7 Days to Another Life

Day 1

Dark Passenger. 

~~~ Dear sanity, I miss you so, come back to me.. ~~~ 

The shadow wasn't a shadow anymore, not a silhouette but a person with definition and details. A person who was standing almost directly under the yellow light bulb, allowing it to illuminate the top parts of his pale face and cast shadows over the rest. His cheeks looked hollow, his eyes dangerous in their darkened sockets. Broad shoulders wearing a black and white stripped sweater, black hair with shaved sides, and a thick neck that lead to a slanted jawline. His hair was greasy, pushed back from his face and off his short forehead, and he was tall. 

Nick's gaze trailed down the person's sleeved arm, landing on the red-hilted pocket knife held open and gleaming in the guy's hand. He swallowed hard, anxiously looking up to meet the guy's eyes. 

"Do you want freedom?" the guy asked, taking Nick by surprise. He seemed calm, and his voice was so... normal. So casual. He looked so intimidating, yet held himself so relaxed with those loose shoulders that still held a sort of posture. 

"Uh, I- um," Nick stuttered, looking around the room as a distraction. The guy frowned in confusion at Nick, and Nick could feel his eyes on him, but he couldn't answer. 

He had to kill this guy if he wanted to get out? 

There's no way... 

Nick backed away but stumbled into the door and thus tripped over his own feet, catching himself on the wall. The guy just stared at him, but not in a creepy way. More like he was wondering that the fuck was wrong with Nick. And honestly, Nick would like to know the answer himself. 

His face heated up in embarrassment and he regained himself, eyeing the blade in the guy's hand wearily. The guy seemed to get the message and he held up the knife carelessly. 

"I wasn't gonna stab you, you can relax you know," he said, but Nick knew better than that. He was probably lying. His father used to to that. He would tell Nick he wouldn't hit him again, but the harshest hits always came after he said that. No, Nick knew better than that. This was a trick. 

When the guy noticed Nick wasn't budging, he sighed and dropped the knife back onto the floor. 

"I didn't mean to scare you," he tossed out, moving back to where he had been sitting before and sinking down the brick wall. He chose to sit on the floor instead of the bed, Nick noted. There were two beds in here, more like cots actually, and a blanket rested on each of them. They were pushed up into the opposite corners of the room on the wall with the door, as if to show off the entrance like it was a piece of art in a museum. There was no other furniture in the stuffy room and no windows either. Nick didn't find a bathroom, but he did find a bucket with a lid over it in the back right corner. 

The newcomer continued to stand there uncomfortably, keeping an eye on the guy until eventually the guy looked up at Nick, resting his head against the bricks behind his back. He opened his mouth to give air to words Nick never would've seen coming. 

"Stab me." 

Nick was once again taken aback, meeting the guy's look and wondering if he had heard him correctly. 

"What?" he asked, bewildered. 

"Stab me," the guy repeated, still so unnaturally calm and casual about this whole thing. He looked Nick dead in the eye, the certainty evident like you could physically see it in those little glass orbs. 

"What the fuck? Dude no," Nick replied, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. 

"I know you want to. I don't mind," he adds. 

Nick shakes his head. "No," he repeats. The guy sighs. 

"Why are you so okay with dying?" 

The guy shrugs, giving a half smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I've got no one left to care about me, other than Ricky," he says, waving a hand to gesture loosely at an empty space by the door next to Nick. Nick frowns. 

"Ricky?" he questions, seeing no one else in the room. The stranger simply nods, unsettling Nick further. 

"You're Nick, right?" the guy asks, to which Nick nods hesitantly. "I'm Chris," the man introduces. 

"Yeah," Nick says quietly and lets the conversation drop. Chris. Fuck. 

*** 

Nick lays on his cot that night, exhausted from being kidnapped yet too on edge to sleep. He stares blankly at the ceiling, letting his mind drift off every once in a while. He can't shake the feeling that he's being watched. 

It's just your senses, calm down, he thinks to himself, shuffling around so he was now on his side. Just paranoid. But when Nick looks across the room, he's not so sure anymore. 

His eyes are met with those of Chris, his pale face like a sheet of paper in a dark room-- only with dead yet somehow glittering eyes and thin, pale lips. Watching. 

Nick shifts uncomfortably, unable to take his eyes off Chris not being able to take his eyes off him. Chris doesn't bother to look away, he just stares. 

Why? 

Nick is silent but the uneasy feeling in his gut doesn't go away and Chris doesn't look away. He doesn't even blink. Finally Nick succumbs to the feeling and is unable to continue in silence. 

"Why are you staring at me?" 

"Shh," Chris hushes, a smile playing ever so dearly on his pale lips. "It's quiet time now." 

Shh, it's quiet time now. 

Shhhh, it's quiet time now.. 

But the voices had found a phrase to hold on to now, it was over for Nick. An eruption of whispers like an eerie chorus of demented and wronged people, the dead, those who hang from trees. 

And the voices weren't going to stop. 

Shh, it's-- quiet (quiet, quiet, quiet) quiet time-- shh, it's- it's--

Shh, it's quiet time now. 

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