Page 187 of The Invite
Or how.
Confusion dots my head underneath the pounding.
A sixth sense warns me that in the next few seconds, I’ll be waking up to a nightmare. But I can’t avoid it, nor can I panic. Turning my head, I use my shoulder to scrub my eyes and crack them open.
The surroundings are a blur. Clarity swims in and out of focus.
Am I in… a basement?
A rotten smell permeates the air. Dust collects on the surface while old drain pipes run along the ceiling. I haven’t been here before.
Where am I?
Where’s Johnny?
A scraping noise pierces the deafening silence, followed by a fat rat running past me. My head snaps toward the direction it came from, and I scream, “Ahh!!”
Oh god!
Oh god!
Oh god!
“Johnny,” I choke out, tugging at the restraints. “Johnny!”
One of his eyes is swollen shut, while the other has a gnarly bruise like someone repeatedly punched him. His head hangs to his chest like he can’t hold it up. As I look closely past the tears forming in my eyelids, Pain curls tight in my stomach, sharp and relentless, as I notice he’s unconscious and lying naked in a pool of his own dried-up blood.
Helpless, my gaze roams down the rest of him and ugly sobs wreck my soul at the violence inflicted on his limbs. His once beautiful body is now a canvas of black and blue injuries.
Who would want to hurt him? Or me?
Unlike him, I’m in my shirt and pajamas that are caked in dirt with little bruises on my knees.
I can’t even tell if Johnny’s alive. With his palms nailed to the arms and legs tied to the metal chair, it’s hard to tell whether his chest is moving. Oh Lord! Is he missing… fingers?
“Johnny! Please… wake up.”
What kind of heinous animal have we stumbled upon?
Why can’t I remember how he and I ended up her—
No. No. No!
It… it wasn’t yesterday that I was happy.
That… that was FOUR days ago.
Johnny and I have been stuck here ever since.
Bile rises in my throat when the dreadful reality slams into me, making my stomach drop. The drugging, the dragging down the staircase, and the endless torture that followed—it all returns.
I think I passed out when they electrocuted Johnny while making me watch with a gun to my head.
It’s all my fault. I got us into this mess.
A groan yanks me to the present and I sigh in relief that he’s alive. It means there’s hope for us to make it out of here safely.
“Johnny,” I call for him, keeping my voice down so our captors aren’t alerted. I made the mistake of underestimating them before. “Johnny.”
