Restrained

She couldn't breathe.

Her shoulders ached while her wrists throbbed against the blood, slicked chains, forcing her legs to remain standing and finding what little leverage she could to yank at the rusted bolts in the wall. She got just as far as the last few hundred times she tried.

God, why couldn't she breathe?

She was pulling in air, her chest heaving rapidly, but it didn't feel like she was breathing. She felt like she was inhaling poison, the air so thick and wet with mold, rot, decay...iron. It didn't even feel like air, but still, she inhaled as much as she could in just to force enough oxygen into her already torn and exhausted muscles to yank at the chains that kept her hanging.

Above her, the wood ceiling creaked and whined as something moved above them, slow and methodic, as if it were purposely taking it's time to taunt her into helpless insanity. She pulled at the chains again, enough to have the tears start streaming from her eyes and a low scream in frustration escaping her lips before she went limp again.

It was getting harder and harder to find the strength to pull at her restraints, the rational part of her knowing how impossible it was to break solid metal with bare human strength, but still, she tried desperately. The body on the metal table before her being the only reason she fought against her own pain, fought against that inability to breathe.

The wood creaked and groaned again, stopping and going, reaching ever closer to the door. There wouldn't be much time left. So as she continued to inhale the putrid air, she would continue to put strain on her chains, trying to softly offer words of security and encouragement to the tear-stained face that watched her struggle in vain. The face that was full of terror and pain as they adamantly struggled against their own restraints.

Dreadfully, those footsteps began making their way down the steps, fear and panic began to rise within her as she began to frantically wrench at her chains more and more, feeling them tighten around her wrist to a point she wasn't sure she felt them. She didn't care. That feeling of suffocation was beginning to consume her. Her stomach was dropping, the bitter taste in her mouth, making her want to vomit.

All she saw was her sister on that table, her sister screaming out her name to save her and for it to get away from her as it grabbed for a long, serrated knife.

She pulled and yanked, screaming at the damned thing to get away from her family, to take her instead—her sister pleading and sobbing for her to save her as the bastard brought the blade closer.

The metal whined as a final scream ripped through her like a roar at the same time the pointed edge of the blade descended toward flesh.