🔥Chapter 6: Just Two Rats Meeting In A Lab🔥

       I DIDN'T DARE move, not even a smidge. According to the two years of dreadful anatomy classes that I had to endure in college, the knife was too close to my jugular vein, and if something cut that, I'd be in more trouble.

"So, what is a pretty little thing like yourself doing in this hood?" His disgusting breath danced on the nape of my neck as his elongated tongue licked my cheek; I tensed. He wasn't getting a response out of me.

He sighed. "Come on, Princess. I'm trying to be friendly here."

"Piss off!" I snapped, trying not to move a muscle.

"Oh, don't get feisty now. That's my biggest turn-on," said the man seductively as his unusually long, forked tongue felt its way down my shirt, dipping into my cleavage. "What is that you have for me, sweetheart?"

I didn't have to see his face to know he was talking about the box. "I was just doing my job. Let me go!"

"Please let me go!" he mimicked in this disgustingly high-pitched voice before howling with laughter.

That just ticked me off. "I didn't say that, you perverted asshat."

"Say what?"

"I never said please. I'll die before I beg shit from you," I threatened while scanning the area for any other attacker, "I instructed you to let me go, you idiot."

His voice lowered into a menacing whisper, "Speak to me like that again, you little fat bitch, and I'll rip off your throat with my bare teeth."

Luckily for him, I didn't waste another breath on him and just waited for the right moment to initiate my secret attack. It was a trick that gave me a brief moment of distraction, and my father had taught me this from a young age and how I warded off bullies. Harmless but nasally destructive ruse that had helped me evade multiple fights in my time, and I highly doubted it would fail me then.

So, I did the unthinkable; I farted.

Yes, you read right. I released all the gas I had collected since lunch, and, oh boy, it was a lot.

Like an unexpected slap to the face, he stumbled backward in shock and disgust, and I took advantage of the moment. With all the strength I could muster, I swung my leg behind the masked individual's knees and made him land back first on the concrete with a hard, bone-cracking thud before whipping out my pepper spray and blasting it to his exposed eyes. That earned me an agonizing scream from him; it was like music to my ears. As he cowered in pain -- blinded -- and cursing me out, I spotted his dagger and kicked it as far as I could from him.

With the can of spray still directed at him, I smirked. "You picked the wrong girl to rob tonight, bud --"

I spoke too soon.

A blunt, hard object smacked hard into the back of my head, and I crumbled to the ground almost instantly. Another voice came from behind me, but I struggled to unscramble the words as a scorching rush of pain made me bubble out a disturbing groan. As my vision blurred from light to darkness, more voices surrounded me. On the brink of passing out cold, a hand tugged at my arm and then dragged me until the roar of an engine came into proximity. A heavy haziness filled my head as I tried to wriggle away, but I soon succumbed to my injuries and entered an abyss of complete darkness.

=🔥=

I woke up a victim. A hostage to the world of black's reverberating anthem, the greatest weapon of dehumanization in every maximum prison, and my anxiety's principal supplier: I awakened to silence.

And its dearest friend: darkness.

No bleating siren and frantic screaming. No foul taste of blood that stung my palate and throb of pain that beat against my forehead. No miasma of smoke from the exhaust pipe to grill my nostrils raw.

Nothingness hummed in the envelope of black fog sliding over my body. It was all there was, and as each second progressed, it felt as though that was all there would ever be.

A thought slipped through, one that desolated the remains of my soul.

Damn. Did I die?

Trapped in a peak of mental torture and a paralyzed body entombed in the void for what felt like an eternity, the possibility of that reality screamed louder than the hush.

My ears rang, and for the first time, I was scared shitless. I didn't know how long I'd been here. Or how long I would last.

A slight chill weaved into the surrounding air. My cracked lips quivered as I called out. "Hello?"

Silence was the response. Silence was what ate me up.

I, like many others, had presumed a silent afterlife filled with sleep was something to look forward to, especially in comparison to the biblical predictions of Hell — and others of a similar religious realm. However, the truth was far from any speck of paradisiacal slumber. It was the polar opposite and pressed my mind an inch closer to the sticky web of lunacy. Nevertheless, my persistence to live burned on.

"God, if you can hear me, please let me get home before her spies report my absence and my mother kills me. I know I've been a little shit most of my life, but I can't die now. Grandpa will eat all my Cheerios again, and if that old fart dares to speak up at my funeral, I'll be screwed for sure —"

"Oh, shut the fuck up."

