PFC #1: "The Cold Room"

Finally, it's time to post the first Picture Fiction Challenge story.

Still, I wish I'd had more time... hehe. Well, to be honest - there was plenty of time, but I didn't get started on it until this morning. So, no time to proof read, re-write or regret anything.

I am really looking forward to reading what all of you have come up with for this one. My own story certainly went in a direction I didn't really predict from the start.

Well, I'm not going to be writing a whole lot in this introduction, as the story ended up quite long (4.228 words long), so you have enough reading to do for one day.

So, grab that cup of coffee and some snacks and enjoy my contribution. After the story - you can also read about how I interpreted the pictures, to see how this story was formed in my head. Something I intend to do for each PFC story. Only if you're curious - you don't need to read that part...

And, don't forget! If you posted your own PFC - leave me a comment and let me know, so I can add the link and check it out!

********** THE COLD ROOM **********

The floor was cold and hard against his face as he slowly came to. His entire body was hurting tremendously and he tried to open his eyes to see where he was. His left eyelid remained closed at first, and all he could see was blurred darkness. The eyeball behind that left eyelid felt swollen and about ready to explode, that’s how much it hurt.

He remembered the blow that caused the pain in his eye. A strong fist connected with his face, and he could even remember hearing the skin of his eyebrow splitting open and the gush of blood that flooded down his face. He was thrown back, landing flat on his back, and then they were on top of him. He couldn’t remember how many they were, or if he ever really saw them all. He fought them with everything he had, but he never stood a chance. That first punch to his eye alone was enough to render him defenseless. He could barely remember the struggle that took place after that, but he knew he had been flailing his fists and kicking like mad trying to escape the inevitable.

Valerie…

What happened to Valerie?

He tried to move. He wanted to get up off the floor, but his body felt like it had been run over by a freight train. His fingers spread out and tried to grasp the floor, as if he tried to drag himself up like that. He had to get up. He had to find out what happened to Valerie.

It was a year ago now, since he and Valerie did the unthinkable. He had been in love with her for as long as he could remember, but she took a different path than he did when they became teenagers. She started hanging with the wrong crew, and quickly she was involved in the Gang. They continued to speak every now and then, but he always felt they were slowly losing that connection with each other that they had had since they were children. It wasn’t until that day she showed up at his college, crying with a black eye that they found each other again.

She had been beaten up badly by her boyfriend Jake. He held her close to him and comforted her. Then she’d looked him right in the eyes.

“Why are you always so good to me, Brian?”

“You deserve to be happy. You don’t look like you’re happy with Jake”, Brian had told her. They had looked at each other for a while, and then he kissed her. She’d responded by pulling him closer to her, hard, and kissing him back while fresh tears were streaming down her face.

Jake was a bad-ass. No one ever double crossed him and walked away from it, but Brian loved her so much he wasn’t thinking about the consequences. They saw each other more frequently after that, and they had the most amazing sex two people could ever experience.

Two weeks later, Jake found out about their affair. Valerie had heard him coming for her at their home. The walls had been thin, and she had heard the muffled voice of her stoned out boyfriend saying to one of his “guys” that he was going to “fucking kill that bitch for screwing around with that pussy-boy Brian”.

She had reacted immediately. She’d known he was serious about killing her. There was an old lunch-box under the bed where Jake stashed his money – a couple of thousand dollars – and she reached under the bed and snagged the box. Then she escaped out the window and ran as fast as she could. She ran all the way to Brian, and when she’d found him she started screaming crazily.

“Brian! Brian! We have to go!”

Brian would never forget that moment. The instant he saw her face, and heard the urgency in her voice, he knew something was terribly wrong. She threw herself at him and hugged him so hard he could barely breathe.

“He knows. Jake knows… he’s going to kill us!”

He didn’t need to hear any more. He knew all too well what Jake was capable of. For a while he was just frozen in time, his eyes scouring the college campus expecting to see Jake coming at them with a gun in his hands.

“Where the hell are we going to go?”, he’d said to her.

“Anywhere. Out of here. Far from here. Away from him”, she held out the lunch-box. “I took his money”.

Brian’s heart stopped at the sight of it. He knew what was in there – Valerie had mentioned it to him one night in bed. She’d said she wanted to take that money and run away with him. Run away with Brian and never ever have to fear Jake again.

“Oh, Jesus… tell me you didn’t.”

