There was no way for Nikki to know what time it was exactly. Her claustrophobic five by eight foot cell in solitary confinement didn't include a time piece. The only thing she knew for sure was that it was late, sometime after eleven because the janitors were done for the night. The tiny box was bad enough on its own, barely big enough to lay down and stretch out in but the night conjured all sorts of phantoms. There was no light at all in the tiny room, only what could manage to leak in through the skylight and that wasn't enough to see. Every time Nikki bumped into one of the walls she'd swear they were beginning to close in on her. Thick concrete walls did an excellent job of muffling most noise from outside, for all she knew she might have been alone. They could have vacated the prison because of an attack, or had a prison riot and killed the guards. She knew how ridiculous the thoughts jumbled around her head were but the near total darkness combined with the silence played games with her head.
"God I'm fucking going crazy!" She shouted at the top of her lungs. Nikki scampered herself into one of the corners of her tiny cell staring in the direction she thought the door was. It was just another one of the maddening facts that she couldn't see well enough to know for sure where she was. The only option would be to feel along the wall to find it. "I can't do this again. I can't do this again." She started chanting almost like a mantra but it was making things worse not better.
A sudden rumbling sound sent her further into hysterics than she already was. It was a sound she would have been able to identify normally. It was an everyday sound, a vacuum or a toilet flushed. The piping in the prison was over thirty years old in some places and made groans that sounded like some kind of monster. It certainly wasn't a gargoyle preparing to rip the door from its hinges and devour her. Nikkki gripped her pillow and brought it up over her face irrationally returning to the youthful idea that if you couldn't see it, it wouldn't see you and she would somehow survive the night.
Nikki took a deep breath and held it in place as long as she could. There was the hope that she could somehow make the world sane again but she couldn't. The world wasn't sane. She couldn't be in jail for murder and she couldn't be in solitary confinement for being caught with a dildo. That wasn't how the real world worked and if she wasn't in the real world what were the rules to this crazy place? Nikki's lungs were beginning to burn when she exhaled and drew another breath and that same sound had her pounding at the walls of her cell. "Oh God let me out!"
The last few parts of Nikki's mind that were functioning properly knew that there was still no such thing as monsters and she was utterly alone. The problem was that her situation was so insane that rationale was one of the first casualties. When the roaring noise returned she was certain she'd heard it before in her worst nightmares. It wasn't a sound humans could make. It was a unique roar. Whatever was making that noise had already killed everybody else in the prison and now it was coming for her. The only reason she was last was she'd been locked in that concrete box that kept her in and everything else out.
For the first time in hours Nikki was certain where the door was when the beast slammed against it. It was like a thunderbolt had gone off in the tiny room. The first one pulled a terrified shriek from the African American prisoner but the second and third drove her to uncontrollable sobs. It was too dark for her to see what was happening but she could hear the door giving way. It was horrific to know that the thing coming for her was barely concerned with six inches of steel. It was treating the door the same way kids treated plywood. It was breaking it slowly for fun, had it truly wanted it could have just torn the thing from the hinges as easily as opening a door. The only reason it wasn't was it enjoyed torturing her. The monster was enjoying Nikki's terror as it tore down her protection one step at a time.
The door to her confinement only slowed the beast for a few minutes before a final blow tore it free of its hinges and slammed it against the wall. Nikki cried out as the door slammed against the opposite wall then fell back into place. The door was taller than the room was wide so even with it torn free of its supports it still blocked the entrance. Whatever had torn the doorway open had to make one last conscious effort to grab the door and pull it out of the cell flinging hundreds of pounds of steel away casually.
It was still too dark to see her assailant. Nikki could only sense the thing that was coming for her. It was enormous, it seemed to fill the entire room leaving only the tiny space that Nikki was curled in. "Don't hurt me!" She squealed. That was possibly one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Until she's squealed there was the possibility that her plan was working. That she could hide beneath her blanket and pillows and the creature would just ignore her. That chance went away when she opened her eyes she'd be safe in Stephens arms where she belonged. That sole thought was why Nikki kept her eyes pinned shut. If she could keep them shut long enough when she woke up it would be back in her world and not this hell she was actually in.
Keeping her eyes shut might have kept some of the horror away but it had no effect the creature wrapping one of its slimy appendages around her ankle and yanking her into the middle of the room. The creature's strength was instantly obvious. It was effortlessly lifting her upside down bouncing her off the padded walls. The bright orange jump suit Nikki was wearing didn't offer any protection against her attacker.