, her pigtails bouncing, without a care in the world. This tune was a funeral dirge in the trappings of a child’s rhyme. The song of bloody work done by bloody man while wearing clown noses and smiles.

A strange hissing undercut the man’s whistling, like the ethereal voice of the mummified corpse was trying to join in the chorus. Like the shriveled remnants of a woman’s body were singing along with ragged, gasping breaths.

Maria felt the zip-ties chaffing at her wrists. Her leg was falling asleep but she still held motionless. Dennis’s hands seemed steady but he was no trained surgeon. She hoped that he was almost done, but then what? What could he – they – have in store for her?

“Done,” he said in a hushed, quelled voice. He took a knife and cut the thread, knotting it with deft hands. He looked at Maria, locking eyes with her, his smile trembling. “Good as new.”

“Thanks,” she said but through, Why the fuck are you thanking him?

He smiled a shy, childlike smile and skittered from the room with the first aid kit clutched in his hands. He seemed like a child in a strange way – despite looking to be a man nearing fifty – he seemed no older than twelve in many respects.

Maria found herself wondering if he was handicapped, and being used by the sniggering hag in a wheelchair. The corpse! The corpse in the wheelchair, she reminded herself.

“He’s a good boy,” said the old woman’s voice. No louder than a whisper.

Maria clenched her eyes shut, shaking her head. There was no way the corpse was speaking. She knew that her mind was playing tricks on her. It simply was not possible.

“Oh, I’m real, little lady. In some ways I’d dare say realer than you.”

“I’m not listening,” Maria said. She squinched her eyes shut harder than she ever had before, trying to tune out the impossible voice that hissed throughout the empty room. Empty save Maria and the corpse.

“Oh, but you will listen, girl. You’ll beg me to listen soon enough. Right now all you need to heed is this: You stay away from my boy. He does not need a hussy like you gumming up his thoughts; he does not need anybody slowing him down, not my boy. Not my son. You hear me?”

“I’m not listen-”

Maria felt something swipe across her face. It felt like the backhanded strike of an abusive boyfriend, leaving a sweltering mark on her cheek.

Her eyes shot open but nothing stood before her. The room was barren save the rotting garbage and remnants of meals past. Save the corpse idling in the wheelchair, filling the room with an overpowering stench of decay.

But what had hit her?

“Quit your whining, you ungrateful whore,” hissed the voice. “Or there’ll be worse next time. Nod if you understand.”

Maria sat still, trembling.

The strike came again, harder this time. Maria’s cheek throbbed and her head snapped to the side, wrenching her neck.

“Nod,” hissed the voice.

Maria nodded, trying to hold back her tears. It was impossible. It was… real?

“Good,” the voice said. It sounded hoarse, weak. “It’ll go better for you if…”

The voice vanished, once there and then mid-sentence fizzling out, like an old television set taking longer to click off, but still without power. Dead. Gone. Silent.

Dennis returned, refusing to meet Maria’s gaze. He seemed a timid child, beaten and afraid to meet her gaze for fear of reprisals. Ignoring Maria, Dennis began rifling through cupboards. Mouse droppings plummeted from the cracking shelves, collecting on the unswept floor.

“It’s dinnertime, Missy.”

He didn’t look at her as he worked, keeping his attention on the task at hand. “Mother likes stew. She says it keeps us strong, but me, I like Mac and Cheese. Of course, Mother don’t let me eat it too often, she says it’ll rot my teeth.”

He paused, a look of hope spreading across Dennis’s face, “Do you like Mac and Cheese, Missy?”

Maria allowed a smile and nodded.

Dennis’s face lit up, excitement seeming to well up inside him. He grew three inches taller as his spine straightened and he looked to the corpse with hope brimming. “Can we, Mother? Can we? Ain’t every day we have guests?”

He paused, listening for the voice. He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Maria strained her ears for the voice, but the cracking woman’s words had vanished.

Dennis’s face twisted in confusion and he wheeled on Maria. “What did you do?!”

Maria shook her head, baffled.

He stormed forward, towering over her with twisted lips and mad eyes. “You can hear her too, right? You heard her! So where’d she go? What did you do to Mother?”

Maria wanted to shove her chair backwards, to scoot across the ragged wood flooring, away from the towering, terrifying man. His face had morphed into a rage-filled mask, his terror seeping through and mixing with unbridled anger.

His fists balled tight as he advanced on her.

She began to push backwards, realizing the futility but needing to do something. Anything. She pushed with all her might, sliding back inch by inch, as he advanced foot by foot.

The leg caught on a piece of pried up floorboard. Her retreat halted. She tried to push over it, shoving back with all her might.

The world tilted.

She fell backward. The world jolted and her arm popped. Scalding gouts of pain shot up her bone, tears rimming her eyes. She screamed, howling over Dennis’s terrified cries.

“Did you hurt her? Did you do something to the tether?”

Tether? What the hell is he talking about?