“I had to… he was going to kill me, Brian. I could hear it in his voice.”

His love for her knew no boundaries, and they had quickly gone back to his student apartment where he swiftly packed whatever belongings he had that he could not do without. Then they got in his car and they drove away – never to return.

That was a year ago. The fear had subsided as time went by, and they no longer worried every day that Jake would find them. Jake’s money had been enough to get them to another state and set up a new life for them. Brian never went back to school, but they both worked decent jobs and although it was tough, their love for one another kept them happy.

Now… Jake had finally found them.

They had been out jogging this morning, as they usually did on Saturdays. They both just stopped when all of a sudden in the park they saw Jake and his Gang waiting for them. How the hell was that even possible?

“Did you really think you would get away from me, bitch?”. Jake’s eyes were filled with rage. That’s when that fist came out of nowhere and connected with Brian’s left eye.

Brian managed to get his arm moving. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but he was able to pull both his arms up and he tried to lift his body up from the cold stone floor. The pain was unbearable, but he had to get up… just had to. There was a wall behind him, and after some excruciating pain, he was able to prop himself up in a sitting position with his back leaning against that wall.

He looked around the room. It appeared that he was in some abandoned building. Not a single piece of furniture existed within these four walls. No lamps hung from the ceiling and the only source of light came from a small crack on the boarded up windows. It was still daytime.

The heavy layer of dust that covered the floor moved slightly as a gust of wind found its way inside through those boarded up windows, and Brian was aware of an almost silent rustling sound. His eyes searched for the source of that sound.

A dried up leaf lifted off the floor and spun quickly around before the breeze let go of it and it sailed silently back to the floor. Brian’s eyes watched that leaf, and somehow the ease at which it lifted itself up in the air, and the smoothness of its fall back to the floor filled him with hope and comforted him.

His gaze remained fixed on the leaf. In the darkness it was the only thing he could really see, and it reminded him of freedom.

He had to get up.

Slowly, he dragged his legs across the dust covered floor and curled them up in a fetal position while his back remained propped up against the wall. Aided by the wall he tried to shift his body over and get to a kneeling stance. Once there he tried to bring his right leg forward, so he could stand on it and lift himself up. His leg would not do what his mind wanted it to do. It felt numb and detached from his sensory system. Something was wrong with his leg, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

He used his left leg instead. Moaning and grimacing in pain, he was able to plant his left foot in front of his right knee, and holding on for dear life to the wall with his hand he started pulling himself up off the ground. His shoulder leaned against the wall and used it for support as he gathered all of his strength to get to a standing position. He had been beaten up pretty damn good.

Tears filled his bad eye and stung like crazy. As he grimaced he could feel the dried up blood on his face crackle and it was itching like hell. He realized he couldn’t breathe through his nose. One of those punches that had landed on his face must have shattered every bone in there, and for a second Brian was terrified that his nose was not even there any more. That it would only be a slab of loose skin flapping around in the center of his face.

As he reached a standing position he looked around the room again. In the dark he could make out the shape of a door across the room from where he was standing. He needed to get out of here.

He moved his right leg in front of him. The pain was overwhelming, but he had no choice but to use it. Walking required the use of both his legs. As he managed to bring it forward and he shifted the weight of his body onto that right leg to take that first step toward the door, the world around him started to sway.

The pain that shot up the right leg as he put his weight on it was far beyond any kind of pain he had ever experienced in his entire life. It was as if a bolt of lightning shot up from the foot, alongside his inner thigh and then buried itself in his scrotum.

He cried out loudly, and then his leg gave way completely. He went crashing back down to the floor, landing face first and it was as if someone had hit him on the jaw with a sledgehammer, full force.

He almost passed out. But, his eyes again fixed on that leaf, which moved ever so slightly across the dust. A gust of wind was produced as his body slammed back on the ground, causing the leaf to slide a little further away from him. Brian focused on that leaf, to keep himself from passing out.

When the danger of losing consciousness subsided, he rolled over on his back and looked down the length of his right leg. At the end of it, his foot pointed in the wrong direction. It was a horrid sight… his foot was not only broken – it was no longer properly attached to his leg. He drew his leg upward, bending his knee, and watched in terror as the foot lifelessly dragged across the floor. He attempted to make it move – wiggle his toes or anything at all… but there was no way his brain could connect to the muscles of his foot. The foot was a thing of its own, dead and limp and the end of his leg – only held in place by his skin and flesh. Brian started to cry, softly.

