Another extract from the story

The chains made a gentle but eery unsettled chime. A slow sway kept the chimes consistent with their rhythm. There was no breeze or gusts of wind to feed the chains their sustenance for them to sing their unsettling song. They were attached to the ceiling of a room void of windows or doors, and a light that shone down seemed to be unattached to the ceiling itself. The light flickered here and there like an iridescent pendulum. The walls of the room were tortured, scarred, and bruised. The walls seemed to hold more than the lacklustre paint, which was barely even visible to what now seemed to be a new coat smeared on top.

There were scratches and claw marks. Some very deep, deepening into the very foundation of the room. Some scratches were faint but in abundance, very repetitive, very determined, very focused. And to what reason had they stopped?

A ruby red hue laid its mark in all directions without a sense of cohesion, some parts darker than others.  Another song can be heard harmonizing with the chains chime. In the middle of the room, on the floor directly under the flickering light, was a metallic bucket. A ting noise could be heard echoing from it every single time the bottom of the bucket interacted with something falling into it. The bucket began to fill, and the song began to deepen.

Suddenly, the chains chimed vehemently the song was broken. It became very chaotic, confused scared. “Arghhhhh”, the body that was hung by the chains screamed before controlling their agony to not alert anyone. “I’m still here”, they thought. Holding their pain and discomfort, they began to turn to look at the hooks buried in their back and spine. A shocked expression ran across their face. More hooks had been buried into their back. From the two that were in both shoulders and the two in the collar bone there was now two more in the upper spine, one above the other.

The realisation seemed to cause more pain to move through them like electricity. A sudden panic grew through them, which made more rivers of red to rupture from their restraints, and flow like a tidal wave into the bucket beneath. Gathering themselves, “Ok, calm down, breathe in…breathe out…breathe in…breathe out”, they uttered. Their body began to slow from the panic. The chains began to chime less, and the buckets ripples began to quieten. Having calmed themselves, they could focus again on the situation they unfortunately found themselves in. They looked around. There were now more wounds that covered their torso, slashes deep into their flesh. Through all this, something struck out; their wings had been bounded in chains but had not been touched. “Why?” they thought.

Out of nowhere, the room began to shake, not violently, but something was happening from one of the walls. The wall began to open as if like curtains effortlessly and without a stager. A blinding light came from the opening, and a figure stepped through the vail. It was Ereshkigal.

@nesu_sc