It was cold. Pitch black. The cold was everywhere, the worst of it coming from the hard metal surface beneath her. It seeped into her bare skin, holding tight in an unforgiving grip. Despite all efforts, she was unable to move a muscle, a prisoner of the dark, and the relentless chilled air surrounding her.
She'd lost track of how long she'd laid in the darkness, the cold making its way to the core of her being. From time to time there was a sound, distant and unrecognizable.
Then nothing. Only the dark, only the cold. Her mind kept going back to the last thing she remembered.
It had been just another after hours party at the club where she danced. Some High Rollers from out of town, suck a few cocks, get a big tip, nothing out of the ordinary. The hairy blob she was sucking off was just about to blow his load when some other guys burst in, shouted something in Spanish and started shooting. Hairy Blob jerked and spurt into her mouth at the same instant a bullet tore through his brain and splattered it against the wall. A second later, she felt a sharp yank on her hair. After that, nothing. Only the dark, and the cold.
She tried for another uncountable time to move, to make a sound. To do anything. Again, there was nothing. Nothing but the dark. Nothing but the cold, the cold, the cold.
Her mind tried to drift, to think of anything that would distract from this Hellish and unexplained circumstance. She'd wanted to be an actress once, but those dreams gave way to the harsh reality of low paying Waitress jobs between auditions that never seemed to go any further than a greasy couch in some casting agent's office. The only thing that panned out briefly was when one of the sweaty slime bags set her up with his buddy, another smegma factory who produced low budget porn shorts.
After a month or so of getting her pussy pounded by coked up nameless cocks, she decided to take up dancing. She rationalized that it was acting of a sort, and much more preferable to taking cum shots in the face from walking AIDS sticks.
The money was a lot better than waitressing and the work was steady. Picking up a few extra bucks at the after hours parties was no worse than what she'd already done on some smelly casting couch. It seemed like an eternity ago, in another life somehow, but that was nothing compared to this timeless dark and cold surrounding her now.
Faint sounds reached her ears, growing louder. A few moments later, she recognized them as footsteps. A surge of excitement gave way to an uneasy mix of apprehension as she wondered if the same guys from the club were the ones that had put her here. If so, what would they do to her next?
She picked out two sets of steps, walking briskly. They echoed slightly, as if coming along a hallway. There were two voices, both male. She decided anything was better than staying in here another minute, and tried to call out to them. Nothing came.
The voices and steps grew louder, paused, and then still louder along with the open and close of a door. They stopped near her head.
She clearly heard one of them say, "This is it."
A moment later, there was a click and shards of unexpected light blazed into her eyes, sending stabs of pain along her optic nerve into her brain. She tried to blink, but couldn't.
A loud clack of metal on metal was followed by an abrupt jerk that set her in motion with the sound of metal rollers. Her vision was an opaque blur of greenish tinged light. The motion and sound stopped with a small bump. A searing pain ripped through her neck.
One of the voices said, "Here she is Detective, the Jane Doe from the club."
Her mind tried to wrap itself around this sudden and unsettling chain of events. Why was there a Detective here? What did he mean by 'Jane Doe'? Where the fuck was she? A deeper sense of dread began to build in her.
She realized the greenish tint to the light was caused by its filtering through a sheet covering her face. She screamed, but again there was no sound.
Voice one asked, "Help me get her on the gurney, would you?"
He counted '3' and suddenly she felt herself being moved sideways with another metal on metal sound. Every bump was agony, forgotten as the shock of what she heard next sunk in.
The Detective asked, "Cause of death?" Voice one replied, "Preliminary exam is broken neck, severing of the spinal cord at the 3rd and 4th vertebrae."
The green lifted from her eyes, her view changed to an institutional style ceiling with fluorescent lights. In her peripheral vision, she could make out the two men standing over her. One wore a suit, the other a lab coat. Terror ripped through her as he leaned across the table and she read the patch on his coat. It said 'Coroner'.
An abrupt jerk accompanied by a fresh blast of pain cut through her rising panic long enough for her body to be turned to one side. Her head rolled limply, her mind reeling between pain and unheard screams. Horror and pain fought for and exchanged supremacy.