There were voices outside.

He turned his head toward the boarded up window. The one that let a little light into his world. And, he could hear the panic stricken voice of Valerie out there.

“No, Jake! No!”

The sound of a door opening. They were coming into the house/building he was in. Valerie was crying in fear and desperation, pleading to Jake incoherently.

“I’ll do anything. Don’t hurt him, please. I’ll do anything at all – just let him go, please!”

The voices were loud and clear. Brian figured they must be in the adjacent room from where he lay helplessly on the floor.

“Shut the bitch up, Jake”, another voice said. “She’s getting on my fucking nerves”.

There was a loud banging sound, followed by a painstaking cry in Valerie’s voice. He could hear her crying, almost screaming out of pain and fear.

“Stop the fucking cryin’, Val!”, Jake’s unmistakable voice roared at her. It was followed by a frighteningly loud cracking sound – it sounded like he had slapped her in the face so hard it almost echoed back at them from the walls of the abandoned building.

Her loud cries became a quiet hopeless sobbing. From where Brian lay on his back in that empty room, he could actually hear hope disappearing from her heart, and how she was reduced to nothing but a mindless heap on the floor. He could almost picture her lying there, curled up with that empty stare – wishing she were dead already. That the pain and fear would just go away.

“Don’t fucking tempt me, bitch!”

Brian listened closely. He didn’t hear any other voices, or sounds of movement that would indicate there were any other people in that other room, except for Jake and that one other guy. And of course, the love of his life, Valerie whose sobs were even beginning to slowly die on her. That scared him more than anything. Baby, don’t give up, he wanted to tell her. We’ll get out of this somehow, and I will hold you in my arms again.

The wind outside was picking up. Brian watched as the leaf became airborne once again. It drifted, twisted and turned in the air, as it flew closer to the wall. It landed just below the boarded up window.

Brian started to crawl after the leaf. He didn’t really understand why, but he felt as if that leaf had something to say to him. That the leaf wanted to show him something. Something that would help him get out of the mess he was in.

As he crawled across the floor, he listened closely for sounds in that adjacent room. Valerie’s sobbing had almost stopped completely, and there was only the occasional sniffle.

“Go check on the boy.” He could hear Jake’s voice. Footsteps immediately started approaching the room Brian was inside. The other guy was going to come in here any second now. Brian had crawled his way to the middle of the room, halfway to the window. Panic started building up inside of him. In his state he would be totally defenseless against anyone. There was no way he could fight back – hell! He couldn’t even stand up!

Valerie’s voice suddenly cut through the air.

“No! No! I hate you! I fucking HATE YOU!”

Brian could hear the commotion out there. He could hear how Jake punched her several times.

His eyes fixed on that leaf. His brain tried to find a way to get him out of here, but of course there was nothing he could do. He crawled as fast as he could, dragging his body through the dust on the floor. It was painful and he wasn’t moving fast. It was all in slow-motion to him.

Behind him, he could hear the handle on the door turn. There was a slight creaking sound as the door opened and a stream of light came through it, lighting a path from him straight toward the leaf on the floor.

In fascination, Brian witnessed as the leaf again became airborne. The wind outside was blowing harder, and as the door was opened it created a whirlwind of sorts. The leaf went up the wall, twisting and turning as it did. Brian eyes followed its every move. It continued to rise and rise, dust swirling around it as it did.

An evil laugh was heard behind him. The man who entered the room obviously found it quite amusing to watch as Brian tried to drag his beat up body across the floor.

“Hey, boy! Where you goin’?”, and then the door was slammed shut behind him.

As the door was closed, it caused the leaf to quickly turn in the air, and it threw itself against the boarded up window, almost up by the ceiling.

The top wooden board was loose. It barely hung onto the window frame by a single nail. It was poking outward, and Brian noticed two large nails protruding from the other side. Nails that once had held the board in place, but had now come loose, leaving that one board slightly askew. That’s where the light had trickled in – that’s where the wind had come through blowing that one leaf around, lifting it up off the ground.

Brian crawled as fast as he could toward that window. Behind him the other guy was mocking him, laughing that evil laugh.

“You go crawlin’ there, boy. Where you crawlin’ to? You momma ain’t here.”

