'No, no, no,' Bubbles thoughts screamed, 'this cannot be happening! This cannot be real!'
She called out to the others also in cages, but they wouldn't meet her eyes and some were in so much pain they couldn't speak. Many were disfigured, pieces of their bodies had been hacked away and their wounds were left to fester.
"Have anyone of you seen my sister?" she called out, her voice sounding high and frightened to her own ears, "please, anyone? Please speak to me!"
It was then that one man hanging from a wall by his arms raised his head and said in a rasping, very voice, "stupid girl, can't you see...don't you see?"
"See what?" she asked, but he didn't answer. Instead his head flopped back down to his chest as if he were too damaged and exhausted to go on. So Bubbles began to look around the basement. Maybe her sister was here somewhere, too hurt to answer her? But, on her inspection she suddenly realised something.
"There are no women here," she muttered before repeating more loudly, "there are no women! What happens to the women? What happens?"
"They take them out," giggled a voice. Bubbles saw that it was a thin man, with long greasy brown hair, body dirty and naked in a small cage on the other side of the basement. "They take the girls, the pretty, pretty girls, outside. They take them for the Blood Feast. We sate their appetites for a little while, but it's you that they want. Pretty little girls!"
"Why do they just want girls?" she asked as he giggled strangely, feeling the blood draining from her face. "What is the Blood Feast?"
But he was no longer answering her; he just sat gabbling to himself and rocking.
"You'll find out tonight," a voice deep inside her head that she did not recognise as her own whispered, "you'll find out tonight..."
However, she was not so easily defeated. Ignoring the sounds of agony around her, Bubbles took out a small hairpin from her hair and tried to unlock her cage, but the lock was too rusted and she couldn't unpick it. She worked at in, scratching at the metal when her hairpin finally snapped in half until her fingers began to bleed, but to no avail. It was then that she bowed her head and begun to cry.
What could she do?
How could she escape her terrible fate?
All around her she could hear the groans and moans of the dying. She put her head between her legs, covered her ears and tried to block it out, hiding into herself.
Had this happened to Blossom? Had Blossom, her pure, brave, innocent, beautiful sister, been taken to this terrible room and subjected to these horrors? Had she prayed for death? Had she wished for someone to rescue her, all whilst Bubbles and her father had sat at home, oblivious to her suffering? The Morbucks, had they smiled kindly at Bubbles, all the time knowing what heinous acts they were going to inflict on her, on what they had to her sister?
Bubbles grit her teeth, fury mixing in with her terror. She began to rock, her body already freezing up and cramping from the small cage she was in and from the cold. She pulled her hair, 'I mustn't panic,' she thought, whilst simultaneously feeling it welling up in her chest causing her breath and heart beat to speed up, 'do not panic...I must stay calm...there must be a way out of this!'
"I can't take it anymore!" someone shrieked suddenly, making Bubbles jump and shaking her out of her attempts of self-calming. It was a man in a cage who had cried out, his hair was a dirty blond and he was also naked, bite marks evident all over his body, "I can't take it!" His blue eyes were bulging as he began to scream, high pitched and short. It was the screams of someone whose sanity had finally snapped. He grabbed the bars of his tiny cage and began to shake it, screaming incessantly.
This seemed to set the others off, another man, one near Bubbles began to shake profusely, spittle and froth pouring out of his mouth. His eyes rolled backwards as he fell on to his side.
Bubbles put her fist in her mouth and bit down hard, terrified by what she was seeing. It was too much...it was too much for her!
Some of the other prisoners began to hide away, looking towards the door. Some, like the man who was hanging from the wall did not react at all. Most began to scream as well, as if they no longer cared about anything, because pain was all they knew and understood now.
Ms. Scara burst into the room, "silence! Silence you beasts!" She marched over to where the blond man was screaming and ripped open his cage.
Though she was a woman, he was so small and thin that she easily over-powered him. She threw him to the ground and the man began to laugh hysterically.
She grinned at his madness and stared lasciviously without shame at his naked body. She was enjoying his pain, his shame, his humiliation, his complete mental break-down.
Bubbles shut her eyes. She couldn't stand to watch such perverted evil.
Suddenly, everything went quiet.
Bubbles frowned.
The screams of the others, of the blond man, of the man in the cage near hers having a fit. It all stopped.
'Open your eyes,' whispered the mental voice that was not hers, it sniggered making her shudder with discomfort, like when someone whispering too closely to your ear, 'open your eyes.'
She complied, if only to stop the voice, which felt oily and filthy in her mind. It didn't belong inside her, yet somehow it was worming it's way though her thoughts and speaking to her. She could see into the cage of the frothing man. He was frozen in the spot, his back arched in an awkward position. His mouth had spit all around it, bubbling and white.
