<div style="background-color:#000000; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="background-color:#470000; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="background-color:#800000; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="background-color:#000000; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a class="postlink" href="http://i.imgur.com/3da4nIm.png">[ img ]</a><br/><br/>___________________________________________________________</div><br/><br/><table width="100%"><tr><td style="vertical-align: top; width:50%; padding-right:10px;">The smell of rancid cigarettes was the first thing she noticed, slowly coming to as the world filtered back into being. It burned her nose, overpowering her senses and causing her stomach to turn. Bile, acrid and strong, moved up her throat as her mind ran a mile a minute. What made even less sense to her were the sounds she could hear from somewhere close by, even more out of place than the cigarettes. Loud and unbidden, to seemed hot and heavy somewhere in her vicinity, the sounds of a banging headboard and the high pitched screams of a woman mingled with the low groans of another filled her ears. Somewhere else, the screams of what she could only assume was a child were met with angry yelling of the exasperated cries of a mother who couldn’t get them to stop.<br/><br/>But none of this made sense. She wasn’t anywhere these sounds would be found. She’d been trying to find a signal for her phone because her car had stopped on the road. …And then it’d gone black. Wracking her brain, she struggled to piece together what had led her to end up…wherever she was. Blurry eyes opened, scanning a room that held little more than fuzzy figures and dull lighting as she tried to piece together the missing links.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Think. Think! What is the last thing you remember?</span><br/><br/>There she lay, the bed her body rested atop of barely registered in the wake of the new development. No, she was miles away on a deserted road, her arm up in the air with the brilliantly-lit screen flashing at her.<br/><br/>“Damn it!” Helena hissed beneath her breath as she tried standing on tiptoe as if that would magically bring the bars to her. Grumbling about the unreliability of modern technology and why it’d not progressed beyond having no dead zones, she looked down each stretch of road, the only real lights being her headlights and what light had come down through the trees was muted at best. The woman let out a sigh, bringing her phone back down to her so she could watch it intently as she began her walk down the deserted road, no car in sight to worry about.<br/><br/>No sound seemed to reach her as she continued her walk along the road, only the sound of her heels clicking and her heart pounding in her ears kept her company. Even her phone sounded miles away as her mind began to run away with her, every horror movie she’d watched playing out in vivid detail. How many had she seen where they’d been trapped on a deserted road? Turning off for a motel wouldn’t work; killers worked out of those. Turning down side roads set you up to get ambushed. Staying on the road with a broken down car was no good, either. Getting picked up to catch a ride would end in the same fate. No matter how she spun it, she’d get murdered.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Relax. Those are movies and this is real life. Nothing like that happens here. Nothing. You’re fine. You just need a signal. Keep walking.</span> Her mind berated her for the stupid train of thought she’d carried on with, but even its stern tones did little to sway the ominous feeling that crept up her spine. She felt cold despite the weather being warm. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention, goosebumps peppering her arms. Glancing around, she saw nothing. No one around and no curious animals standing off to the side as she wandered, arm outstretched, searching for the elusive signal.</td><td style="vertical-align: top; width:50%; padding-left:10px;"><span style="font-weight: bold">SNAP!</span><br/><br/>A branch at her back broke, a few birds taking flight and causing her to jump out of her skin. Her phone bounced in her grip, struggling to catch it, barely managing to keep it from crashing to the ground as her heart hammered wildly. “It’s just the birds,” Helena panted to herself, hand clutching at her chest as she struggled to catch her breath. But, even saying aloud, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched, eyes scanning for whatever was responsible for the feeling, completely exposed.<br/><br/>Another sound had her jerking in the other direction, her eyes wide as her body remained frozen in place until the urge to run took hold, too much to ignore. Without warning, she made a break for her car, ditching her shoes as she went, the panic etched into her features as she ran for the headlights, ran for cover, ran for what security her sedan could offer her.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">But I never made it…</span> her mind filled in, the room beginning to filter in as the pain came with it. Along with the cigarettes that initially overwhelmed her, something else began to make itself known that had her blood running cold. It was blood that filled her nose, the copper worse than anything she’d caught up to that point. Her eyes refused to focus completely just then, so her next instinct was to feel around for something wet, something that she could lift to her face and see if red graced her fingertips.<br/><br/>…Only her arm wouldn’t move.<br/><br/>Frowning, the panic she’d begun to feel rising by the second as she tested the arm again, and then her other, finding them restrained. The more she pulled, the tighter they felt, her legs kicking as she tried to shift…but their movement, too, was limited. <span style="font-style: italic">This can’t be happening,</span> she thought, tears welling as she felt a scream building up in her throat, a sound that didn’t come out—couldn’t come out—as she wasn’t drawing in enough air to loose it. Instead, there it stayed, choking her as the panic became too much for her to take. The more she struggled, the more real it began to feel. The sounds of the rampant sex next door had all but disappeared. The screams of the child were of no consequence. All that remained was her, tied to a bed, hurt, in some room she didn’t recognize.<br/><br/>And she wasn’t alone.<br/><br/>It took her a while to spot him as everything seemed fuzzy and the tears that had risen in her eyes made what clearing vision she had diminish, but when she saw him, the scream that couldn’t fight its way out before came out at the top of her lungs until there was no air left in her lungs. But whomever this was, if they were sitting there so calmly, staring at her rather than helping her, they were obviously in on it and no friend to her.<br/><br/>“HELP!” she screamed, each devolving into sobs as she yanked at her restraints, thrashing about atop the bed in hopes that the sound and her pleas would draw attention. “SOMEONE, PLEASE! HELP!”</td></tr></table><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;">___________________________________________________________</div><br/><br/><span style="color: #000000">line break formatting</span></div></div></div></div>