He stopped by the wall. His hand reached out for the window sill. His survival instinct took over as he pulled himself up against the wall. Pain shot through his body like he’d never thought was possible, but this was a matter of survival.

“You remember Jake, don’t you boy?”

As Brian turned around to look at the guy, his heart skipped another beat. This guy was huge. His forearms were bigger than Brian’s thighs, and the guy looked like he could single handedly lift an eighteen wheeler off the ground. His head was shaved, and his eyes were wild and crazy, staring right at Brian – a piercing stare.

“Jake has some unfinished business with you, boy”

Brian reached for that loose board. He raised his arm way above his head, as his fingers searched for that wooden board. It was the only weapon around that he could use. His fingers found nothing – only air.

The other guys crazy eyes followed his hand, and caught sight of that loose board. It became clear to Brian that the giant in front of him immediately understood what Brian was reaching for. His crazy-man smile widened on his face, as he began to laugh that evil chuckle once again.

“Oh, I see”, he said as he started to walk slowly toward Brian. “You don’t wanna go without a fight do you?”

He took out a knife from his jeans pockets. His eyes never leaving Brians.

“You gonna have to jump for that thing, boy. It’s out of your reach.” His smile widened further. It was the most evil smile Brian had ever seen. “Can you jump with that leg of yours, boy?”

Brian jumped. Well, at least he tried to jump. There was no strength in his legs. His feet barely left the ground. As he came back down his broken foot awkwardly bent backward, and shot that same rush of pain up his leg and into his scrotum. Somehow, he remained standing up.

The knife wielding maniac in front of him came closer… slowly.

Again, Brian jumped. This time he really became airborne. His hand reached the loose board, and his fingers closed around it. As he came back down, the board tore loose from its last remaining nail. Brian quickly seized it with both hands – holding it out like a baseball bat.

“Holy shit, boy. You impress me”, the man in front of him said and raised the knife.

Brian swung the wooden board at him. It swooshed through the air with all the remaining strength in his body. Then it connected with the giant’s head. The two long nails at the end of it buried itself into his skull, and Brian could hear it as they broke through the skull and dug themselves into his brain.

The scream that followed echoed back from all four walls. The crazy eyes widened. The knife fell to the floor, as he raised both his hands toward his head. It looked as if he was trying to hold his head together, as if it were exploding.

Brian pulled back. The wooden board was stuck to the side of the man’s head, and he had to pull harder to get the nails out of his skull. It was a horrible sight as the mans head cocked to the side, unable to free itself from the rusted nails, and then the nails came loose. Brian could actually hear the sound of them being pulled out of the mans brain.

When the board came loose, Brian couldn't fight the recoil. He went sprawling to the ground again, crying out in pain as he landed flat on his buttocks.

“VALERIIIIIEEEE!!!”

He barely realized he’d cried out her name. The man in front of him, now had both his hands up to the side of his head. Blood was seeping out from between his fingers. That crazy stare was fixed on Brian. Then his knees gave, and he fell to the floor. He then fell, face forward, landing on his belly and remained motionless.

“BRIAN!” Valerie’s voice reached him. He began crawling again. Towards the door, dragging the wooden board with him.

“What the fuck is going on in there?”

That was Jake’s voice. He could hear him running toward the door.

Brian crawled faster. Somehow he managed to reach the door before it was opened again. He stopped next to it, so that when it opened the door would provide cover for him. He prayed to God Jake wouldn’t see him first.

The door swung open. Jake saw the lifeless body of his friend in the middle of the room.

“Mother fucker!”, then he began to turn.

Brian swung the board as hard as he could. The nails buried themselves into Jake’s right knee. The board broke in two.

Jake went down like a KO’d boxer. But, it didn’t last long. He dragged himself up, twisted the piece of wooden board that was nailed to his knees, and pulled it out. Blood slowly began to run down his pants from the hole in his knees.

“Now you die, Brian. Now you fucking die.”

Brian tried to hit him with the remaining piece of wood he had, but missed. He had no strength to hold on to it any more, and it went flying across the room. Empty handed, with no weapon, Brian was powerless to fight back as Jake’s fist landed squarely on that very same left eye again. Jake then closed his strong fingers around Brian’s throat and began to strangle him.

Brian couldn’t breathe. He tried to fight back, flailing and kicking, but Jake was much too strong for him. He could feel the life being drained from him. Jake continued to tell him he was going to die, he was going to die right here, right fucking now!

