Poor, Pretty Creature

Chapter One

Chapter One

When I first opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything beyond the merciless pounding in my head. My mouth tasted a little funny, a bit like blood, and my entire body ached, in that same way that your feet tend to when you’ve been on them all day.

I blinked, and something began to come into view: a cross, carved from what looked to be some sort of white wood and hung up on a wall that was, similarly, made from wood.

I didn’t remember any of that.

Shifting my weight to get a better look at the room around me, something tugged at my arms above my head with a rattling sound. My stomach dropped; I knew that sound. Not from real life, of course, but from movies. The sort of movies that Jacob would turn on and laugh at, while I hid behind my hands to avoid the gorier scenes. Because these sorts of movies always included gory scenes. I glanced up to confirm it, and sure enough, it was true: my hands had been chained to the bedpost above me. Not tied, not even handcuffed; chained.

That was when panic began to set in.

My eyes roved wildly over the room, desperately trying to take it all in, to remember something about it, some reason why I might be here, chained to a f*****g bed. I couldn’t remember anything. Altogether, it was a fairly nondescript room; small, with little more to furnish it than a dresser, an old-fashioned wooden chest, the bed I was lying on, and the cross that hung on the wall. There was a window, but it was on the other side of the room, small and high like the window to a prison cell. Needless to say, I couldn’t see anything through it. Atop the dresser, someone had left a collection of glass bottles, filled to their skinny necks with some sort of clear liquid and bearing only tiny crosses on their fronts. What was that supposed to be? My entire water supply for while I was kept here? The urine of girls who had been kept here before me?

Okay, stop that.

I didn’t know that I was being held hostage yet.

Think. There had to be a reason—a real, everyday, not terrifying reason why I was here.

Think.

There had to be a reason.

Try as I may, however, I simply could not conjure any memory of this room, or of being chained to a f*****g bed.

Okay; not this room then. Forget this room. What is the last thing that you can remember at all? Where were you before you were here?

Forcing myself to remember things made my head pound harder than ever though. Sorting through my memories was like searching for something important, something crucial, that was hidden within a thick fog. And every once in a while, I thought I spotted something through the fog, but I could never be entirely sure. Was it real? Was it what I was looking for?

Had I been drugged?

No, no, don’t think about that; just focus on remembering. Where were you?

Slowly, pieces began to fall into place. I could remember music, and chatter, and the warmth of too many human bodies packed together in one small space... a bar? Oh, I’d definitely been drugged. Or maybe I’d merely been drinking; I had never been drunk before, so maybe this was just what it was like. The genuine college experience: waking up in a stranger’s bed with a pounding headache and no memory of the night before. Chained to the f*****g bedpost. Yeah, that was it.

But why had I been in a bar? I mean, it wasn’t really my scene. I typically spent my Friday nights in one of two ways: studying alone in my room, or movie nights with Jacob. There was no real variation on that schedule. So if I had gone to a bar, then I hadn’t been alone... There must have been another, someone who had talked me into it...

Through the fog, my mind conjured up a single image: a glass of frothy, golden beer with a hand wrapped around it, the skin white as snow, unnaturally pale even, the acrylic fingernails long and pointed at the ends, painted a deep, dark red...

Mircalla?

Maybe this was Mircalla’s house then. Maybe I had gotten really, really, stupidly drunk and Mircalla had taken me here to let me sleep it off... I mean, this place didn’t look like anything I would have imagined for Mircalla, and I really don’t know why she would have chained me to the f*****g bed, but those were all details that could be dealt with later. My number one priority was getting unchained from the f*****g bed.

Emboldened by the idea that it was only Mircalla I was talking to, I licked my dry lips and called out, “Hey!”

Nothing happened. I tried again. “Hey! Mircalla? Mircalla’s roommates? Is anyone there?”

Was that a bang? Was that another one? Yes; footsteps, coming closer and closer to the door. I held my breath, though I didn’t know why. It was only Mircalla after all.

The door pulled open only a crack, just enough to allow a single gangly figure to slip into the room, and then shut the door fast behind him. He wasn’t Mircalla.

