BALANCE, A STORY OF HORROR, CHAPTER I

              BALANCE, A STORY OF HORROR, CHAPTER I

Balance was published by Necrology Shorts in 2010.

There is no free ride in life.

                                                                         Balance

Nijo London pounded on the door of her small cell – her world now for over a year – until her fists bled.  “Let me out!” she screamed although she knew her plea would go unanswered.  She stepped back and studied the door covered with dark brown outlines of her fists from past attempts to summon help.  She was not sure why she was being held captive, but there were times she was not sure she wanted to know.

Nijo was thirty-five of medium height and slender, with close-cropped black hair and startling blue eyes.  She was slender now because of her imprisonment, but she once drifted up and down in her weight.  After each of her two pregnancies, the pounds tended to remain more than being shed.

It had been a year since she last saw the sun.  No one would speak to her, let alone answer her questions.  But she heard occasional conversations through her door.  There was hushed talk of brutal murders.  One time she thought she heard the mention of cannibalism, but she couldn’t be sure.

Surely these conversations could not be connected to Nijo; she was a nurse and devoted her life to caring for the sick.  But she had vague memories that she didn’t understand; flashes of perception that were more than disturbing.  They were horrifying.  There was also some connection with these horrors to ancient rituals of healing she had tried to incorporate into her practice.  Nijo also recalled the most unsettling consequence of using these ancient rights: the complete loss of memory after she used the power.