dawn wilkerson: Thanks :) I try

Q the omnipotent night fury: Thanks XD And you're close; a rutabaga is a cross between a cabbage and a turnip (literally). In some places, like the UK, it's known as a swede. And yeah, it does look kinda like a giant beet ;)

rutabagacostumeD: Heh, thanks. And you wanted more...well, you got more ;)

Light...light...where's the damn light? I knew there was one; I'd caught a glimpse of the switch on the far wall just before that door had slammed shut and trapped me in here. I just had to find it, push it and hope that it worked.

Luckily for me, when I finally found it, it lit up the whole room.

Unluckily, it lit up a lot more of the room than I'd really wanted to see.

I hadn't been too far off when I thought of it as a butcher's storeroom. The dim, shadowy objects I'd seen swaying gently on their own little hooks were carcasses, same as you'd find in a place like that. There was just one difference.

These were human.

They weren't – how shall I put this? – entire; there was nothing hanging there but the torsos, which was why I hadn't recognized the silhouettes. Someone had dismembered them, taking off the arms, legs and head with surgical precision.

I couldn't help it; I turned, stumbled a few steps away and vomited helplessly. I hate throwing up. Apart from the actual sensation and that nasty, slimy taste it leaves in your mouth, it also leaves those ugly dark red pinpricks all over your face...at least, it does with my face. Maybe other people don't have to worry.

I straightened up very carefully; the last thing I wanted was to hit my head on one of those torsos. I wondered if any of the male ones belonged to Kevin Heath, and if so, which one.

Kevin Heath.

The name kept going around and around in my head, like a song you can't get rid of.

He'd been a high school student, whose name I only remembered because he hailed from the outskirts of Michigan, which happens to be Hannibal's hometown. Well. Kinda. I mean, Hannibal was an Army brat, so he moved around a lot.

He'd also gone out hiking with a friend and vanished aged fifteen (Kevin, not Hannibal), which had baffled police. He'd been a good student, no trouble with drugs or at home, no reason to run away. The friend – naturally the Number One Suspect – was distraught but had no idea what had happened. Far as I know, the police had stayed baffled right up until an unmarked video was mailed to the Heath household, postmarked Philadelphia.

I don't know the details of what was on that video; the parents never released it to the press, although I'm sure they had some good offers for it. What I know from the papers – and yeah, the story made it all the way to LA – was what the police told the press: that the video showed Kevin Heath's last moments, from the time he woke up to the time he was slaughtered. The reporters described it as a gruesome demise, and even though they tend to exaggerate, if the poor kid had ended up in that corridor, then gruesome demise would have been quite accurate. I don't often care about murders that take place on the other side of the country, but I remember feeling a pang of sympathy for the Heath family. Knowing your kid was dead had to be bad enough; watching it happen on your own TV added a new layer of sadism to the whole thing. And you would watch it; there was always the chance it could be a ransom video or something.

I sat down on the floor as I thought about who was behind this (my knee had started twinging after I'd made my way through that damn corridor. I wondered if I'd tweaked a muscle or something).

There had to be a limit to the number of rooms in this building. Same went for there being a way out; whoever put me here didn't push me in through the wall. Even if they'd dragged me all the way through the building, they'd have had to get me inside at some point. Whoever was behind this was mechanically talented and probably trained, to rig up something like the blades I'd seen back there. Someone who didn't want to kill me themselves, but instead wanted to watch me die. Add that to the video and that meant there were a few cameras and mikes scattered around the place. Okay, I hadn't seen any back in that cellar, but then, I hadn't thought to look.

I did a quick sweep now, pushing the dangling torsos out of my way with as much dignity as I could manage. Nothing. Maybe this guy had stuffed them inside the torsos themselves.

I glanced at one, then backed away from it. Uh uh. No way was I rummaging around inside there; if he had planted cameras and mikes inside dead and semi-frozen bodies, then they'd just have to stay in there. If I did die and if a copy of my death video found its way to Hannibal, I'd rather he see me perform a sloppy search than see me unhook a dismembered torso and then root around in it with my bare hands.

At least now I knew for certain it wasn't the Army (while I'd never really suspected Decker, I hadn't quite ruled out the possibility of some new officer rising to our challenge). Even they wouldn't set up something like this and murder several innocent people just to get to us. That was the other thing I knew; Kevin wasn't the only victim of this jerk, just the most recent one.

Well, second most recent. I was the most recent.

