The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Shaft
by Julianne Snow

Strung up, alone with my madness, I know the ground is far enough away to kill me should I give into the burning pain in my muscles. I should let myself relax into the air around me but I can’t let go despite the assurance I’ve been secured for later rounds.

They call it fun, these rounds of torture I’m made to endure. They’re anything but. At times I feel like the skin is being flayed from my bones. In others, my fingernails are pried a bit further from the tips of my fingers. My tongue has already been cut out and my screams have become guttural moans of pain.

I don’t blame them. I put myself in this position. Acting like what I was doing was normal, moral, and even sanctioned by a God none of us could see nor chose to believe in. How could we believe? Growing up, we’d all seen more pain, inflicted even more carnage on those around us. The many who fell through the cracks of society running rampant with a kill-before-being-killed mentality.

It’s a miracle I’d survived until now. Most would have died before my tender age of seventeen, succumbing to the streets filled with those up to no good.

And I had been one of them. One of the worst. Not afraid to slit the throat of my best friend for a dollar. Never loyal enough not to rat out my own mother for the chance to spare my own life until the next time something came calling in the night.

It led me to this moment in this shaft knowing my time had thankfully come. My body is tired from the constant fight for survival but my mind is sharp, still working on a way to get out, to get away. My mind fixates on the bloody handprint I know was on the inside of the shaft’s door. Proof someone had gotten out.

I vow to leave my own as I escape.

Fiction © Copyright Julianne Snow
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Julianne Snow:

The Dead of Penderghast Manor

What would you do if you knew the Dead could talk?

For Chester Penderghast, it’s not the easiest of questions to answer…

Ensconced in the basement of his family’s mortuary business is the last place he wants to be, but when the conversation starts flowing, Chester’s the only living person who can hear it. What do the Dead want, and why is he the only one who can hear them?

This is not your average zombie tale—the Dead don’t want to eat your brains, but they will chew your ear off!

Available on Amazon!