Excerpt: Sleeping Beauty (nickname)

Prologue

Her weary sapphire eyes opened wide in horror as another contraction sent waves of pain through her body. For as long as she could remember, she had looked for an exit from her prison, feeling around hopelessly in the utter darkness, attempting to climb the unseen stonewalls, slamming herself against the fortified oak door she discovered with groping hands, but all was in vain.

She had been working down in the valley all day, tending to the crops and picking apples to make preserves. Everyone in her village was bustling about preparing for the cold seasons and the coming raid. Every year the raiders came to their village. To prepare for the attack, they separated their crops and supplies, hiding some in the surrounding forests and leaving the rest for the marauders to pillage. They set aside just enough to suffice as a front, satisfying the raiders and preventing bloodshed. That way the pillagers believed that they were taking all of the villages supplies when, in reality, the necessary provisions and a majority of the villagers were safely hidden in the surrounding woods. The unfortunate few left in the houses had lost the village wide lottery. Despite their sacrifice, it was the best way for the village to reduce their losses and it left them with enough supplies to make it through the winter.

The raids had occurred for over a hundred years in her valley. They were routine and relatively predictable. The marauders rarely attacked until all of the work for the coming winter was done. That day was different though. The sun had started setting when the myriad voices of her people rose around her singing the evening vespers to the gods. Her voice joined them and the notes mingled together as more people picked up the song. The gentle pitches wound their way through the leaves and floated on the light wind moving through the valley. Then the voices slowly dropped off one by one, each individual bringing their song to a close. When she finished her vesper, she started towards home with a basket full of deep red apples. The breeze blew her long brown hair about her as she looked up at the clear twilight sky. Only when all the light had faded from the heavens did she notice their torches. Those vile, unsightly creatures rode in from the mountain pass, lead by a horrifying shadow. Their dark, primordial faces flashed in the firelight, leering grins stretched across their protruding lips. The sinews in their legs pulsed with each stride of the horses; their muscular arms held the torches steadily above their heads. Rough-hewn armor covered their bodies. Each creature wore his own rendition of body armor, which they had recovered from past battles and pieced together with primitively made sections. Spikes jutted out from helmets and shoulders, layers of leather poked out between worn plates of armor, flapping against the metal in rhythm with the horses. Their inset eyes shone with eager violence; the smell of past wars preceded them on the night winds.

The village went up in arms. Women grabbed their children and ran; men dashed for their pitchforks and axes, any weapon they could find. She instinctually crouched behind a hillock and watched in horror as the raiders gathered their belongings, slaughtered their men and set fire to their houses. Within minutes each delicately carved timber cracked and collapsed, sending sparks into the night sky. Men prayed silently to their gods as they lay dying in their own blood. The clatter of steel sounded as the creatures fought her people. Those women, who had not escaped, screamed while the beasts acted out their suppressed lust. The children wailed at the destruction, too afraid to stay and watch, but too scared to leave without their mothers. Somehow in the midst of it all they seemed to find each other and form a terrified cluster. She tried to call to the children and coax them in her direction, waving her arms to get their attention and motioning for them to come. She knew that they would be taken with the crops and livestock as a source of food if she did not rescue them.

It was her frantic attempts to save the children that drew the leader’s attention. From a distance, she saw him turn towards her. His gaze sent a chill into her bones and raised goose bumps on her skin. They called him Cabhanrix, the Hollow King. All she could see of him was the black shroud he wore and the sword in his ornate gauntlet. He nudged the black stallion with his heels and it responded to the years of training. He rode down upon her as she scrambled towards the forest. Before she could reach the haven of the woods, he knocked her unconscious with the flat of his sword. He turned her onto her back with a quick kick and took her elegantly rounded face in his cold, gilded gauntlets. His cloaked eyes stared down at her for a moment before he flung her skirt up and ravished her.

She awoke in a dark cell with throbbing pain between her legs. Uncertain of her situation, she felt her way around the cell as she tried to recollect the prior night’s events. She searched in the pitch black for some weakness in the design of her cage. She was determined to escape. Yet, her search was fruitless and weeks began to pass by her. The only reprieve from her search came once a day – at least that’s what she assumed it to be – when a small panel at the bottom of the door would open and flickering torchlight would dance across the cell floor. While covering her fallow eyes from the blinding light, she would hear the grating of a pewter plate sliding into the room across the cold stone floor and another being pulled out.