“Leave him alone”

The voice was barely audible. To Brian it sounded as if it came from another planet. He almost wasn’t here anymore. His mind was already starting to accept the fact that, indeed, he was going to die. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that voice as that of Valerie. Somewhere deep in his conscious he remembered how much he loved her.

The world was fading away from him, but somehow he managed to open his eyes. He still couldn’t see clearly… but that same deep consciousness recognized Valerie behind Jake. She was holding a gun with both hands, pointing it straight at Jake.

Jake continued to choke him. It wasn’t long now before his life would escape him forever. Jake’s head was turned away from him. He was looking at Valerie pointing a gun at him.

“You don’t have the fucking balls”, he said to her. Then a shot went off.

Blood and grey matter splattered across Brian’s face. That was the first thing he noticed. Then the grip around his neck loosened. He quickly took a desperate breath, as he saw Jake’s limp body falling to the side, away from him.

Then everything was quiet.

Slowly, the world was coming back to him. Slowly he could see the world in focus again. He looked at the lifeless body of Jake beside him. A large hole in the side of his head exposed the remains of his brain inside. Jake was dead.

Valerie was still standing there by the door, holding the gun out in front of her with both hands. She had been badly beaten up, and her hands were shaking. She had no tears left inside to cry, only a blank stare toward the body of Jake. She was completely detached from the world, in a state of shock.

He began crawling toward her.

“Baby… Valerie…”, she remained frozen in that pose, as if she were a doll at a wax museum. Despite everything, Brian noticed how beautiful she was.

He reached her. He started tugging at her leg, trying to shake her out of her catatonic state.

“It’s ok, baby”, he tells her. Then she suddenly lowers the gun, and her knees buckle beneath her. She sits down heavily on the floor next to Brian, and then her eyes flooded with fresh new tears. “It’s ok, baby. It’s all over now. Everything is going to be all right.”

He pulled her closer to him, holding her tight.

And, it was. Everything was going to be all right. They were together now.

********** THE END **********

Well, that's my story this month. Below you can read how this story was formed in my head - well, parts of it anyway. What you will read below each picture are actual notes I put down as I thought about each picture - so those notes were written prior to the story. You may see how some things made it into the finished article, while other things went in a whole other direction.

**********

This picture doesn’t speak to me. For a guy like myself who likes to write character driven prose, this really made this first PFC difficult for me. I can’t get a good grip on the boy in that picture.

What I do see… I see a young boy, maybe in his early 20’s. He’s wearing a jogging suit, and he’s running towards the camera. That’s all I get. He’s running towards something…

A beautiful young girl, approximately the same age as the boy. I see budding romance here… the boy was running towards something – maybe he’s running towards her. Not necessarily literally… he wants her. He’s longing to be in her arms. Are they a couple already? Something keeping them apart? Or does he desire her…

Hmmm… what is that? A run down apartment building? A warehouse of sorts? An abandoned building? Yes, I think it will be an abandoned building. This gets me thinking… what if the boy is in that abandoned building? What if he’s being held in there by some bad people, and he needs to get out of there and reach the girl. Maybe he’s held captive in there so that he cannot protect the girl… and he knows she is in trouble. The setting is my life-saver in this story. I like this picture.

A single leaf. Ok. That doesn’t really make sense. But, looking at the story I’m beginning to structure from the above three pictures… I’m thinking the boy is locked in this room, right. The room is empty – no furniture, windows boarded up. A single leaf on the dust covered floor is the only thing around that the boy can focus on. Yes, it can be a catalyst of some sort… we’ll see where that thing goes.

For the longest time, I could not figure out what the hell to do with that picture. At first I couldn’t get past the fact that it was some girl jumping on the beach. Well, after a while I figured it wasn’t so important that it was a girl – nor that it took place on the beach. Lets focus on the fact that someone is jumping. Jumping… somehow, needs to be a way for the boy to reach the girl – to save the girl and himself.

Maybe the girl is held captive too… in that same abandoned building – just not in the same room. Maybe jumping is an obstacle that he needs to overcome – made even more difficult on account of his broken foot?

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There. That's it. That is my first PFC. Check the sidebar here, as I'll try to update with links to all the other people who wrote stories based on these pictures.

I will announce the next Picture Fiction Challenge on Monday here on my blog. So come back then to find the pictures for next months PFC!