Dark. So dark that I couldn't tell where my body ended and the rest of the room began. I don’t know how I got here,or where “here” even is. I was a fawn in the forest, and it was hunting season. My blood was frozen in my veins, but some of it managed to seep slowly down the back of my neck. I felt for a gash on the back of my head, but there was nothing there. My legs were shaking beneath me as I picked myself off the floor. Three steps, then thud. I’d walked into something cold. It wasn’t as solid as a wall. Pushing past it, my wrist was pulled backwards. I couldn't go any further. They had chained me up.
     Screech. A doorknob turned in one of the corners of the room, and a door flew open. Light flooded in and filled every corner, so I took advantage of it. The floors were white tile and covered in… blood spatter? Meat hooks hung from the ceiling. Some swayed in the new found breeze that came through the propped open door. Others didn't move at all, they had people on them. I bumped into a dead body before. It was cold, but not as solid as the wall.
     The man, my kidnapper I suppose, dragged another body through the threshold. A girl, about my age, blonde and scrawny just like me. Our guy has a type. He flung her onto the floor next to me.
     “Chain her up”, he barked.
I grabbed the cuff on the floor next to me and gently wrapped it around her ankle.
     “Hurry up!”, he yelled.
My eyes welled up with tears and it became harder to see. The kidnapper stomped over to me, grabbed me by the neck, and threw me aside. He squeezed the cuff around her ankle and locked it quickly.
     I crawled over to the unconscious girl and shook her shoulder slightly. When she didn't respond. I tried again and again until I was interrupted.
      “Hands off or you die.”
      “What did you do to her?”, I spoke frantically.
     “The same thing I did to you, and her”, he pointed to a dangling body, “and her, and her, and all the rest. Just wait, step two is my favorite”, he grinned like a child on Christmas morning.
______
     I must have fallen asleep, because I was laying on the cold tile. When I sat up, my arm brushed the girl. She was awake and panicking.
     “Where-- who took-- how did I get here?”
“Just breathe, I know just as much as you do. What's your name?”
     “Grace”, her hands were shaking and her eyes were bloodshot. “What about you?”
     “Claire. We gotta work together to get out of here”, I was a pro at stating the obvious in stressful situations.
The door creaked open again. He waddled in carrying a car battery. There was a metal cart in the corner of the room. He slammed the battery down and left. Five minutes later, he returned with jumper cables. After hooking them to the battery, he pressed the ends together and
produced a zap.
     “Step two!”
_____
  I couldn't remember anything when I woke up. The faint taste of metal and burnt tissue lingered in my mouth. Grace was still next to me, but her face was badly burnt. She was asleep. I touched her shoulder to shake her awake. Her scared eyes flew open and she started to swing.
     “Grace! Grace! It's just me, you're okay, you're okay.”
     “Is he gone?”
     “ I think so, for now anyway. So I was thinking, these are standard locks right?”
     “Right.”
     “Do you have a bobby pin?”
She dug through the pockets of her filthy jeans and produced a single bent bobby pin.
     “That'll have to do. Do you know how to pick a lock?”
     “ Uhh, no. Do you?”
     “I guess we’ll have to figure it out.”
She tried first. After about ten minutes of fiddling with the lock, she passed me the bobby pin. I got mine undone within five minutes.
     “I thought you didn't know how?”
     “ I don't.”
Ten minutes and a bobby pin, and we were free.
     We both stood up slowly, and began to feel our way to the door. Our biggest obstacle: the hanging bodies. All we had to do was find the door before he-- creak. It was open. I grabbed Grace by the wrist and darted deeper into the forest of bodies. As soon as he cleared the door, we were gone. He began wheeling another cart into the room. Blades of all kinds filled four silver pans. When he was completely inside, Grace and I bolted towards the open door.
Blinding white lights. Bang. Bang.
I guess there was a gun on the cart too.
_____
The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't dead. My t-shirt and jeans had been replaced with a white hospital gown, and Grace was gone. I was strapped down to a hospital bed, and the floors were white tile.
     The door opened. A man peered in, the doctor.
     “Hey Claire, how are we doing today?”
     “What's going on?”
     “Today is Monday, therapy day.”
     “Where am I?”
     “Albany Mental Rehabilitation Center.”
     “Since when?”
He sighed.
“When your sister died, you had a mental breakdown.You started having these delusions of kidnappers that stole you and your sister, and he eventually killed you both. Since you've been committed, you've been writing her letters.You always sign them the same.”
He crossed the room, and pulled a massive stack of papers out of a dresser drawer and laid them in my lap.
     “With all my love”, he said aloud.
     “Claire,” I stared at the encyclopedia of letters in front of me.
     “Doctor, what was her name?”
You could see the pity in his eyes.
     “Grace.”