CH 3

I shouldn't move.

For no particular reason, the child knew to stay still. In uncertain darkness, what lay in the abyss beyond where she crouched?

But after a certain point, it was terribly hard not to move.

Squelch.
She froze instantly. There was something gel-like and gummy under her foot. The little girl held her breath and waited in apprehension, but nothing happened. What exactly had she stepped on? Wary confusion flitted lazily around her mind, but her thighs were sore from crouching and curiosity, coupled with the lack of other feasible options, overruled caution. Shakily, the child tucked her fists under her armpits and rose to her feet, gazing frightfully into the shadows as her pupils adjusted. She peered down.
A life-sized, obscure lump rested there.

The child squeaked in alarm and backpedaled slightly, falling onto her knees. She scrutinized the shapeless substance, momentarily paralyzed. For no particular reason, she entertained the idea that the rancid odor filling this stone prison seemed to come from the mystery lump. It was a somewhat familiar scent, actually, and she began to sort through memories from years before to pinpoint its identity.
When the girl was younger, she had accidentally left a cut of pork belly her mother requested from the butcher exposed on the table over a humid summer night. It had spoiled, and the smell was horrific.
The odor she breathed now was unmistakably similar.

A visceral understanding of what really lay before her surfaced into the conscious mind before the child directly peeked at the rotting corpse. She bit back an awful scream.

The decaying body might as well have been her own; it was uncannily similar in size and stature. Pale, pasty flesh and viscous, buttery gel melted off its bones, flowing sluggishly out of the holes of a moth-eaten, layered dress. Its skin was peeling off like papery, feathered scales. Gray bones poked out from the sinew-webbed joints, and stalks of bleached, lifeless hair grew like weeds on the dome of the scalp. Plump, wiggling maggots crawled in and out of hollow sockets where a pair of crying eyes once rested.

Shaking from utter shock, the child's small body heaved with hot, rapid breaths of terror at the grisly display. It felt as if ants were skittering up every inch of her skin, pouring into her mouth, ears, and nostrils in shiny black waves of legs and pincers. Her throat tightened. Gathering up courage, she crawled tentatively towards the corpse, anxiously pawing at her own eyes to make sure that maggots were not wiggling out of those. Noticeably, the white chiffon dress on the corpse was an exact copy of the one spread out on a bed above her, next to several others. The child peered at the straw hair and empty sockets.

She must've had blue eyes. Rumia must've had blue eyes too. How many have died here? How did she die? How am I going to die?

She was going to die. The little girl forced herself to her feet brushed the dust off her new dress, shuddering violently. Skirting the body, she tiptoed around the stone prison, looking for something, anything that would help her in any way, maybe even preserve her life.

Other corpses in vastly varying stages of decomposition littered the stone floor. The little girl's blood ran cold as she realized that she was trapped in a room with not one, but multiple bodies sprawled at her feet. Fear coursed hotly through her veins as her short-lived determination faded once more.

I'm going to die.

However, she was only one who will rot in a black dress. How unique. The child sat back down shakily and cupped her cheeks, trying to clear her mind.

Not far across, a scrap doll lay mutilated on the ground with cotton stuffing spilling out of its abdomen. Half its head was missing, but it was endearing in its own grotesque way. Seeing it, the child made her way to the ugly doll, tiptoeing around the slick human slime coating the floor. With a squeak, she clutched it by an arm and rushed to a clean spot where the door was, a well-worn semi-circle where the heavy wood often scraped as it was opened and shut. Hugging what's left of the disfigured scrap doll, she wondered who the previous owner was. Absorbing whatever warmth that it offered, the child closed her eyes and sat against the door, wrapping the doll in tight embrace.

"La, la la, la la la—"

Her heart nearly stopped. Skin crawling, the little girl opened her eyes and stared at the otherwise empty room.

"La, la la, la la la—"

The lilting melody echoed softly again—sweet, off-tune, and ingenuously child-like, yet undeniably eerie, ethereal, and dissonant in a melancholy minor key. The child gasped, petrified, as bead of sweat inched slowly down the tip of her nose. Her eyes darted paranoidly across the room, looking for the source of the voice. Shrill, giggling voices rose from the blackness.

"My, another Rumia!"

"Failed his test too, did you?"

"No, but your dress—"

"How many of us are here now? I've really begun to lose count."

"Excuse me! That's my doll! Give her back!"

A slight breeze brushed past her left arm. The child stood up in a flash, visibly spooked. Suddenly, she realized that her scrap doll was no longer in her arms. However, she was so far beyond terrified that she was attacked by fatigue rather than fear. With a last glance at the dead bodies, the child slumped back down against the door—dizzy, lightheaded, and still slightly disbelieving. Her body began to shut down under stress. Her breath shallowed and slowed, and she let her heavy eyelids fall, unable to digest the recent events. At last, sleep found her and she embraced it with gratefulness.

