Martin Blackbriar and the Necronomicon | Chapter 1 | Captive

When I woke up, I felt a terrible numbness that followed a bitter cold. I was held in limbo where none of my senses worked. Slowly, my senses returned, one at a time, as I ascended from oblivion to reality.

The first was my sense of hearing, which came back to me with a mechanical scream. It was like one of those late-night prison movies where the guard opens a cell with that terrible ranking sound, and you discover the TV is far too loud.

The violent sound made my head ring, and I wanted to grab onto something to steady myself. Anything to stop my body from vibrating like a tuning fork.

I tried to open my eyes to get a sense of where I was, but I felt fabric pressed hard against them.

A blindfold. Great.

Whoever tied this piece of fabric really knew what they were doing, too. It was latched on so tight, I could feel my pulse running through it.

As soon as I tried to move my arms, I felt myself hugging my own body. I wondered why I would do this. Then I felt it. Sleeves of fabric covered my arms. With a few struggles, I tried to free myself from my own embrace.

I heard the clinking of buckles just behind me. Metal on metal. With the sudden contraction of leather on metal, it was clear: I was in a straitjacket.

Soon, my attention was pulled toward my temples as they throbbed.

"You're awake," a young woman's voice rang.

It was a somber voice. One I recognized all too well.

The sound of this woman's heels began to click click click.

It didn't resonate through the room like a marble floor. But it wasn't a short click like a wooden floor. It was crisp, cold, to the point. Concrete.

"Nobody else has gotten this far," she added, "maybe because they only saw part of the picture."

A metallic shing sounded, and I felt the boa constrictor of the blindfold slowly release from my head. I looked around. At first, everything was hazy. All I could see was grey, yellow, red. All of it in a horrendous, nauseating blur.