The Predicament
Despite an extraordinary feeling of fatigue, a woman found herself being jolted awake by two obscured sensations commanding her senses. A loud roaring was heard to be coming from straight below her, followed by a painful tug on her lower jaw as she felt the inside of her mouth become exposed to soured air.
Her eyes slowly drifted open as she felt the roaring sound sputter out, and as she proceeded to close her mouth she felt her teeth come into contact with something thick, but solid. Her tongue lightly grazing the foreign object, the woman discovered that it tasted very fleshy. Fleshy like skin. Her eyes widening and traveling downward, she witnessed a frightening scene.
She was kneeled down onto a thick, uncomfortable sheet of metal, assumingly attached to a wall behind her. Out in front and directly underneath her was a large, rusted blue tube that led down into a tiled floor littered with razor wire. To her immediate shock, she witnessed a man inside the bluish tube, staring up at her in a daze. Following his extended arms upward, she discovered that his hands were somehow firmly locked into her lower jaw, right past the bottom set of teeth.
Being careful not to bite the man's fingers, the woman attempted to ask, "Who are you? Where are we?!", but it all came out awkwardly due to the current position of her jaw. The man continued to stare at her and then stated, "I don't know…" the situation apparently having only just dawned on him.
The woman, puzzled, reached her hands up into her mouth and attempted to remove his fingers from her jaw. However, the fingers held tightly in place, as though they would inserted somehow into her jaw. Removing her hands, she placed them on the steel in front of her, unsure of what to do.
Suddenly, a loud sound resembling static flooded the room. The woman saw a slight gleam on the man's face as his gaze rose toward the ceiling. She attempted to look up, but found that the more she pulled on the man with her head, the greater her lower jaw was pulled down by his weight, causing her great pain. Eventually surrendering to the discomfort, the woman lowered her head again and listened closely.
"Hello, Margaret. Hello Luke." The woman named Margaret jumped slightly at this cold, rickety voice, while the man referred to as Luke was startled as he hung off of her jaw.
"Both of you, as I've observed, are the perpetrators of obscene crimes. Crimes which have no doubt stemmed from the human thirst for status and attention. Despite these urges we all hold within, you both have made the decision for these urges to overtake you in the most disgusting manners." As the voice continued to speak, Margaret's eyes darted in many directions, fearful. She gazed down to watch as Luke lowered his head.
"Luke," The voice bellowed, prompting his head to rise again.
"You have been a horse jockey for several years, racing some of your region's most experienced competitors. Unable to cope with your loss for the final time, you proceeded to find your satisfaction in another manner… By completely disregarding the nature of the sport you participated in, you set out to slaughter every horse that had entered that faithful race… Including yours to avoid suspicion." Margaret was appalled at what she was hearing, and Luke hid his face from her as she glanced down.
"Margaret." Her attention diverted back to the voice overhead.
"You very well know your crime. A crime which influenced the lives of many people, and utterly defaced those lives. Your victims can no longer hold their heads up due to their inner demons, who you claim will eventually destroy their eternal happiness, no matter how they attempt to change in the eyes of the one you call your master." Margaret felt her head begin to grow heavy with guilt and similar emotions.
"I have brought your two unsatisfied lives to the judgment table once and for all. Be warned, however: you may be missing part or all of the person you were formerly." With that sentence, a sharp hint of laughter was heard, surprising the two prisoners.
"As you can see, Margaret, Luke has his fingers tightly bolted into the pit of your lower jaw. You should refuse attempting to pull them out forcefully, for the result will merely consist of more pain… This fact is what the test of your will is going to be based on." Upon hearing the word "test", Margaret and Luke both looked at each other in blank horror.
"Below Luke is a tube protruding from the ground. At the bottom is a strong vacuum device which, in about three minutes from the end of my explanation, will swiftly pull Luke down into the depths of the tube. Where he will end up I do not wish to specify…" The cracked voice snickered lightly as Luke's eyes widened beyond all compare.
"As for you, Margaret, you must remember that Luke's fingers are rooted into your jaw very securely. Though you may have not been able to notice due to your limited view, your ankles are locked tightly in place behind you, rooted to the slab of metal. When combining these two concepts together, you can conclude that Luke will effectively tear your lower jaw off when he is pulled down…" Margaret's eyes widened as well, her own level of danger having become very evident.
"Now, Margaret… I can suspect that you do not wish to live your life, if you manage to survive the shock, with a fraction of a jaw. Therefore… I am suggesting you use the tool most appropriate for this situation. The tool with which you have scarred life will now become your lifeline…" Margaret was unsure of what this meant, though she feared the answer would become clear.
"Now your judgment is about to begin. Margaret. Luke. One or both of you may leave this place, having sacrificed that which you used to commit these unspeakable crimes… Keep these crimes which you have committed in mind, and you'll find this experience to be quite… converting…" A lengthy pause followed this stunning sentence.
"Begin." This was the final word spoken before the static returned to their hearing. The static was quickly replaced with a soft ticking, alerting both of the prisoners.
