Eighty-one

SNAPBANG!

The noise, whatever it was, had been repeating itself for what felt like forever. Distant at first, it grew closer and closer with each revolution. Each volley jerked at her spine. Shot tension into her legs. Urged her to scramble from her hiding place. To run.

Somehow, she knew that’s what he wanted. For her to run.

She pressed her lips together to keep herself from crying. Even the slightest of movements shifted the pile of bodies she lay underneath, shifting the cold flesh that surrounded her, revealing the sickly warm pockets caused by decomposition. These people had been discarded like trash. No ceremony. No ritual. Like they’d ceased to be human the moment they served their function.

SNAPBANG!

She swallowed the tears pressing against her throat. Tried not to imagine what it’d been like to be trapped here, days stretching into months, with a monster.

“Do you know what it takes to become a saint, Elena?” he called out to her, his voice echoing down the hall. “It takes pain. Blood and sacrifice. More than you can possibly imagine. It’s not easy.”

SNAPBANG!

“My mother did it—she died for me.” He was even closer now, the sound of his voice reaching for her from just beyond the door. “Gave her life so that I could be born. I had to be cut from her womb. If not for her sacrifice, I’d be dead.”

SNAPBANG!

“I was given a miracle … Just like you …” he said it softly, his voice carrying through the door that separated them. “Just like all of them.”

SNAPBANG!

The noise was deafening, reverberating around the room, and she squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for him to come for her. She listened as the door swung open, its hinges protesting slightly as it was pushed wider and wider, until it banged into the wall behind it.

He’d found her.