VERTABRAE

1.

"So I'm saying nothing, each day taking that much more…"

The sound of heavy guitars and drums filtered across the room. The one in the mask had had it on repeat for who knows how long on that beat up looking stereo. She had no idea how long she had been tied up here.

It looked like a small cheap motel room. Like one of those roadside motels still decorated with a rather bad nostalgic seventies decorum. Like the ones you see in the horror movies. She'd run out of tears a while ago. She was exhausted. And yet the one in the mask still hadn't said a word. The last thing she remembered before waking up here was shutting the hatchback door on her car in the supermarket car park. Her head throbbed at the back. She had figured she'd been hit and knocked out. She shook her head a little to shake her strawberry blonde hair off her face. Some of it still stuck to her from sweat, tears, and blood.

Every time she cried out, or begged, the one in the mask would hit her and then raise a finger to the lips of the mask, as if to shush her. She didn't understand. What had she done?

The one in the mask reached out for her with dark gloved hands. She squealed and wriggled. It punched her in the stomach and winded her. She could barely move now. It untied her feet and she tried to kick out. That was when it pulled out that knife, like a large hunting knife with the thick black rubber hilt and serrated blade. Her eyes widened fearfully and knife was waved at her like a warning. She stayed still. It grasped her and turned her over so that she was laying with her back exposed. Her feet were restrained again.

She heard the tearing of material. And then she felt her body being restrained some more. Around her knees, her torso and then around her neck. But she wasn't choked as she just suspected. She was completely fused to the bed now. She felt the cold blade slide against her skin and cut her clothes away. This is it, she thought. She felt the weight of its body as it literally sat on top of her. It was still fully dressed though. She watched it through the mirror on the door of the built in wardrobe.

It took a needle and tested that it worked. A drip of clear fluid squirted upwards. She felt it drive the point into her upper spinal region. She tried not to squeak as it injected the ominous fluid. It sat there for a few seconds and then tapped on her. The only reason she knew it was doing so was because of the mirror. She couldn't feel it tapping, much less sitting, on her anymore. She had been given an anaesthetic of sorts. She began to panic. Even more so when it swapped the hunter's knife for a scalpel. She could barely scream through the gag as she watched the scalpel come down and break through the flesh of her neck.

The music continued to play loudly. The song loud and heavy.

"So I'm saying nothing,

each day taking that much more,

as I'm screaming all my pain,

You will be there counting…"