MY DEVIL IN RED

Chapter one.

Mary Williams

    I blinked my eyes over and over again trying to keep them open. My sight were blurry, the voices I heard seemed distance, it seemed like they talked and laughed in hushed tones. I tried to move my head but it hurts to bad. I tried to move my body but the pain was overwhelming. My hands, my thigh, my neck, my whole body was aching badly.

I knew I wasn't home.

I wasn't at the Hugglesworth brothers party.

Neither was I asleep on my soft comfy bed.

"Mary you're not going to that party..." I could still hear mom yelling at me- decked up behind all those gospel books she is used to reading. I standing next to the door whining at the fact I'm never allowed to attend parties like normal teens do. I stamped my feet, I cried, I screamed but mom still didn't change her mind. She stared up at me, rage clear and obvious in her dark brown eyes. Then she sternly shouted at me ordering me to bed. "Mary go to bed, you're not attending that party."

Then I had ran up the stairs to my room, tears gushing from my eyes.

I didn't understand why.

I should have listened to her and stayed at home.

I felt the tears running down my face leaving warm trails of salty liquid down my cheeks. My still body ached tremendously. My every joint set on fire even though I wasn't moving. I couldn't even move, so I layed on the cold floor where I'd being placed, letting the pain eat me up, taking total control.

I felt weak, drained out of energy that even my eyes were blurry. I couldn't see clearly. Shadows of people walking over my pounding head. In that moment, the pain was unbearable. I had never felt so useless as a human in my entire life when you wanted to move, you could hear the movements in the surroundings and being restricted. For a few more minutes every part of my body refused to work appropriately, then slowly my senses began to return back to me. Blinking over and over again to clear my sight, I tried taking a glance of my surrounding.

Surely, I wasn't home. That particular place was a complete contrast to the compact building I and my mother lived ever since I was a child. The wallpaper is what first caught my attention. An Anglo-Japanese design with Roman and Greek themes in the frieze was on the ceilings and walls. The predominant colors were dark with tan and gold highlights. The room looked big, enough that the ceiling was very high up and the door I could spot opposite where I layed was tall enough it could accommodate a family of giraffe.

From my left, I could hear the sound of fire crackling. I turned my head slowly in the direction of the fire place, gulping down my throbbing, hoarse throat. Someone was sitting next to it, probably warming up. Red and yellow ribbons of scalding heat intertwined while sparks jumped and danced. The orange, blue, yellow, tiny ghosts danced across a log, and tiny snaps of their feet sounded against the wood. I blinked my eyes over again now knowing the figure to be a man crouching by the fireplace as a man. His cream jacket and the his silhouette the only thing I could make out.

He was one of them. One of the men who had kidnapped me when I was going to that party. Flashes of him trying to talk to me, walking right next to me, grabbing me with rough calloused palms invaded my head, panic settling in.

The once distant sound was starting to get louder. Their were voices men. Lots of them talking and laughing loud round a huge dining table.

I turned my head the other way- my body still too weak to move then I counted them.

Six men... Round a huge table, it seemed to me they were involved in a game.

Six at the table...

One by the fire side..