As her eyes slowly open, Susan tries desperately to recognize where she is. A cold feeling forms in the pit of her stomach as her eyes focus in the dark, dank, musty basement she was in. Feeling along the moist cement floor she thought back upon the last remnants of her memory.

She remembered leaving work, arriving to her apartment around ten o'clock, and accidentaly dropping her keys outside the door before she went in. She did not remember entering her apartment. In fact, Susan did not remember standing up from retrieving her keys.

Her thoughts suddenly returned to now, as she felt blindly for a way out of this cellar-like room. How could she have gotten here? It hurt her to try and remember, so she decided to focus on the here and now. Where was she and how was she going to escape? As her groping hands felt lifeless flesh through the darkness she realized the answers to those questions were her number on priority. The smell of rotted flesh became nauseating as she held back a scream and moved away.

Susan realized the mounds in the corner she had reached, that she could barely make out in the darkness where pieces of bodies, discarded for some reason or another. Suddenly, she could hear footsteps coming closer. Hugging the ground, she closed her eyes.

A door creaked open and a band of light creeped across the room. Susan slightly opened one eye, in order to assess who her captor was. To her astonishment she saw the frame of an elderly woman. Short, and in every aspect of her appearance that could be made out frail-looking.

"Oh, I thought the girl would have been awake by now." She heard the woman say.

Despite her appearance, Susan knew this woman was somehow behind all this and continued to feign sleep. She believed she could wait for the woman to leave and then try make her way out of the basement she was contained in.

A few moments after she heard the door close, Susan opened her eyes and let them adjust to the darkness. This time she had a better feel for the basement and headed for the door, doing her best not to make any noise whatsoever - this old woman could have excellent hearing for all she knew.

Once she reached the door, Susan listened for any sign of movement outside before slowly using the handle. As soon as she pushed open the door, Susan felt a sharp pain in her side. She looked over to see the elderly woman an inch from her face with a knife digging into her abdomen. The pain seared through her and blood felt warm and hot.

"I thought you would be awake," were the words that slithered from the aged woman's mouth.

With that she grabbed Susan and pushed her directly across the hall, through a doorway, into a steaming bathtub. This woman was amazingly stronger than she looked. Susan felt boiling hot salt water seep into her wound and tear at her flesh. Her skin was scorching and the smell in the bathroom battled that of the woman's cellar.

"Why are you doing this?" Susan cried and she tried to get out of the tub, only to be prodded more with the knife. The new wounds dripped with gooey warm blood and stung as the saltwater burnt the open flesh.

"I guess you could say I'm helping control the population," the old woman said with a laugh. "That or I just like to kill people."

With that she plunged Susan's head into the bathtub and held it there as she choked and drowned in a saline solution of her own blood.

Learn more about this author, Jessy McQueen.
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