In the Basement

Thick, welling blood dripped in a steady trickle to pool below. Salt traces lingered on his pale cheeks, and a hollow, empty look haunted his staring eyes. The drain in the corner gulped readily the fruit of her labors, the cement stained where it flowed a rich, liquid red. Parting his lips, he moaned softly in agony, a poor contrast to the horrific screams she had torn from his dignity in hours past, like the disturbed cries of the damned, echoing desperately from the fiery Inferno mirrored in her own eyes. Another tortured sigh; the only, pathetic sound in the room where silence reined. Too exhausted to stand any longer, his weak, shaking legs finally gave way, leaving him to dangle, like a doll, from the rusted metal rods that bore into his pulsating wrists. More blood, spraying, and weeping forth to the sound of his frantic heart. Paler, paler still. His cheeks gone sallow, his forehead ashen and doused in a cold sweat. Pallid lips trembled and tried to speak. And still she sat, on a cold wooden stool against the door, watching as the spurts of blood began to slow, and eventually stopped. Leaving the lifeless body behind like the animal it was.