Rule Number 2: When it rains, it pours. So bring an umbrella.
Body? Check. Legs? check. Head? Throbbing. Fingers? Check, kinda ticklish though. Something warm and hairy nudges softly at my fingertips. Oh Gods no, there’s a rat nibbling my fingers! Faster than I have ever moved in my entire life, I’m pulling my hands away. I think at one point I broke the sound barrier. That is the only explanation I will accept for the sound that ensues. I hope no one else heard that, I have a reputation to uphold. After regaining my composure, as well as my dignity, I run my hands across the rough bare-brick walls that make up my current lodging. It’s cool to the touch. My eyes dart around the room in the hopes of orientating myself in my new surroundings. I can trace the faint outline of a door mounted on the south wall of the room. I don’t need to approach it to know that it can’t be opened from this side. Pale, yellow beams streaming into the room from a head-sized circular aperture on it are my only source of illumination. The meagre light it provides leaves much to be desired. It takes a while for my eyes to become accustomed to the semi-darkness but I manage to make out some empty cardboard boxes of varying sizes and a fist-sized hole in the corner of this worryingly small room. Likely where my other roommates emerged from in search of food. They found me. This isn’t even the first time today something has wanted a taste of me. If it even is still today. Who knows how long I was knocked out for. Thankfully, I only came out with a few bruises and a sore jaw. You should see the other guy.
“I didn’t know we captured a little girl.” The voice is a little muffled, passing through the door separating us but I can make out the words just fine. I’m not going to live this one down.
“Would you believe me if I told you I was briefly possessed by a young girl with a truly debilitating phobia of the dark?” I venture.
“Yes, of course and I’m the Duchess of Cornwall.” the mysterious voice replies without missing a beat.
“Oh my, I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of royalty. You must forgive my not greeting you properly on account of my current predicament. Perhaps I could count on the Duchess’ help in liberating myself?”
The Duchess lets out a short, wry laugh. “You seem to be under the impression that we share a relationship whereby I am obligated to render you any service. You would be thoroughly mistaken.”
“My apologies, I haven’t even introduced myself yet.” My mother raised me better than that. “Where are my manners? My name is Leon James III.”
“We know who you are.” Fame really isn’t what it used to be. These days you’d hope no one knows who you are unless you’ve got the firepower or manpower to back you up. I happen to lack both at the moment.
“My reputation precedes me here, I see!” Told you I had one to uphold. “Where is here exactly, if I may ask?”
“Here is the Cage.” That shuts me up straight away. I’m sure it only took a few seconds in reality but hours later the sound of receding footsteps reaches my ears.
I have a curated list of places I don’t want to ever set foot in. I’ve got the usual candidates: the Bermuda Triangle, haunted houses, the entire country of England. The Cage ranks top of that list. The place courage comes to shrivel up and die: the Cage is the real bogeyman. Every grime-stained tile is a scary story that would fit better in a criminal report than being told around a campfire. Each crumbling copper brick of this sinister edifice is a secret lying undiscovered. If the walls really had ears they would have ripped them off by now, blood be damned. The Strays have only been in possession of it for the last few months but few know just how steeped in horrors this place truly is. I miss the time I was blissfully unaware of it myself. I don’t fear what the Strays could do to me. I fear becoming one of the many ghosts that haunt this place, chained in perpetuity to this monument of misery and human suffering. My head throbs even more as my heart threatens to leap from my throat with each haggard beat. It makes me sick to even think about it. Slumped in the corner of a room getting more cramped the longer I stay in it, I turn my eyes to the hole that leads to the rats’ hideout and envy their sweet ignorance.
My mouth is bone dry and I’m drenched in my own sweat. The salt and water combination stings every inch of my body for some reason. I don’t know when, but I fell asleep. I know because I remember the nightmare I just woke up from. It was your typical concoction of terror; being chased by whatever monster-ish entity, in the latest hellscape of your mind’s creation until it either caught you or you woke up. Unfortunately, that is where the similarities end. The details are all too clear to me: I was running through a dark forest in the dusk that appears close to the winter solstice. The kind where the sky darkens all too fast and every shade of purple imaginable mingles with the last, desperate amber rays from a waning sun. The forest had no discernible path, just hard soil that hardly gave way as my bare feet touched upon them and thick under-growths that would trip me up if I lost my focus. The trees themselves were tall crooked things that were blackened to the point of being burnt. They resembled disfigured reapers with their scythe-like branches primed to lop my head off with a misstep. My lungs burned with the exertion and my legs were on the verge of giving out, but I couldn’t stop there. I couldn’t stop anywhere, I could feel its cold breath down my neck. I didn’t dare look back. Without warning, the forest opened up into a quiet clearing. At the edge of the clearing, against all the powers of reasoning I had at my disposal, I decided to stop and turn to face my pursuer. I expected to come face to face with some Lovecraftian demon or a fiendish creature with an appetite for dashing young men. I couldn’t have been more wrong…or wished I was right even more.
“You should cut your hair, you look more handsome that way.”
Her voice was undeniably soft but still grated harshly in my ear as I listened. Warm, sticky blood trickled from my ears. Robed in a flowing, black gown that dripped scarlet at the hems, her skin shone with a terrible brown-copper glow. But it was the eyes that took hold of me. Yellow and bright as the midday sun, with an intensity and fierceness to match, yet the pupils were as nebulous as ever. They seemed to have their own gravitational pull.
“Thanks, mom. Nice to see you too.”
As the words left my mouth I watched as the ends of her lips curled upwards into a smile. It wasn’t until after I woke up that I realized just how off that smile was. As if someone had attached strings haphazardly to them and pulled each end much too high to be normal. I shudder now thinking about it. I’ve always envied those with the ability to control their dreams. No such luck with me.
She began to lift herself up even higher. I had to strain just to even look up at her. It was then that it dawned on me: she wasn’t rising. I was sinking, slowly being dragged beneath the ground by a mass of dirt-covered hands scrambling to grab whatever part of me they could. There must have been hundreds of hands with nails gnarled and serrated as they hooked into me. Try as I might, I couldn’t resist them. Every muscle in my body had seized up, refusing to obey even the simplest command. Their nails bit into my skin as they dragged me lower. Even as they scratched and clawed at me no sound would come out of me. As cool, brown soil touched a new area of skin the nerves within it were set alight. The soil reached my chin, then my mouth and nose. My body was ablaze, enduring the pain of ten thousand raging flames under my skin. Still my gaze was fixed on her. I couldn’t break it if I tried. No screams or cries for help. It seemed I would drown in silence. I was almost under when I heard her last words. They floated down to me and tore at my eardrums. “Go back to sleep.” And ice ran through the marrow of my bones.
My mother is still alive. That’s no revelation, I always knew she was. She was–is a nurse. She was working the day it all started. I was in Wicklow partying with some friends while she was alone as the whole world went to hell. It took a few hours to get back into the city, but days to reach my home. National panic really puts a damper on the transport system. That and the hordes.
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