His eyes were staring right into her.
His empty, dead eyes.
He was dead.
He had died.
He had died looking at her.
Bubbles whimpered and pushed her back against the further side of her cage. He didn't want to be near this dead mad-man, it scared her.
A dark chuckle caused her to tear her frightened eyes from the man and instead on to Ms Scara.
She didn't even look human anymore, her white-blonde hair was sticking out in strange angles as if electric ran through each strand and her skin was too white. Her eyes were pointed at the corners, and maniacal glint in them. She looked horrible.
"You should see this, get a clue for what will happen to you later, pretty one," she grinned widely, too widely for any human, and Bubbles saw that her canines were overly elongated. "See what came of your red-headed sister."
She opened her mouth widely, reminding Bubbles of a snake, and bit at the man's throat, him screaming in pain before blood gushed out of his mouth in thick torrent.
Bubbles screamed and covered her mouth as Ms. Scara ripped out the poor man's throat and swallowed it whole, crunching at it and licking the blood from of her lips.
She laughed gutturally as the man slowly died beneath her, his mouth open in a permanent scream. She sat upon his waist and began to lap up all the blood that pouring on to the floor and down his abused body.
Bubbles was then horribly sick, vomiting on her own clothes and onto the floor. She returned to her old position, rocking with her head between her knees and her arms covering her ears.
"Please God," she prayed, "please save me! Please...please...please...!"
"There's no point praying to your god," she heard Ms. Scara sneering, "he isn't here. No one can save you from us. We are old. We are legion. We are the creatures of Satan. And we're going to eat you up little one, we're going to eat you up!"
The days are short in North Eastern Europe, especially in the winter. The pale sun that had comforted our young, innocent heroine hid away behind the clouds and soon vanished as it dipped below the horizon. The young wolf-pack of the Little Carthapians watched it leave and howled in misery of its loss. The shadows reclaimed their rulership of the cold and desolate land.
Inside Castle Čachtice Bubbles was taken out of her cage by Ms. Scara.
"Take off your clothes," ordered the witch.
Bubbles stood still for a moment, her body stiff and cold and her mind telling her not to do as she was told. But Ms. Scara frightened her so much that she ended up complying.
She stripped into her underwear.
Ms. Scara smirked nastily and briefly before returning to her callous scowl, "take off everything you fool. You're a sacrifice. You're dinner. You are not in need of clothes. Or dignity."
Bubbles bottom lip shook and her face blazed and she took off the last vestiges of clothing.
Ms. Scara then tied a blind fold around the girl.
"Consider yourself lucky," she whispered, and Bubbles could hear the grin on her lips, "your sister had a blind fold of thorns around her eyes. Such tasty blood was wasted, by dripping on to the floor. It's the only reason you are lucky enough to keep your sight."
Bubbles began to sob then, the thin walls of stoic breaking down. Her sister had suffered and died horribly at the hands of these beasts. It was more than she could bear. Guilt and fear and horror forced tears from a girl who thought she couldn't possibly cry any more.
Ms. Scara laughed at her sobs, but silently led her out of the basement and away from the sounds of groaning victims and up through the house. The main door was opened and Bubbles was pushed through it. Now she could feel the cold snow under her feet and wind howling in the air, she had been led outside into the bleak winter wilderness.
"I would run if I was you," Ms. Scara rubbed her cold hands down Bubbles slight shoulders and bought her mouth and sharp teeth close the Bubble's ear, "run as fast as you can."
As soon as she released Bubbles shoulders the girl fled, ripping off her blind fold. 'Perhaps I shall make it to the village,' she hoped desperately even though the village was a day's walk from the castle. She would have to survive the entire night naked and in the snow.
She looked back to the castle, a sight causing her to stop dead in her tracks. At the top of one of the torrents she could see a light was on. She stared for a moment before realising that Lady Elizabeth Morbucks was standing at the window looking down at her. The red-head grinned, her eyes were black but the surrounding part that should have been white was instead a deep red. Her stare was fixated on Bubbles, like that of a cat staring at a small bird.
Bubbles' mouth opened wide.
Elizabeth waved, moving her arm slowly.
Bubbles let out a horrific, throat-tearing scream.
It was in that moment that Bubbles completely lost her mind. She turned and began to run, not really paying any attention to where she was heading. She just knew that she needed to get away. She didn't know what the Morbucks were, but whatever they were they were not human, they were evil things, evil things that pretended to be beautiful but they weren't they were malicious, blood-thirsty psychopaths.
