Red Discord

Chapter 7

The medicine that Kassy was forced to take was diminishing rapidly, however, it still held a firm grip on her legs. Unable to fully control herself while she hurriedly proceeded down the stairs, to get away from whoever was coming fastly down the hallway (probably in a panic too, judging from the sloppy footwork she could hear), Kassy lost control of herself and tumbled down the long, wooden stairs onto the cement floor. The room was dark and filled with an eerie silence that captured everything in its presence like the rising fog on a dew-lit morning as Kassy laid lifeless and motionless on the cement floor. She didn’t know how long she laid there unconscious for—maybe hours, minutes, or possibly seconds—, but she wasn’t concerned with something like that, as long as those weird butlers weren’t there. All she was concerned over was the pounding sensation in her head like the feelings of rolling your head against two walls over and over again. And her vision. It was like a fast-paced merry-go-round, fast and wild enough to make your stomach hurl while it flipped and flipped again.

Somewhere in the vast darkness of the underground cellar Kassy laid in was a noise. It was the sound of metal against metal, that scratching, wailing, dragging, clanking sound. That noise caught Kassy’s attention, pulling her back into a semi-state of reality. She rubbed her head as she thought about the possible ways to reach that sound. The ground. She knew that the ground would be there, no matter how much her vision was showing the swaying ground going from side to side. It was like the mountain—immovable. It would be there; it would. With that thought in mind, she swallowed the vomit coming up in her mouth and pushed herself up onto her knees. She crawled little step by little step with her hands toward where she thought she had heard the sound come from. It was like a ship at sea, where she was the ship being moved all around by the swaying sea, where nothing stayed in the same place for more than a second, at that. Everything looked like a moving blur, one half of darkness, the other half of any color that was able to stick out. With time, like any adventure, the storm settled and the merry-go-round came to a halt. The images she could see through the darkness took shape and her vision returned, the head-pounding pain ceased to exist, as well. Time said it was done.

There was a tall pole off in the distance Kassy could make out as she rose to her feet, slowly, making sure to have good balance and vision before she continued, scared of having anymore motion sickness. It was around the middle of the room, she speculated, and if not, it was a good distance from the entrance she used. Kassy came to a complete stop as she squinted her eyes to try to make out what was the black blob around the bottom of the pole that didn’t seem to disappear as she got closer. She concentrated harder, looked harder. What her eyes showed her was a man—lo and behold, it was none other than James—his hands handcuffed together; his mouth gagged with an old, ripped towel; and chains wrapped around his body and the pole, holding him captive there with no way to move or escape. When Kassy fully made out who it was she was in fact looking at, she scrambled over to him as fast as she could. First, she pulled the towel out of his mouth and checked to make sure he was breathing (her sigh was filled with relief when she felt the warm air caress her hand), then she lifted his face and lightly slapped his cheeks to try to wake the unconscious man up.

“James,” she called over and over again, with each light slap. “James, wake up. Wake up, James.”

After a few dozen slaps, James finally batted his eyes open. His muddy, lost eyes stared kassy in the face. They looked at her in disgust as if she was some run over animal on the side of the road. His words were slow and shook with each syllable. “How do you keep moving forward in this black hole with no end in sight—this hell? How can you stand? How can you still walk?” 

Kassy lowered her head, her face darkening. “James,” she spoke softly, “I move forward only by sheer will with the knowledge that nothing good is ever going to come, chained to the past that drags me further and further back in my own torment and angst. The world isn’t happy or nice. The normal life that I had—we had—growing up, how normal was that really? Our own mother makes human dolls! You could be next. If it weren’t for me—”