They All Kneeled to Beg Me

Synopsis

The basement door's deadbolt screeched like a banshee. I huddled in a mildewed corner, losing track of the days. Seven? Ten? Darkness and silence reigned, save for the suffocating stench of rot and the rhythmic plink of water from the ceiling. A drop hit the back of my hand, ice-cold and biting. It felt like a corpse's finger brushing my skin. Pain flared in my right leg, a constant, throbbing reminder. Three months back, Michael Shaw had pitched me down the stairs, and the fracture refused to knit. The damp air turned the injury into a festering mess. I could smell the gangrene competing with the mold. I spent those months marking time by the smallest measures. I counted the drips, the scratching of rats, the erratic thud of my own heart. Occasionally, a scream ripped from my throat because the void became unbearable. It dragged me back to being ten years old, snatched and shoved into a pitch-black closet for three days—no light, no noise, just raw terror. That trauma was etched into my marrow. So, when they threw me into this cellar, I lost my mind. I clawed and gnawed at the concrete with my nails and teeth, desperate for purchase. I just needed to see the sun. My fingernails tore away, leaving my fingertips a shredded, bloody pulp, yet the physical agony never registered. I only felt the fear—the kind that threatened to swallow me whole. A man's voice cut through the darkness. "Vivian, get out here." It was Michael Shaw, my own flesh and blood.