They say that your average murderer-r****t-kidnapper is exactly who you wouldn’t expect; just a normal white, suburban man who would deliver your mail, or wave to you on the way to school. And if that was the case, then this guy most certainly fit the bill. He was young, maybe even younger than me, and by all accounts, handsome. He most certainly didn’t look like he would need to go to the lengths of kidnapping to get a girlfriend, with his neat, short blonde hair and his piercing blue eyes. But he was handsome in a rather nondescript way, so that the only thing that would have made him stand out in a crowd were his clothes. He was dressed in a crisp and clean, old-fashioned black suit, making him look like he had just stepped out of a photograph from the Victorian period or something.

I tried to drink in every line and curve of his face, every mole or scar that might identify him, and this time, I made no attempt to deny the reason: so that I could give an accurate description of him to the police later.

“Oh,” he said, his voice somewhat high-pitched and unsteady. “You’re awake.”

I didn’t know what to do. I just stared at him, wondering if it was safe to speak back. I mean, he had brought me here for a reason, right? He had chained me, drugged me, for a reason. But at the same time, he was just a kid. Lanky, but thin. Remove these chains from the equation, and I could have beaten him off.

So I swallowed the lump in my throat, and I took a risk: “who are you?” I asked.

The boy stood there, eyes wide. Was it my imagination, or was he trembling? What reason did he have to be afraid? Unless he wasn’t the one who had kidnapped me. Maybe his father? Or maybe—

“Jonathan,” he said at last. “What am I doing here, Jonathan? Where am I?” I asked.

Again, there was a long pause before the boy spoke. “You don’t remember?”

Was there something I was supposed to remember? Had something happened at the bar? Where was Mircalla? Was she safe? Had he done something to her?

“Fascinating,” Jonathan mumbled to himself when I failed to answer. He crossed the room toward the dresser, and extracted from the topmost drawer a leather bound notebook and a—was that a quill and inkwell? How old was this guy?

Come to think of it, there didn’t seem to be any electricity in this room either; no alarm clock, no computers, nothing at all. Not even a phone. In fact, the only source of light appeared to be a large candle, resting in a solid black candelabra on the dresser.

I wondered if my cell phone was still in my jeans. Somehow, I doubted it. And besides, even if it was, it would probably be dead by now.

The boy quickly scribbled something in the notebook, and then, leaving it open as though to dry, he turned back to me. His lips still carved a deep frown into his visage, but there was a light in his pale eyes that hadn’t been there before. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not; I must have been giving him what he wanted, whatever that was.

“Unchain me,” I said, giving a light tug on my binds as though to prove what I was referring to.

He didn’t even blink.

“I have a class I need to get to today. My best friend will be there, and he’ll notice if I’m not. He’ll try to contact me, and if he can’t, he’ll call my parents, and they’ll probably call the police—”

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said, his voice so low that I quite nearly missed it over the sound of my own. “I’m sorry about your friend, and I’m sorry about your parents. Nobody should have to go through what they’re going to.”

Any warmth that might have remained within my body drained away immediately. “What does that mean? What are you going to do to me?” I asked, my lips feeling oddly numb.

He looked away from me then, busying himself by closing up his leather bound notebook and methodically returning it, along with the quill and inkwell, to the dresser drawer.

“Please be quiet while you’re here,” he said softly. “Nobody else knows that I have you, and it would be better for us both if it remained that way. I’ll spend as much time with you as I can, but don’t think that I can’t hear you just because you can’t see me. If I find out you’ve been screaming too much, or if they find out that you’re here, then I’ll have to hurt you and I don’t want to do that. Trust me; I’m doing everything I can to help you.”

“Unchain me,” I repeated.

“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Undo these f*****g chains and let me go,” I hissed.

At that, he winced. “Please don’t speak like that while you’re here either. Ladies shouldn’t swear.”

“Well, if you wanted a lady, then you got the wrong f*****g girl! So let me go and play out your sick s*x fantasies with someone else!”

Jonathan’s brows knitted together, as though in deep concern. He opened his mouth to argue, but apparently decided against it. He heaved a deep sigh, his shoulders slumping in resignation.

“I understand,” he said. “You’re upset, and I’m sure that my presence in only aggravating that. I won’t deny, that saddens me, but I understand. I’ll leave you alone for a bit. Just remember what I said about screaming, okay?”

He turned back upon the door then, opening it just enough for him to slide his body through and then shutting it fast behind himself.