Page 18 of Beautiful Venom
Deep darkness envelops me as the door slowly shuts behind me. The low creak is followed by a softclickthat thuds in my chest.
I can’t see anything.
Not even my hands.
I reach behind me for the knob and touch something cold and flat. Like a small metal plate. I feel around, my short nails getting stuck in the cracks of the wood, but there’s no way to open it.
A shattered exhale slips through my lips, and I remain completely still, barely sensing my own existence.
I’m stuck.
I don’t like feeling stuck.
Not after I was trapped in the car with my dead parents for several hours before I was found.
I’d like to think I’ve gotten over my slight claustrophobia, but the more I look and see nothing, the tighter my chest squeezes.
Drip.
I startle, searching around like a caged animal.
Drip.
Water. It has to be water coming from somewhere.
Cold air bites into my skin and the pungent smell of moist earth, along with the faint stench of something rotten, linger in my nostrils.
I stretch my arms out on either side of me and touch damp stone.
A tunnel?
A cave?
Carefully, I take one step forward, then follow with another while still touching the stone. The silence is oppressive, only broken by the occasional drip of water ringing in the darkness. Each footstep is loud, almost as if the walls are echoing them.
Once I’m sure the ground is safe, I walk faster. My clothes cling uncomfortably to my skin and my heart beats loudly. So loudly, I can only hear the thumping in my ears.
Someone once said it isn’t darkness that’s scary, it’s what lurks inside it.
So despite the complete annihilation of my vision, I still squint and blink and struggle to make out something, anything around me.
I’m not sure how long I walk, but it’s long enough that I feel the strain and my throat turns dry. But maybe that’s because of how hyperaware I am. As if I’m waiting for one of those horror-ride skeletons to jump out at me.
Though I could handle that or any other horror-esque scenarios. Fictional jump scares don’t faze me. Not when I spent my childhood surrounded by actual monsters.
I walk farther, still feeling the walls, my heartbeat finally dropping to a relatively normal rhythm.
My trial is probably at the end of the tunnel. The sooner I get there, the better.
“Dahlia?”
I still, my breathing deepening, and a shocking shiver slashes through me.
M-Mom?
I haven’t heard that voice since I was six. It’s been over fifteen years. After my parents’ deaths, I hopped from one home to another, meeting one foster ‘mom’ after the other until they all blended together, but I could never forget Mama’s voice.
The softness, the affection, and the slight exhaustion from spending late nights sewing dresses.
