In The Dark

Lori dropped the box, and immediately regretted having done so, the card fluttered before hitting the ground, but the finger rolled away down the slanted sidewalk. Not totally sure of what she was doing, Lori picked up the finger frantically and through it back in the box. This was all done very clumsily, and she didn't succeed first try. After getting both the finger and the package out of her hands, Lori backed away from the box. She watched it as though the finger might lunge at her from the container.

Lori dropped to the ground in the weeds, sobbing hard until Jennifer screeched to a stop in front of her house. Deciding that Jennifer might be able to decipher an unknown meaning from the business card, Lori quickly went back for it. It had fallen next to the box, so Lori cautiously inched towards it, careful not to peer inside. She ran back to Jennifer's car, getting in the passenger side. She glanced briefly at Jennifer. This woman was a complete stranger to her, and now she was trusting her in a moment of crisis.

Lori knew her burning red eyes and tears that still dampened her cheek were visible signs that something had gone wrong during the short period of time that she had been dropped off at her home, but Jennifer said nothing. As they drove in silence, Lori started to become suspicious of Jennifer. It had been years since Lori had said anything about her sister outside of work, and yet here was Jennifer out of the blue, telling Lori that she knew where her sister was. Worse yet, immediately after meeting this woman, she found what could only be her sister's severed finger in a box at her house.

"What is actually going on here? Lori pried after a long silence. Jennifer shook her head, "Very bad people have your sister, and they're not going to let her go without a fight." Lori wanted to ask more, but she wasn't sure what to say, so instead she showed Jennifer the business card that had been in the box. Jennifer glanced at it as she drove, doing a panicked double take as she recognized the card. She veered to the side of the road and screeched the car to a stop.

"Get out." She demanded of Lori. "W-what?" Lori stammered. "Get out now, your sister is gone and this is about to get very dangerous." Jennifer barked. Before Lori could argue, a black SUV came barreling into the back of Jennifer's car. Lori hit her head against the dash and blacked out. When she came to, she was in a damp dark room. She really couldn't see anything, but she could hear an echoing drip.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see that she was in a fairly small space. She was laying on a rigid rectangular object that only vaguely resembled a bed. There was a passage into another small space, that she could tell without moving was a bathroom. There was also a door across the room from where she lay. She got to her feet slowly, for she was still rather dizzy from the collision. She first peeked her head into the bathroom; no windows. She then crept across the room to the door. Not surprisingly, it was locked.

For the first time in a long time, Lori felt afraid. For years, she had behaved recklessly, only concerned with finding Ellie. Now she feared that her sister had been killed by her captors, and the reality of her own impending fate began to wash over her. She sat down quietly next to the door, trying to envision what she would do when she heard the knob turning. As she sat uncomfortably on the cold, wet floor that seemed to be no more than a concrete slab, she noticed a shape against the wall near the 'bed'. She half crawled, half walked over to the object.

As she neared it, she saw that it was a bouquet of roses, with a single marigold in the center. In the near complete darkness of the room, it was hard to make out the words on the card that sat with the flowers, but she could see that it was the same script as the card from the brown box that had been on her porch. Lori's heart pounded, whatever had happened to her sister was about to happen to her, she was sure of it.

Suddenly, Lori heard a creaking sound, and quickly realized that someone was walking down a staircase towards her. She held her breath as the knob jiggled, and the door slowly opened. As she saw the face of the person who had entered the room, she was in disbelief; it was her mother.

"Mom." Lori whispered. Her mother's eyes, now clearly visible in the light cast into the basement from upstairs, were pitch black. She grinned a horrible, toothy grin, and at least to Lori it appeared as though her mother's teeth were the same as a shark's teeth. With no warning, her mother ran at her, letting out an earsplitting shriek.

Lori tried in vain to defend herself from her mother's wrath. She tasted blood as she was beaten ruthlessly. Stars filled her vision as her mother landed blow after blow on her face. As Lori faded out of consciousness, a vision of her, Ellie, her mother and her father filled her mind. She sat in her car seat, holding Ellie's hand. She was trying to comfort her little sister as her mother screamed violently into their father's ear. She was yelling at him about an affair that he was having with another woman. Suddenly, a semi filled Lori's vision, and everything went to black.

Jennifer watched as the doctors announced the time of death. Her heart was heavy was she looked in at Lori's lifeless body. The doctor came out and shook Jennifer's hand. "I know you tried really hard with her, you can't help them all." He said, offering her condolences. Jennifer shook her head, "I really thought we were about to have a breakthrough." The doctor looked at her inquisitively, "How so?" "She had a moment of clarity right before she attacked me, where she acknowledged that she had made Ellie up. Then just as soon as she said it, she came at me like all she wanted was to kill me."

The doctor chuckled uncomfortably, "Crazy is in your job description Jen, did she ever realize that she was the one that killed her parents?" Jennifer sighed, "I don't think that she did. She was blaming her father for cheating on her mother right up to the end. I honestly think she had no clue that she's the one that pulled the steering wheel and sent them in front of the Semi."

The doctor was somber, "Well, I'm sorry Jen, I know that it's always tragic when one of your patients goes out like that." Jennifer gave the doctor a final nod before turning to leave, "I have to get back to the asylum, I've got an appointment in a half hour."