At first, the food was inedible; the smell alone drove her to the furthest corner of the dank prison, but as her hunger grew so too did her willingness to eat the rancid dish. She would force down the slimy, acerbic paste and then immediately resume digging with the crude dish. She established the tunnel entrance in the furthermost corner from the door, prying up the stones to reach the packed dirt below. She scraped at the earth in the same place after every meal. She placed the debris from her excavation in the chamber pot, which the guards emptied once every two days. Only small amounts of dirt could be put there lest the guards should notice. It was thus that she worked, steadily and methodically. The guards never entered her cell or looked in; they merely opened the slot and slid in a dish of slop or grabbed the chamber pot to empty it. However, her progress on the tunnel was set back when she forgot to put the saucer back in its routine location by the door. She was three months in the prison and five feet into the tunnel when the strange creatures burst into her cell and carried her to the dungeon where she was punished for her crimes. They blindfolded her and beat her arms and legs, avoiding her abdominal region. Afterwards, they tended to her wounds and carried her to another cell.

Her new prison was more stalwart than the last. The stone was thicker and harder to dig through. It made the dishes wear down more quickly. She dug for a few hours, then positioned the plate right next to the slot in the door and busied herself with whatever she could. In the beginning, she sang the songs of her people and even got up to dance just to take her mind off the insufferable darkness. Soon, her throat became too raw to sing and her body betrayed her by collapsing despite her silent pleas. She tried to sleep to pass the time after that, but she could not sleep every moment and when she could not sleep, she wondered about her situation. Millions of questions came into her head, but few answers arose from the depths of her mind. She dwelt on her home and those she had been taken from.

The lack of companionship left her lonely and scared. She tried to rationalize; if they hadn’t killed her yet then they weren’t going to, but fear snowballed without a friend to counsel her. Her captors left her without an explanation. They simply came and locked her away with not a soul to comfort her. They screamed at her in their strange tongues as they carried her into the cell. They taunted her from the other side of the door with their guttural laughter. Not once did they give a hint of understanding her begging or pleading from the other side of the door, nor did they answer the question that always arose from her lips, why me? The fact that she had no answer drove her insane. The question echoed through her head in the shadows that eternally surrounded her. Nothing kept her mind from that single question; even while she dug in the corner it rang out with each strike. Why me? She had been pondering that question for so long that she barely knew what it meant anymore.

Slowly, her sleep became more and more perverted by dreams of perpetual suffering and loneliness until she feared to close her eyes. Even with her eyes open, the images appeared from the darkness. She spent much of her time debating with the voices and memories that goaded her in the gloom. They mocked her and played with her mind, distorting her memory until she no longer knew what her own face looked like. Then she had nothing left to remember but the isolation, the black space that surrounded her without fail. Even when the creatures opened the slot, the searing light forced her eyes closed, keeping at bay any recollection of sight.
Sometimes she would merely lie in her cell, cheek pressed against the frigid stone floor, and listen to the raw, heartrending screams of her mind. Some days they seemed so real that she wondered if someone were on the other side of the wall and other days they sounded too nightmarish to be true. Time passed in leaps and bounds while she lay there on the floor, sometimes unmoving through four or five meals. But then she would find a surge of energy and slam herself against the door in a panic for hours on end. The pain, the tears, they all meant nothing to her. Every passing minute and every arising sensation was worthless. She did not notice that she lost her sanity, because all that time she was gaining a child.

Severe cramps started twisting her stomach and cravings began to tease her taste buds very early in the pregnancy. Morning sickness kept her from tunneling almost every day, if only until the nausea subsided into a dull pain. She never knew a pregnancy to show such persistent signs so early. By the time she was placed in her new cell, she could feel the distinct bulge of her stomach in the darkness. The thought of bringing a new life into the world kept her sane at first; it was her hope. She dreamt of giving birth to a gurgling little baby, dreamt of becoming a mother. It was something she had looked forward to all her life. But the pain in her abdomen grew and her desire to have a child faded. Then her thoughts turned to the father, who she blamed for her imprisonment and for her pain, for everything. She didn’t even know who he was or what he looked like beneath that sinister shroud. When she thought of him, she dreaded the birth and wanted nothing of it. If anything, the child would only serve as a reminder of her ghastly experiences.

Other than the opening of the slot, she endured her misery without any knowledge of the passage of time. She often wondered what season it was outside, if the snow fell after she was kidnapped or if the whole world had been taken prisoner along with her. The unseen passing of night and day baffled her more than anything else. Every morning since she was born, and even before in her mother’s belly, she rose with the sun and sang the matins, embracing the glory of the day and thanking the gods for it. And every evening she sang the vesper with the setting of the sun, bidding it farewell and welcoming the night. Her only other hint was the ever-growing girth of her belly. She knew that she would have to give birth at some time, but she wasn’t sure when, until the contractions started. She tried desperately to escape the cell when they began, but with each one she grew feebler. Each pulse of pain weakened her knees and shortened her breath until she could no longer stand on her own. She crawled to the door and banged on it until her fist bled; she screamed for help in the language of pain.

