The first thing I remember is waking up and seeing the clock on the dash. It had just changed to 12:12am.
Then the crash. Yang had been driving, but she hadn't seen it – hadn't seen him. I tried so hard to scream, to grab the wheel, anything that might've made her react faster. But I didn't. Nothing but air escaped my lips as she swerved off the pavement, through the aged barbed-wire fence, and into the nearby timberland.
I'm not sure how long I had been unconscious. It felt like seconds, but perhaps it had been hours? I'm can't be certain. I remember looking to my left, desperately searching for Yang, but she hadn't been there. Her airbag had ejected, just as it was designed to, so I should have been thankful, but I wasn't. I panicked, just as she had always told me not to. I can hear her voice in my head, even as I write this, lecturing me about "standing my ground" and "never showing fear". She always talked a big game, but we were nothing but cowards. Deep down, maybe we always knew that, but this night had proven it to us. To me.
I wonder if I would've still been taught that lesson, had I not pried myself out of the window and simply waited for someone to help.
"Yang!" I croaked as I dragged my body through the passenger-side window.
Silence.
I shakily put my hand down to support myself, only to feel a lightning bolt of pain strike through my palm. After looking down, it was easy to identify what remained of the rear-view mirror. I grimaced and stood slowly, feeling a dull pain creep up my leg from my ankle. It was sprained, but luckily I had suffered no significant damage. By then, however, drops of crimson had begun their long descent down my fingertips.
"Yang?!" I called out again as my threads of hope slowly began to snap apart, one-by-one. Maybe the metaphorical rope had never actually been there in the first place, though. Who can tell?
At this moment, the reality of my unfortunate circumstances sunk in. The vehicle was totaled, I was slightly injured, stranded, lost, and, even worse, I was alone. And it's times like these when we humans begin to have questions. Where? Why? What? Who?
Where is my sister?
Why did this happen?
What caused this?
Who was that in the road?
"Yang!" I called out once more. My own voice responded as its waves bounced around the woodland around me.
I checked my phone – something I probably should have done much sooner. No service, of course, so I began to walk along the side of the road, accepting the fact that the vehicle clearly would never turn over again. The radiator had to have been collapsed, if not the engine itself.
Every 20 steps or so, Yang's name would escape my lips once more, only to be returned by the sounds of my own voice echoing around each other.
"Rose…" A whisper from behind.
I turned around hastily, "Who's there?"
Nothing.
"Rose…" Another, this one a bit louder than the previous. The source of the sound seemed to be toying with me, only speaking when I wasn't looking at it directly. My hypothesis was confirmed when I turned around, only to be greeted by the same patch of dreary road illuminated ever so slightly by the ever-cascading moonlight.
"I…I'm not p-playing around! Who's there?!" I screamed. My entire body began to tremble and chills ran continuously up my arms and down my neck.
"…RUBY!" A shriek erupted from deep inside the woods to my left. I wish I had noticed that it didn't leave an echo in its wake.
I was too afraid, or perhaps too hopeful, to rationalize and analyze at that time.
"Yang!" I cried as I ran through the forest, "Where are you?!"
I ran amidst the trees for half an hour, at least, screaming her name at the top of my lungs. My throat hurt even more now, and the salty bitterness from the tears streaming down my face only worked to hasten my thirst.
It was at about this time when I began to slow down as the remaining seeds of doubt were finally harvested within my mind. Yang was still nowhere to be found; she was not replying to my calls any longer. My ankle ached excruciatingly, and the wound on my palm was still bleeding badly. Adrenaline was my only ally, and it had all but faded away.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I collapsed onto the ground and wept once more. The sobs wracked through my entire body, causing me to shake to shudder without warning.
A branch cracked from behind. I turned from my fetal position wide-eyed and scared.
But it was too late.
My body was clearly dragged there, wherever 'there' was. It was dark and cramped – the cage, even more so. It clearly was not meant to enclose large animals, much less a human.
Something came in the door, something reminiscent of a person, but eerily not. The only light source in the room came from the lantern he had been carrying that shed menacing amounts of light onto his face and body.
He limped towards the edge of the room, away from me, and held his light forward.
I wish he hadn't done that. Why did he have to show me what he'd done?
No one deserves that, especially not her. Not Yang. Why her? She was so vibrant, so full of life. But that vibrancy she had all but exemplified had since been drained from her. She had taken on new appearances now.
Lifelessness.
Frigidness.
Mutilation.
Her entire body represented these traits. The nails through her limbs and torso, hastily installed to connect her lank form to the wall. Her fingers were ripped away and cast aside, leaving only broken, bloody nubs in their place. Each of her limbs had been broken in order to bend at angles that no bone should ever bend. On the floor beneath her battered, beaten corpse lied the soppy remains of her intestines, still oozing with blood and fluids. They had been strung out and dragged across the floor, almost as if they had been removed rapidly, and merely for the pleasure of doing so.
Then he, the creature, turned to me, his lantern swaying as he did so.
He uttered one word.
"Rose…"