Footsteps echoed beyond the door, gradually increasing in volume. Without warning, it burst open in a strained creak, sending the unconscious child tumbling forward with a sleepy cry—into a half-decayed corpse. The wolf man loomed expressionlessly at the doorway, torch in one hand. He threw a loaf of bread inside.

"Where is my daughter?" he demanded.

The little girl did not hear, for her horror-stricken eyes were riveted on the freshly-severed head of the body. It lolled lethargically and came to a halt inches from her finger, accusing holes glaring up at her. The hollow sockets vomited waves and waves of resident maggots and cockroaches, along with their larva and slimy eggs. The impact of the fall had shattered the body's delicate neck and some other parts of spine. The little girl yelped kicked the skull away, where half of the cranium shattered again a wall. The last of the bugs were rocked out of their homes and scrambled away to occupy other skulls. She reeled backwards in guilt and disgust.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry…" she whimpered.

The wolf man noted her answer with an amused nod. The door slammed shut. Startled, child whipped her head around as the amber firelight disappeared abruptly.

"Wait! Stop!" the blonde stumbled over and plastered herself against the ancient wood, pounding it with a bruised fist as the madman's footsteps receded, "Please let me out! Please!"

After an hour of sobbing, the flushed, exhausted child wilted and fell to her knees before the unrelenting door, bawling and sucking her bloody knuckles. Eventually, she gave in to hunger and scooted over to the dirty loaf. With tears still spilling from her eyes, she began to pick at the spongey flesh, sniffling and hiccupping.

"I preferred to have had a head."

The child choked on the food and doubled over in a paroxysm of coughing. After recovering, she surveyed the room with swollen eyes, locking gazes with the misshapen skull lying in a pile of shattered cranium.

"Cockroaches are great company. They're resourceful, resilient bugs, really. But maggots don't quite compare though."

Suspiciously eyeing the skeleton head, the child munched warily on the bread. The world no longer felt real. Her earlier life was a faraway dream, as was nearly everything after the moment has passed.

As she swept the food around her mouth with her tongue, she noticed something leathery in a particular mouthful. There was a bit that did not quite have the same consistency as the rest of the loaf. Spitting out a wad of semi-digested bread, she gingerly picked through the mushy paste—pulling out a small, wet strip of paper.

Examining it in wonder, the child managed to make out some tiny black scribbles. She wiped off any excess paste, then brought the strip up to her nose and squinted. In neat, childish handwriting was a short, cryptic message:

I'm up the pipe.

Up the pipe? The little girl faintly recalled hearing the same words whispered in her ear sometime before. Is there an exit up the pipe? But after further observation, it became abundantly clear that there was definitely no pipe in the stony prison. It was a suffocating hole in the ground with only one exit, but otherwise cut off from the rest of the world. The hopelessness of her situation was emphasized once more, and the despondent child lay down tiredly on her side. Dark circles sagged under her eyes and she closed them, hoping that they would never open again.

The passage of time was indefinite. Eventually, the wolf man came to visit again, bearing bread as well as the same, impossible question. The child reacted slightly to the flickering flame of his torch but stared, unhearing, at nothing in particular with dull, glassy eyes. She did not reply.

"Tomorrow," sneered the wolf man as he chucked the loaf at her face, "I may—say—forget to come. I'm a very busy man, I'm afraid. I suggest you answer me quickly before that happens."

Despite being threatened, the wide blue eyes were not staring at the wolf man in fear. They were staring past him at the corridor outside—at a loosely-barred vent that appeared to lead to a complex network of pipes beneath the mansion. Again, she did not reply.

Seething, the wolf man turned and shut the door, furious footsteps receding into the distance. His patience was wearing thin. When the angry stomping could no longer be heard, the child scrabbled over the messy bodies and fell prone on the bread, tearing it to shreds.

"She's about lost it."

"Poor thing. She's gone mad."

"Is she not eating?"

"No, I don't think so. She's gotten further than any of us, though."

Was she even real? Had she any true autonomy in her life at all? Was she the universe's toy, and was every single person going to play with her before one has way too much fun and finally snaps her fragile neck? Her consistent misfortune felt as if it was coordinated by every being in the world, as if some transcendental god was watching gleefully from its high throne as she tore blindly around an impossible maze, hurting and bleeding as she bumped into wall after wall. The child clutched her head as insanity brewed inside.

Something white caught the corner of her eye. Amidst the flurry of crumbs, she fished out a strip of paper and held it under her eyes, trembling.

Kill him.

The little girl ran her fingers down the wall, studying each word as she read it again.

Kill him.

Throughout her life, she had been reminded numerous times of how little power she had to do anything in this world. However, she had just found something she did have control over, something she could do under her own volition. The child crushed the paper scrap decisively in her fist.

I will.

She knelt and voraciously devoured the pieces of bread that carpeted the ground like fallen snowflakes.