During her suffering, she wanted nothing more in the world than her mother. She couldn’t evoke her mother’s face in her memory, but she vaguely recalled her love. It was a slight feeling, a fond recollection of the heart that she clung to in her desperation. She wanted her mother to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but her mother never came, in fact, no one ever came. She lay on her back, screaming to the best of her ability as the contractions quickened. Her mother had taught her about childbirth and a little about medicine, but her mother had never mentioned the throbbing, flashing pain. All she could do was stay on her back and pray for the torture to stop. Her stomach clenched and she felt an agonizing movement downwards in her uterus. She clutched at the walls and gritted her teeth in an attempt to remain conscious. Spots and flashes of white pain floated before her in the gloom. With every contraction, the baby moved further down, but in between each one severe cramps racked her uterus. She barely had the energy to whimper. The pain was so relentless that she thought she would perish, but she continued pushing until she could feel it leaving her body. Then, with a last excruciating push, the baby spilled onto the floor, covered in slime and soil. She let out a gasp of relief, laughed and cried simultaneously in the dark.

The new born babe wailed as it wiggled on the floor, impatiently waiting for its mother’s affection. Despite extreme exhaustion and agonizing pain, she rolled onto her side and pulled the baby into her arms with shaking hands. The baby looked up at her, content, as she used the ragged remains of her dress to wipe the fluids from the baby’s body. Even in her dark prison, she could see the small infant in her arms smile up at her. The baby was radiant and beautiful; it even had the same dark blue eyes she did. Yet, there was something about the baby’s eyes that seemed abnormal. Something she could not place.

Nonetheless, the new mother looked down at her child and felt hope for the first time in months, regardless of the growing cramps in her uterus. She sang a song that would be her child’s own original lullaby for the rest of its existence and beyond. The tune sounded peaceful and calming, bringing serenity to the dark chamber as the small infant gurgled. The song had the hope for the future contained within its pitches and lyrics. If she could bring this small child to life, then she could escape and bring the child up as her own. She could watch the infant grow up just as her mother must have watched her. She could almost touch her renewed sanity, but a sudden splash of light whisked it away before she had a chance to grasp it in her hands.

It was not the food slot that opened this time, it was the door. The bizarre creatures burst into the room, bringing in torches that scorched her eyes. The babe screamed as she reached to cover its eyes instead of her own. She could barely make out their ape-like images against the illumination, but she could feel their gravelly, hirsute skin as one of them brushed past her. Just as she wrapped her arms more tightly around the child, the creatures reached for her. They pried the child from her embrace and ripped the umbilical cord from her uterus. She lunged to retrieve her baby, but she had no energy left to fight. She landed on her side, racked with sobs, as the door closed once more, separating her from her last hope. She was back where she had started with no way out, no means to escape from her own mind. They had merely needed the baby that squirmed in her embrace and now they had it, along with her last shred of sanity.

Silence. Pitch black. Putrid, stagnant air. Foul, horrid tasting sludge. Harsh, cold, impenetrable rock walls. It was all she had known for eleven months, all she now remembered in her state of shock. She dimly remembered trying to escape from that place, but she no longer cared because she had lost the only dream left to her. All that she had ever known had been washed away by loneliness, time and despair. There was nothing to remind her, even vaguely, of what she had seen in her short lifetime. There was nothing to help her recollect the sweet sounds of voices, except the ones that rang silently in her head. There was nothing to recall the sweet scents that she had once breathed in with joy. There was nothing to call back the savory flavor of any food she had ever tasted. There was nothing to bring back the feel of her child in her arms and nothing to retrieve her sanity. Only a single question rang through the darkness; why me?

The pain in her uterus escalated until her body could no longer withstand the agony. Blood and body fluid continued to flow from her. Soon, the functions of her body shut down one by one, starting with her broken heart and ending with her grieving mind. Her last thoughts rested upon a small being that she had brought into the world. She prayed to her gods, asking them to bless her child and to keep it safe from the creatures. Somehow in her heart she knew that they would do as she asked. She blinked for the last time, a sanguine glimmer shining in the utter black.

The next morning the creatures entered her cell once more to drag her carcass from the room and down the long hallway of identical rooms to the mess hall. As her body came into the light they saw a look of ultimate freedom frozen on her features. Her eyes were aglow and a smile rested on her lips. It seemed as though she had won the battle for liberty against her captors, but creatures take great pleasure in the taste of freedom.