Crimson

I screamed, called out into the darkness. I heard the echo of the splash of something dripping in the inky black of the hall. A shiver ran down my spine, forcing me to close my eyes and gulp dryly. A gasp of pain as a twitch in my hand caused it to pull painfully against the metal. The room was quiet, to a level where even the scratching of my skin bounced off the walls. I couldn't count the hours since he'd left me, alone in this room, like a hollowed out shell.

"Why won't you play?" the voice seemed to float on the air, haunting and malevolent. I looked around, my eyes searching the walls for a source. I shivered again, my left hand rising to meet my right atop the table. The tips of my fingers glided over the skin of my hand, seeking the thin metal spoke protruding from the table. Sliding up the shaft slowly, I winced in pain as the tip of the screwdriver seemed to bury itself deeper in my hand.

A voice in my ear again, teasing me. A young girls voice almost certainly, but there was so much more. As my fingers twirled around the plastic handle I tried to pull the metallic spindle from my hand. I cried out again, the skin in my hand pulsing in agony. Slumping to the floor I looked around the room, tears slowly building in my eyes.

"Why won't you play?" the voice was closer, in the room with me. I closed my eyes, trying desperately to block it out. "Why won't you scream?" there was an eerie malice in her tone, she wanted pain. A fear came over me, a need to be free. I felt it rise through me, slowly taking control and letting the panic settle in.

I stood, no longer crying, to scared to shed another tear. I pulled desperately at the screw driver, gasping in anguish as it tore at my flesh. It wouldn't move from the table, wedged firmly into the wood. Footsteps in the corridor, slow and calm, but with an unnatural quality to it that I couldn't place. The screwdriver pivoted left and right, moving slowly from the wood, but pulling more flesh from my hand, scraping painfully across the bone.

"What are you doing?" the voice at the door was questioning, young. I looked up, eyes stinging in the dark. Light filtered in from a street lamp above us and illuminated a small girl in a plain white dress. "Why are you taking it out? Don't you want to stay with me?" she walked forward, trailing a porcelain doll behind her, the smooth white head scratching loudly on the floor.

I stood, silently watching her enter. She stopped for a moment, stepping her way around a mass on the floor. Looking down I saw the deep red pools staining the floor, slowly winding their way towards the far corner of the room. I followed them back to their source, a body, cut and slashed. There were two that I could see, a man, curled up on the floor with deep lacerations running down his back, the blood freshly oozing from them and sliding downwards. The body above was a girl, back arched over her companion. Her eyes were bleeding, the blood spreading outwards from them in three thin lines across her cheeks on either side.

"Don't you want to stay with me?" She was next to me, looking up at me with dark eyes. I sank to the floor again, shrinking as far from her as I could, cringing with the pain of the screwdriver in my hand. She knelt down, the hem of her dress curling under her knee and pressing against the sticky river of blood beneath her. I flinched as her hand stretched toward my face, fingers outstretched in mercy.

"Why are you scared of me? That's not nice," her voice held no feeling, though her words had clearly soured. She rose to her feet again, turning away from me. Forced forward to alleviate the pain in my hand I watched cautiously as she circled the duo of the dead on the floor. She looked down at them, a look of sadness in her eye. For a moment I saw the truth in her face, no tear would be shed for them, the two on the floor, her sadness was for herself.

"They wanted to leave me two," pity built up in m as the sadness bubbled in her voice. Suppressing it for moments, enough to scan the room, trying to find a way from this place, she fixed me with a glare. "Just like you do." Simple, but the words sent a wave of panic through me, my instinct to flee was replaced by a need to appease her. There could be no other way from this place, but through her.

"They tried to escape from me, didn't want to play with me." She didn't seem to be walking anymore, but still she moved around the bodies. "They weren't the first to leave me," her head stayed bowed, but a flash of lightening from outside illuminated a portion of the wall opposite me.

Blank eyes looked at me from a pale face, tilted roughly to one side. The face was that of a girl, but life had long since left her. Her face had lost all colour, so much so that it seemed life had never touched her feeble form. Her lips were beginning to turn blue, the only trace of colour on her timeless body. Even her eyes seemed inhumanly empty, much more than dead, simply void of anything, living or otherwise.

Her neck was as pale as her face, but torn and broken in three jagged lines. They wrapped around her neck in a twisted tear, now dry and cracked where blood had once flowed. Buried deep in the cuts, and tightly gripping her skin was a thin wire, twisted and barbed across its length. She was there, hanging from the ceiling, looking at me, accusing. Warning. I turned my attention back to the little girl, but she had gone.

"She wanted to leave me, she didn't want to play. You won't leave me will you?" her voice was in my ear, whispering sweetly, but the words came across sour and accusing. I turned from the voice, flinching in surprise. A cold blast of air hit me from behind, i turned, looking for the source. Anyway out, anyway free from this hell and I would take it. Nothing but a blank wall.

A sharp intake of breath pulled my head quickly around to the front again. Her face was inches away from my own, smiling mischievously. My mouth faltered, quivering slightly. Her eyes twitched, darting from my mouth to my eyes. Her lips narrowed, tightening slightly before forming words.

"You're still scared of me," She rose to her feet and began to turn from me. Her hand wrapped around the handle of the screwdriver, making it scrape over the skin again. She pulled in a swift motion, the thin spindle now free from the wood of the table. I retracted my hand quickly, pulling it close to my chest and sobbing. She was at the door when I looked up again, her back to me and still trailing the doll behind her.

"If you won't play with me, they can have you," She began to walk down the hallway, the last image of her being the porcelain face of the doll, stained in the blood of the bodies that shared the room with me. The light seemed to dim, the shadows on the corpses slowly growing. In the dim of the light, it seemed as though there was movement in this small room. I looked around, the two on the floor, the girl in the corner...

She was swinging, glaring at me. Her once empty eyes were now burning with fury, with rage. Her legs began to jerk, shaking violently as her nerves reacted to the new-found life flowing through her veins. Her mouth began to make the shapes of words, but I couldn't make them out. I buried my head in my arms, my right hand at an awkward angle to keep the blood from my hair.

"Don't leave us," The voice was of a man, close to me and hauntingly childlike in tone. I looked up from my sleeve, eyes on the writhing bodies before me. Tears began to fall as the broken arms of the corpses reached out toward me, scratching their nails through the floor.

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Outside the room a small girl in a lace white dress stood smiling to herself, listening to the screams and sounds of tearing coming from her newest playmate.