[Fiction] Friday Challenge #179 for Oct 29nd, 2010

[Fiction] Friday Challenge #179 for Oct 29nd, 2010
In most parts of the world, Halloween is celebrated – in some form or another – this weekend. Your challenge this week is to write a horror scene (or something horrific) using a wet noodle, a styrofoam cup and a feather.

jax@theinceptionofchaos- Continued from challenge #178, Jax finds herself in a bit of a pickle...

*first draft

*jax excerpts may or may not appear in chronological order and may or may not make the final cut.

***

Wow, it worked fast. Jax woke up under what smelled like a damp pile of feathers, her vision blurred and her head throbbing where the handle of the gun connected with her temple. The last thing she could remember was the look on Agnes’s face when Jax bit her hand in a futile attempt to break free.

A sane human would have reacted in pain— Jax had even hoped for Agnes to loosen her grip providing her with the chance to inflict more damage—no such luck. Agnes, it seemed, was beyond normal human reactions. With a sinister laugh Agnes eyes glinted with evil and without flinching she plunged the needle deep into Jax’s neck. Jax crumpled like a wet noodle.

Once her eyes adjusted to the light in the room her surroundings surprised her. The pile of damp feathers were actually sumptuous soft linen’s, the dampness caused by her own body heat rather than something grungier. A soft lamp glowed in the corner and a fan lazily circled over head. The humidity in the air hung like a wet blanket and through the wooden blinds she could see palm trees dropping their fronds onto a sandy beach.

Jax shook her head sure she must be caught up in a dream, or an illusion of denial in the least. Agnes did not seem in the mood to treat Jax to a little holiday up north. No, Jax was sure what Agnes had in mind was permanent residence somewhere much further south. As in six foot under.

A noise outside the room made her jump. The door opened and a man Jax had never seen before walked in. Jax pulled the covers up to her shoulders and tried to appear nonchalant. Never show fear, the first lesson her mother had taught her when being confronted with a dangerous situation. Sure her mother had been talking about large stray dogs but the same rule surely applied to large strange men?

‘Good-morning. Did you sleep well?’ He pulled a service trolley into the room behind him and began setting up what looked like a breakfast tray.

Feigning aloofness Jax did not reply, but her stomach rumbled, giving away her weakness. She could smell freshly brewed coffee and could detect a hint of some type of cooked meat. Her mouth watered involuntarily and her stomach growled again. The man smiled good naturedly, ‘Good, glad to see you have your appetite back. You are wasting away under those bed clothes.’

Jax did a double take. ‘What do you mean you’re glad I have my appetite back? There’s nothing wrong with my appetite!’

He pushed the cart ahead of him and came to the side of the bed, ‘Well that’s not the impression I got yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’ Jax panicked, ‘How long have I been here?’

‘Oh miss, I couldn’t tell you exactly, but I have been here two weeks and you have not eaten a morsel in all that time.’ The man smiled again but Jax picked up a sinister edge to his comment.

Two weeks! The bed head pressed hard into her back and Jax realised she had pressed herself as far away from the stranger as she physically could. Her head felt cloudy and the room swam in her vision as she tried to focus.

The smell of coffee became overpowering, and a metallic taste filled her mouth. The silver platter on the service cart was one of those fancy ones you see in posh restaurants, with a domed silver cover. What she thought was breakfast turned out to be a long row of medicinal vials and a very large syringe. There were no mugs or coffee percolators in sight. Jax tried to form words, to ask what was under the silver lid but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

He offered her a styrofoam cup of liquid, ‘Here, the humidity in these rooms can be terrible. You must be thirsty.’

Jax sniffed at the contents of the cup. Relieved to smell only water she emptied the cup in a desperate gulp.

‘Now, if you stay still miss, this won’t hurt a bit.’ Her waiter slash captor lifted the silver lid revealing her “breakfast”. Jax took one look at the severed head on the plate and fainted.

***

How To Play:


1. Check this page for the weekly challenge.

2. Write for a minimum of 5 minutes… AND THEN KEEP GOING!

3. NO editing.

4. On Friday, post it to your blog.

5. Come back to Write Anything and leave the link to your post using the Link generator.

6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.

7. Use Twitter (with our hashtag of #fictionfriday) or Facebook etc to tell your network about the stories posted up.

8. Come back again next week!