The harsh words weaved in the foreign accent pried my eyes open to a gunmetal-grey sky with a single beam of a dying white sun flickering in its center. A crick in my neck stung me first as I lifted my head off the back of the bench. I gave myself a frantic body search to discover my body hidden under an ashy-grey hospital gown, then immediately went motionless when I met a pair of silver irate eyes.

Terrified, I flinched back and ended up on the ground. "Who are you and—" I scanned his outfit "—and why are we both in cruddy hospital gowns like some knockoff twins in a low-budget horror flick?"

A ridiculously tall young man with mature dark features reminiscent of Armin's towered over me. His annoyed expression made me feel like a piece of dirt. However, unlike that scrawny German walking armpit, this guy had an athletic physique. The broader shoulders, a very prominent Adam's Apple, and a midnight shadow to finish his aggressive look must have been included in his fuck-boy package.

"Hello?" I stood up and waved my hand in his face to see if he was still functioning. "Did you hear me, square face?"

He swiped my hand and asked, "Is that how your kind greets each other?"

In an instant, this man dropped from fuckable-hot to sewage-rot.

I formed a shaking fist and snapped, "Do you under-dwellers know saying such is considered rude from where I am from?"

"Hmph, the little frazzled girl with a bird nest for hair comes from a realm where manners exist?" he snickered. "Your way of speaking is very unrefined, so I thought otherwise. I apologize I'm not too familiar with earthly slums or its hood-rats."

The energy radiating from this man was great, but his mouth was dirtier than a toilet seat. It was obvious he was some pompous brat who lavished in luxury since birth.

"You tower of a douchebag. Say that again, and I'll carve your face in."

"I would love to see you try, you filthy Majitter worm." His eyes sparked with something that alarmed my senses and warned me not to engage in any physical battle with him. So, I stepped back. There was something very unusual about this rude mouth.

We both growled at each other for another minute or so before the man in the gown gave up and said, "I'm too old for this. Since we're both going to get butchered up or possibly vaporized at some point, my name is Desvaldo, but I'm called Devlin by most. I am a devil and the next successor of the Iram kingdom. Nice to meet and perish with you."

The sarcasm in his last sentence made me want to give him a free face-lift. Would it hurt for him to not be such a dickhead?

"Yeah, yeah. My name is Jazlin, and I'm the pineapple queen of Hawaii. The pleasure to face the grim reaper with you is all mine," I quipped with a feigned smile before finishing my jest with a curtsy and a little weird dance that lifted my dress.

His eyes watched me very closely, with a hint of something I couldn't quite identify. However, the second I dropped my skirt, his grimace returned stronger than the last. Turning away from me, the tower of a man ruffled his shoulder-length hair and snarled to himself, "Bräyÿ, I think I'm losing it. I found this rat's legs attractive."

"Okay, now that we are through with the unpleasant pleasantries and you've outed yourself as a rude pervert," I scanned for an exit before continuing, "Well, Mr. Prince of Iraq or whatever, how the hell do I get out of here?"

"You can't," answered Desvaldo, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. "Trust me, I've tried for weeks."

"Um, we're outside. Can't you fly us out or something? I heard you devils have crow wings and are like Batman — or whatever."

He heaved a long sigh. "This is a simulation chamber. We are not outside. They keep us in here so that we don't go insane and eat each other like the last guys."

"Right. Right," I mumbled as my eyes darted from one part of the room to the next. "Maybe there's a door hidden inside this simulated building thing—"

"Are your tiny ears just for decoration? You are not escaping this place," he interrupted, exhaling deeply with irritation. "You and I are stuck here until they either sell us, or parts of us, to their highest bidder. You are not going home, your mother is going to be sad, and your Gramps is going to eat every last bit of your damn Cheerios!"

As his words set in, my limbs went limp, and the blood drained from my face. I couldn't believe it and wanted to call it a fib. However, there was no lie on his face, just a jungle of anger with heavily shadowed trees of fear and hopelessness.

"I-I'm stuck here..." and possibly forever.

I cupped my face as my legs gave out and dropped me to my knees. This whole situation was a horror movie because not only was I kidnapped by Underworld dwellers, but, to make matters worse, I was caged in with a deluded and perverted shit-talker who thought himself as the prince of igloos.

|
🔥