“Missy, I swear to Christ…”

It was then he paused. Slowly his rage melted, his face softened. Then he said, “Oh, where did you go?”

 Maria lay on the crooked floor, still bound to the chair. The plastic ties had dug into her wrists and she could feel small trickles of blood seeping out of her cracked, raw skin. Her arm throbbed with dull intensity, and she could only hope it hadn’t shattered.

Dennis seemed to listen, nodding. A smile spread across his emaciated face and he turned to the stove, setting about making dinner. Maria lay on the floor, completely forgotten.

“Mother fell asleep,” he laughed. “She gets tired sometimes.”

Maria shivered at his nonchalance. Somehow it was more unnerving than the speaking corpse. How could this man act like this was just another day in the life? How could he pretend like nothing strange was happening?

Was this his normal?

He went back to whistling as he crossed the crumbling kitchen to retrieve a rusted pot, “I’m sorry for yelling at you, Missy. I just thought you went and did something to her. Understand?”

Maria set her jaw, remaining silent. She watched a mouse scurry alongside the floorboards, dodging between the man’s large feet to disappear through a hole in the floorboards. She envied the mouse its freedom and its little escape hole. She wished she could be so lucky.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be pissed at me,” he said, almost hurt, almost saddened. “Don’t be pissed at me, I didn’t mean to hurt…”

He turned, trailing off. His eyes turned apologetic, realization dawning. “Aw, hell, I’m sorry!”

He raced across the room and lifted her chair one-handed. She again felt weightless as the world tilted the right direction. The ache in her arm screamed at her, but at least she wasn’t lying on it any longer.

Dennis gave her a quick, affirmatory nod and returned to his work. The pot was hot, simmering, and Dennis stirred and hummed that awful song all the while. He turned to the fridge and retrieved the meat for the stew. Something about the chunks looked odd. Far from the processed meats of a deli or supermarket, this meat looked fresh, new, butchered. Human? Maria wondered, feeling her stomach do somersaults at the wretched – far-fetched – thought.

Soon the large, water-streaked pot was bubbling contentedly on the stovetop, edged on by the occasional stir of Dennis’s wooden spoon. Mother watched the scene through the hollows in her skull, an unfeeling death-glare that remained motionless yet seemed to follow every twitch of movement in the dilapidated room.

Despite Maria’s early conspiracies as to the origin of the meat, the smell was intoxicating. Maria’s stomach rumbled with discontent. It ached for a taste – potential cannibalism be damned! She hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before. A pang of remorse washed through her, wishing she had eaten breakfast. Without thinking, her tongue snaked from her mouth to wet her lips, saliva swirling with anticipation in her mouth.

What if they drug you? Poison you?

The terrible thought stopped Maria’s heart cold, trembling within her racing mind. Still, it seemed a losing battle between her rational thoughts and her ravenous stomach. She shifted in her seat and tried to tear her gaze from the pot, to remove herself from temptation. It was not working.

A quick snap sounded throughout the room. Maria leapt, her mind flashing back to the horrific pop of Dennis’s muted pistol. The sight of the cops dropping on the desert sand, staining the tiny granules crimson. She fixated on the quick, definitive pop that had ended the two people’s lives. Try as she might, she could not tear the heinous images from her, they were seared in place, permanently branded into her mind’s eye.  

Her eyes shot towards the source of the snap.

In a far corner of the room was an upturned mousetrap. Inside, the twitching, frail body of the small creature spasmed. Its flank heaved with each belabored breath, its legs still ran without thought or purpose, the final instinctual twitches preceding the void.

A pop followed by death. Cop. Mouse. Gun. Trap.

Blood.

Maria let out a shaking sigh, pulling her eyes from the dying animal. Dennis did not turn to look. He did not need to.

“Damn mice,” he grumbled. “They’ve been giving Mother and me a heck of a time. I’m thinking they’ve been getting in through the basement, but I ain’t sure.”

“Leeches, that’s what they are,” said the whispering, ethereal voice. .

“Mother hates them mice, but I don’t know… I think they’re just trying to survive the only way they know how. Ain’t so different than you or me. I kind of feel bad for them, you know? It ain’t like they asked to be here. Not like us.”

I did not ask to be here, Maria sighed inwardly.

The large man covered the stew and folded his arms. “It’ll be a little bit before the stew’s done. I think we best get you to your room.”

“My… My room?”

“Of course!” he laughed, as if she had said the dumbest thing he had ever heard. “Mother and me, we’ve been expecting you! Can you walk?”

Maria did not want to walk but she knew better than to lie. She nodded.

“Good. Now, you ain’t going to take offense if I ask you to lead the way, are you?”

“No.” Maria stood from the chair, fixing cold eyes on her captor.

“Good, that’s good.” He smiled. “I’ll be back soon Mother.”

He shot a jaunty wave at the corpse, smiling a big, toothy grin. His large hand prodded Maria between the shoulder blades, and they walked from the room. 

Next Chapter: Part Two: The Empress