"Shit!!" A terror-stricken Luke exclaimed, diverting his attention to Margaret's dizzied face. She was starting to breathe faster, having come to the inevitable realization she could possibly perish in this very room.
"Hello? Answer me, dammit!" He yelled, but his calls were distant compared to Margaret's buzzing thoughts.
"Tools. Tools…" Margaret gasped, her words muddled once more, as she began straining to remember what the strange voice had said. She grasped, panicked, the fingers of Luke that were jammed into her mouth, and hastily attempted to remove them from her lower jaw. She felt inside the very bottom of her jaw and felt a cold metal object, which was likely the bolt jamming his fingers in there. She picked and grabbed at it, unable to aim for the bottom of the bolt, and finally surrendered to the strong bind the bolt held.
"Tools. Tools! Tools…" She continued to chant wildly, before noticing her teeth unintentionally clamp onto Luke's finger, eliciting a slight sound of pain from him. As the ticking began to grow louder, Margaret found herself understanding what the voice had intended for her to do in order to escape.
"Margaret! Do something!" Luke yelled, beginning to feel visibly helpless as he dangled back and forth.
Margaret, a look of ferocity molding onto her face, much to Luke's bewilderment, glanced down at her jaw. Slowly, as the ticking noise continued to grow in volume, she proceeded to place her hands under her lower jaw and gradually began to push up.
"Wha… What are you doing?!" Luke shouted maniacally as Margaret's two parts of jaw slowly came together onto Luke's fingers. Then, she began shoving her hands up full force, her teeth beginning to dig into the meaty digits.
Luke cried out in pain as Margaret manually started to close her teeth onto Luke's fingers, attempting to break through them and cut them off before they could pull off her jaw.
"Bitch!!" Luke screamed, beginning to swing his legs in many different directions in response to this grisly action. This change in weight began to gradually pull Margaret's lower jaw away from his fingers, but, as this happened, she tightened her grip in response. As her teeth sunk further and further in, tiny spurts of blood began to break through his vulnerable skin, making him hiss in pain. Meanwhile, the ticking was near deafening now as both prisoners understood the time was running out rapidly.
"Damn you bitch! Damn you to fucking...!" He began but this ended in an outburst of pain as her teeth began digging into the bone of his fingers. Margaret uttered a small snicker of success, not letting up her vicious bite for a second.
Then, just as the middle bone in Luke's fingers was growing very brittle, a swift chain of events activated. The blare of a buzzer sounded.
Time was up.
A deafening sound of suction filled the air, and Luke began to drop slowly down the tube, pulling Margaret's upper body closer in with every second. Finally, a sickening ripping sound echoed as Margaret's lower jaw snapped off in an instant, dropping down while still attached to Luke's fingers. Luke's shouts as he fell were quickly dwarfed in comparison to the uproar Margaret soon created.
Blood quickly began to flow from the large gap where her lower jaw and cheeks had once been. Screamingly intensely, Margaret desperately attempted to stop the blood flow with her hands, but the tear was too wide. A puddle of blood streamlined down onto the metal slab and onto the tile floor below, reddening the metal of the razor wire.
While mouthing nonexistent curses with her upper jaw while still crying out, Margaret's wails quickly dissolved into loud sobbing. She felt her head fall forward slightly, her face paled significantly from loss of blood.
"Noooo… Nooooooooooooo!" She repeated, her fists slamming hard into the metal sheet on which she was situated. Unexpectedly, among the clang of the steel, she heard a small object apparently bounce around behind her. Raising her wilted face up, with tears streaming down her pained face, Margaret slowly turned her body around. She saw her legs laid out under her, two iron binds digging into her ankles, keeping them bolted to the ground. Surprisingly, as she looked further back, she noticed a small black key lying on the metal sheet. Margaret realized it must have been there the entire ordeal. Cautiously, she reached out and slowly picked it up, holding it beneath her. Her lower mouth area was still bleeding violently, brightening the black of the key slightly as the red liquid fell.
Hesitantly, she fitted the key into the locks of the iron binds and released herself. Rising slowly to her feet, Margaret noticed an open door located on the left side of the metal platform. Whether it had always been open was a mystery to her. Reaching up for the first time to her face since the sobering pain had stricken; she felt the flesh that would have been beneath her lower jaw, had she still had one.
She knew at that point that whenever she walked from this horrid experience, she would never be able to influence anyone ever again. The half of her mouth missing made this clear. She would never again utter a word, be it praise or condemn, and perhaps the vicious person who had put her here knew this. Perhaps it was for the better...
Some Notes:
There is razor wire on the floor because I didn't want to get reviews asking: why didn't she jump off the platform she was on and just rip off Luke's arms in the process so she could escape. The razor wire was put there to eliminate this possibility.
Margaret's cause for being in the trap was meant to be ambiguous, simply because I didn't want to flesh it out that well, but some of you should be able to understand, I think.
The key and door that were waiting on the platform she was on were unknown to her until she was able to turn around (at least, turn around and not have to pull Luke along, which would have caused her jaw great strain and pain.) and get the key to her iron binds.