As she ran images flashed through her mind, of Ms. Scara and her white hair that made her look like a demonic witch, of the three little boys, of Elizabeth Morbucks standing in front of the mirror surrounded by snow, of the long nails of Seduca trailing down her own pale flesh, of the Thing in the corner...
It was too dark to see, too dark to reason.
Bubbles heard the wolves beginning to howl.
'If I should die,' she thought, 'please let it be by their jaws, the wolves have more mercy than those wicked creatures!'
A sick, oily laughter resounded in her mind.
'You're going to die,' it whispered between dark chuckles, 'you're gonna die all alone. We will feast on you. Lick up all your blood, steal away your life force...oh how we shall be full on pleasure and exaltation at your suffering! Your misery and your body will sustain us!'
"Stop!" Bubbles screamed, covering her ears and falling to the ground, "no! No! Stop!"
'That's right, lie down, leave yourself open for us!'
"Oh God!" Bubbles gripped at her hair willing the voice away. She opened her tear stained eyes, "Oh please, please let this end..."
She could see a little better now for her eyes had adjusted. She turned to look at the castle, which was now further away.
Three heavy shadow flew out of the top window where Elizabeth had been and began to fly down to earth before swerving towards her direction.
Using this fear she forced herself back up and began to run again.
There was no one else for miles, no people for miles!
She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. 'There's no point heading for the village,' she realised, her thoughts clearing of her temporary madness for a moment, 'I'll never make it, but there is somewhere else I can go.'
The wolves' howls lit up the atmosphere. The wind was blowing strong through the trees, making them shriek, but she could clearly hear the wolves over it. She began to follow their howls.
This led her into the forest of dead black trees.
She ran quickly, eager to reach the pack as soon as she could. Her body was in absolute pain from the cold but with the pressure of fear she could ignore it.
Then she heard it. A woman's chuckle right next to her ear.
Bubbles yelped a leapt away from it, the jump causing her to stumble and fall into the snow again. She flailed a little before getting back on to her feet.
In front of her was a Being wearing a red, hooded cape. Bubbles shivered, but not from the cold.
The howling had stopped.
The figure lifted a white hand and pulled off the hood. It was Lady Seduca. Her eyes were red and black, like Elizabeth Morbucks, and her hair moved unnaturally, as if it were a sea of snakes.
Seduca grinned madly revealing her razor-sharp teeth.
Bubbles looked around on the floor for something she could use as a weapon but there was nothing.
"You can't defeat me," laughed Seduca, her voice sounding strange and inhuman, as if she had many people speaking inside her, "even if you could find something, you cannot beat me. I have a thousand souls in this body. The blood of a million strong, feisty little girls, just like you. They sustain me, they keep me strong.
"I'm gonna eat you up," she continued, stepping towards Bubbles, rubbing her hands over her own body, "I'm gonna drain you of your life. Oh God...Oh God, Bubbles you lucky girl, you'll be part of me." She licked her lips, her tongue too red and too long.
With unnatural speed, not unlike a spider, she suddenly sped towards Bubbles, grabbing her throat and throwing her to the ground before sitting on top of her in similar fashion to what Ms. Scara had done to the poor blond man from the basement.
Seduca hissed like a snake, writhing slightly on the poor girl before lifting one of Bubbles arms and biting it viciously. Bubbles cried out as Seduca began to suck, only stopping now and then to laugh breathlessly.
"I should save you for Elizabeth," she said, "but why should that little brat get all the fun? All she cares about is bathing in blood for her stupid vanity. A waste in my opinion."
She leaned over Bubbles and began to scratch her long nails over the girl's body, making her bleed all over, tiny river of blood erupting over her shoulders, face and chest. Bubbles screamed in pain, trying to push the vampire off her, but it was too heavy and too strong.
Seduca laughed at her screams of pain when suddenly a large animal came charging from the shadows and pounced on Seduca, knocking her off Bubbles and making her scream hysterically in rage. Bubbles didn't wait to see what it was but instead continued to run. Another howl tore into the sky over Seduca's increasingly panicked screams, a howl from behind her.
Bubbles turned to see a large wolf staring at her. Its eyes were sharp and red. Blood stained its snout. It carried Seduca's head in its jaws by her hair. The girl stared at it for a moment. Seduca eyes were open but rolled back, her mouth was open as if in surprise more than horror.
"You killed the monster," said Bubbles faintly. The wolf dropped the head and let its tongue loll out of its mouth as it panted. She stroked its snout, knowing not to be afraid of it.
Two other large wolves appeared either side of it both watching Bubbles.
"I know you," Bubbles sighed, "you-you were the ones that followed me here. You couldn't step into the Castle's shadow."
One of the wolves, one with pale blue eyes, stepped forward and licked her face gently. It was then that she realised that, for now, she was safe.