Fall With Me

forming on my forehead.
    I’m in a dungeon. The word alone caused alternating images of stories I’d read about places like the London Tower and the kinds of torture prisoners endured there. I balled my fists, realizing for the first time how much I loved my fingers, as images flit through my mind of someone sticking sharp objects underneath my nails.
    If my goal in life was to not go insane, this sure as hell was not helping me meet my objective.
    I sank to the ground, pulling my legs against my chest with my arms, remembering all those times I felt like something was wrong with me. Familiar fears of turning out like my mother began to assault me. Growing up, I’d seen psychologist after psychologist trying to figure out “what was wrong with me”. I apparently had ADHD when I was a kid, OCD during my preteen years. Just recently, they were testing me for bipolar disorder. Given this situation, I was sure I’d develop an extra disorder or two.
    Let’s add post-traumatic-stress disorder to the bunch.
    Then I heard sounds – echoing footsteps – coming from outside the room I was in.
    Eight seconds later, the door unlocked and swung open. The incandescent lighting flickered on. It took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust to the sudden flow of light. My first instinct was to take in every detail of the room I was in. With the light, it looked less archaic than it was in my imagination. The walls were actually made of concrete, not mortar and brick like the castles of old.
    I stared at the floor and frowned in confusion at the straw beneath my feet.
    “The hay adds a nice touch, I think. Makes our captives feel like they somehow time traveled to the Dark Ages.”
    My eyes were quickly drawn to the source of the voice. All I could do was glare at him.
    It was the stranger from the beach.
    There were so many questions I wanted him to answer, so many curses I wanted to blurt out, but I held my tongue. Considering my predicament and my very limited mobility, irking my captor didn’t seem like the wisest thing to do.
    He eyed me from head to foot the same way he did when we were back at the beach. This time, however, I could sense his hunger. He was predator. I was prey. I shuddered to think exactly what kind of predator had just caught me in his trap.
    His eyes were spanning the length of my legs as he approached me. He seemed to find amusement in my anxiety.
    He stopped about a foot away from me and grinned as he studied me closely. The fact that he seemed pleased by what he saw made the situation even scarier.
    “Who are you?! What do you want from me?!”
    I asked the questions not so I could hear the answers. I just needed to break the silence, in hopes of hiding my erratic heartbeats.
    He raised his hand and brushed a stray strand of my auburn hair away from my face. I couldn’t help but flinch from even the slightest hint of his touch. Everything about him told me that I wasn’t safe around him.
    His next actions solidified my suspicions that his intentions toward me were less than noble.
    He pushed me to the wall and pinned me to it by leaning his full weight against me. It felt like he was trying to crush my ribs and every other internal organ I had.
    “Welcome to The Shade, Sofia.” He leaned closer, his breath cool against my ear. “You really are quite a beauty, aren’t you?”
    From his lips, it sounded more like an insult than a compliment.
    My fears were being replaced with anger. I gathered all the strength I could to lift my hands in an attempt to push him away. As I struggled, I became fully aware of the coarseness of the concrete wall behind me, scratching through the sheerness of my cover-up and grating against my skin.
    He chuckled when I failed to budge him even slightly.
    “You’ll only hurt yourself.”
    “I demand that you let go of me. Now.” I said the words with more confidence than I felt.
    If there was even the slightest trace of true confidence in me, he managed to make it disappear when he grabbed a clump of my hair with one hand and my jaw with the other. He leaned his face close to mine, the tips of our noses almost touching.
    “It will do you well to learn that here, you are not in a place to make impetuous demands.” The words hissed from his lips.
    It was appropriate for him; he was revealing to me exactly what he was. A snake. His hands eased out of my hair and away from my jaw before he began to freely grope my body in places no other person apart from