Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33904527-20181202003607

The terrible smell of rust and burnt metal wafted into Carol’s nostrils as she wrenched open her eyelids. They throbbed painfully for a few seconds, trying to adjust to the haziness in front of them. She was lying on something cold and metallic, pressing into her wrinkled skin. With laboured breaths, she turned on her back, only to see an abyss of darkness above her. This wasn’t her bedroom. Or anywhere she knew. Hadn’t she just been walking home from the-

Oh. Oh no.

Carol sat up as fast as an old woman could, a wave of frightened adrenaline coursing through her body. There wasn’t a sound in the air, save for the low buzz of something electrical. Terrified, she tried desperately to make something out in the pitch black, but nothing could be seen. Her laboured breaths seemed to echo all around her as she picked herself up from the ground into a standing position.

Suddenly, the room lit up. Fluorescent lights flicked into action with a powerful flash, nearly blinding Carol as she shielded her delicate eyes. The humming grew louder, and as the sudden brightness died down, she gasped in terror.

In front of her was a young man of about 16, strapped into a gut-wrenching mechanism. Lay on his front on a table of sorts, he was elevated off the ground at waist height, his head drooping down over the edge as if he was asleep. There were tight clamps on his legs, keeping them next to each other whilst his hands were outstretched in front of him on a separate table, lying limply through a pair of wooden stocks, like the ones used in medieval times.

The room was barely bigger than a hotel elevator. Carol pushed herself up against the wall, shaking her head in disbelief at the situation. The walls were brown and rusted, like those of an abandoned factory left to rot.

“h-hel-hello…” Carol tried to yell out, but her throat was coarse and dry. She didn’t have the strength in her. Why would anyone kidnap a frail, elderly woman?

With a soft spluttering, the boy in the mechanism began to stir. He lifted his head to reveal a dark black hood pulled over his face. Carol crept slowly to him, her legs weak already.

She reached out and peeled the hood away. A pasty, freckled complexion showed itself to her, with a blindfold bound tightly around the boy’s eyes. He looked strangely familiar to Carol, but she couldn’t quite place where she had seen him from. There was a dirty cloth stuffed into his mouth, and his mumbles grew increasingly frantic as he realised his situation. Carol too was panicking as she scrambled in her mind to figure out a way to calm him down, but all she could think to do was stroke his scruffy ginger hair.

The boy flinched at her touch. Carol could not find the courage to speak as tears rolled down her cheeks. She tugged firmly at the knots of the cloth, but they would not come loose.

Eventually, the boy’s cries died down, turning into fearful sobs. Carol stepped back and glanced back at the contraption he was in. It looked new: the metal was clean, and free of rust or dirt, a stark comparison to the brown-streaked walls that surrounded her. Gradually, she inched around it, approaching where the boy’s feet lay.

Carol’s heart sunk down even further. There was an axe laying upon the floor, with two sheets of paper next to it. Cold sweat ran down her back. Her eyes wide, Carol stretched out a shaky hand to pick them up.

The axe was heavy, with a red blade. It swayed lightly in Carol’s weak grip, dangling above the floor. Turning the papers over, the first one was of the boy on the table. It was his mugshot, displaying him in a black hoodie with a disgruntled frown spread across his face. Below was his name: Peter Davis, along with a police report of the charge: vandalism. Carol raised an eyebrow, her memory slowly reforming in the back of her mind.

The second picture was of a tweet. From Carol’s Twitter account.

“Just saw the nastiest piece of graffiti on a WW1 memorial. Hope the scumbag behind it gets his hands chopped off.”

Carol froze. In one terrifying moment, it all made sense.

Choking back vomit, she dropped the papers and turned her achy head back to Peter. There was something etched at the base of his hands. Leaning in, Carol made out a dashed line wrapped around both his wrists. That was it. That was how she earned her freedom.

No. No, she couldn’t. Not in a million years.

Feeling a great heaviness wash through her body, Carol struggled to stay standing up. She felt sick to her stomach.

She had done this. It was her fault, the entire time, it had been her fault.

Carol lifted the axe in front of her. The blade shone with an almost beautiful gleam. A glance back to the mechanism reassured her there was no way she could dismantle it.

Wasn’t there any other way? Did it have to end like this?

Lifting it above her head, Carol turned her face away, wincing. She held the axe firmly, sweat pouring down her forehead.

She was a monster. She was going to take the life of a 16-year-old to save her own. She’d never forgive herself for this.

For a solid minute, nothing happened. Carol was stuck between her own conflicting thoughts, her conscience melting away to primal instincts. The axe lay still, hovering above her skull agonisingly while Peter moaned and cried.

Without warning, the lights flicked off, and Carol collapsed in fright. The axe clattered to the floor, and there was a mighty thud, followed by an immediate crunching of flesh and bone. Two wet and meaty splatters echoed across the room, followed by a blood-curdling scream by Peter. Carol held her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise.

After what seemed like a lifetime, Peter’s screaming became tearful whimpers, and then absolute silence. Carol sat in the dark, numb. The electrical humming had stopped. A crack of light appeared in one of the walls, catching Carol’s eye. The crack grew wider and wider until it opened up completely, and a whiff of fresh air caught Carol’s nostrils. She crawled to the gap, staring out into a lonely street below the starry night sky. A single streetlamp illuminated the trees and grass around it, showing a field just a few miles away from Carol’s home.

With blood and tears stained on her face, Carol pulled herself up and stepped out. She spied her groceries laying in a plastic bag by an abandoned car. Picking them up, Carol took a deep inhale of the sweet night air and set off.

Taking one last look at the room, Carol could just make out Peter shrouded in between the darkness and the doorway, stood with his severed hand held up, the finger pointed straight at her. 