That thought kicked me back into action and I headed back to the door. There was no handle on this side, and I wasn't stupid enough to try kicking this one like I had the last one. I'd seen this door as I opened it. It was solid metal and about six inches thick; if I kicked it, I'd be lucky not to break every bone in my foot.

I turned around and paused as my gaze fell on the large freezer at the other end of the room, a new thought occurring to me.

Was that a way out? I'd seen a panic room designed on those lines in one of my house sitting jobs; you opened the closet, pushed your way past the clothes and went through a secret door on the other side into the room itself. Kinda like a commando style (and much smaller) Narnia. I figured it had to be worth a try. At the very least I'd find out what was in the freezer; maybe I could use whatever I found to help escape, or find out where I was.

It turned out to be a dead body.

Well...more than one, actually. It was a little hard to tell which limbs went with which torso and I wasn't interested in playing jigsaw.

I swallowed. I'm not a squeamish man or even a particularly superstitious one, but the thought of hurling limbs over my shoulder and treading on frozen, dead fingers as I climbed down into that freezer for an exit that might not even be there didn't sit well with me.

All these people...There had to be some twelve torsos swinging on their hooks, and at least twice as many arms and legs, which made a grisly sort of sense when I thought about it logically, but that didn't make it any easier.

I searched the room for any way out, including trying the door several times (no go; it was still as sealed as it had been the last fifteen or so times I tried it). Believe me, I searched it, and when I was done, I searched it again. You know. Just in case I'd missed anything the first time.

Ah man, who am I kidding? The truth is I was stalling, trying my best to put off the moment when I'd have to examine that freezer more closely.

Was there any way I could take the lid off? I'm not what you'd call claustrophobic but I didn't want to get in all the time there was a chance it would slam shut and trap me like the door just had. Slow asphyxiation in the pitch dark was not my ideal choice of death (that involved extreme old age, champagne and several beautiful women. And for any gods who might be listening, nurses don't count! At least, not for this fantasy).

Where was I? Oh right; stalling.

The lid opened and shut easily enough – unlike that damn door – but I couldn't even see how it was attached to the freezer, let alone how to unattach it. As far as I could see, that only left me one option, and so I began unpacking the freezer with as much dignity as I could, trying very hard not to notice how the ice on those limbs made my skin stick to them. It's at (very rare) times like this that I miss having Tawnia around; her talon like fingernails would have been far better suited to this kinda thing.

The little part of my mind that seemed to work independently of the rest of me wondered if any of these arms and legs had belonged to poor Kevin. At least there were no heads in that freezer. I didn't know if they'd been hidden somewhere else, but I sure as hell wasn't about to go on a scavenger hunt.

Once the freezer was empty, I bent over and peered inside.

Turned out I was right. I could see hinges on one side of the bottom, and a bolt on the other. There was no lock on the bolt and it didn't look rusty, but it was too far for me to just reach down and unfasten. I'd have to get right in there, or...

I frowned, then hoisted myself onto the edge of the freezer, gripping it tightly between my legs. I'd done this a time or two back at the orphanage, when I'd wanted to get some ice cream without anyone else knowing. Ice cream was a serious luxury, only available to the Very Good Kids, and that only on Very Special Occasions. I was never considered a Good Kid (let alone a Very Good Kid) and so the only way I ever got to taste ice cream growing up was to sneak into the kitchens and take it for myself. This trick had worked then; I didn't see why it wouldn't work now.

Holding on tightly with my knees, I leaned sideways and reached down, managing to grasp hold of the bolt and slide it back. The trapdoor (in this case, the bottom of the freezer) dropped open. I listened for the clang as it hit the wall below, but couldn't hear it. That was good. It meant I could lower myself down, roll in that direction and not be afraid of hitting anything.

I clambered back out, retrieved Hannibal's rutabaga costume and dropped it through the trapdoor. At least I'd have a fairly soft landing, although I wasn't sure what kind of room I'd be landing in. All I could see was concrete.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go further underground, although now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure that I would be. I mean, I'd assumed I was in a cellar or a basement when I first woke up, but all I'd really had to confirm that was the smell. It had certainly smelled like a cellar, that kind of dank, wet smell, but I have to admit that my nose is not my most reliable organ when it comes to pinpointing my location. I guess I could just as easily have been on the top floor for all I knew...which let out any convenient thoughts of jumping out the first window I came to.

So instead of working my way up and across, I have to work my way down?

Well, it was an exit, of sorts, and if I ended up trapped in a tiny little room with no way out, at least it was no worse than being trapped here.

I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and dropped.

Okay...kinda short, I know, but it seemed a good place to end it ;) Hope you enjoyed it and if you read, please review!