Making a Mess of Things

Sarah awoke with a migraine. She wanted to vomit but managed to keep her stomach under control. She had no idea of where she was, but she was thankful the lighting was dim. She tried to think of what had happened. She had been in the coffee shop and Declan was . . . proposing to her? She thought that was what he was doing. He had unquestioningly said, “Will you,” before something cut him off; before something had grabbed her. She could just remember spiraling down a long hole that went on forever. She’s have sworn that she had died at the completion of her endless fall, but her she was alive and slowly dying of a massive migraine. She didn’t even have any of her medication on her to help alleviate the pain. She was just going to have to suffer through it until it went away.

She realized that she was lying on a cold metallic floor. It was smooth, but it was the temperature that was her blessing. She slipped her head back to the cool floor and let the icy chill combat the pain in her head.

She had no idea of how long she had been out for, but she knew that she slipped into unconsciousness as she did when her headaches appeared. At least now all she had was her nausea and a slight pain behind her eyes. She sat up slowly and tried to make out where she was. She could see that she was in a nearly empty room that was probably 10 x10 in dimension. Even the ceiling looked to be ten feet high. She was in a cube. The only other thing that she could make out in the room with her was an old Halloween decoration; a robed skeleton seated on a rolling chair. She wondered if that was meant to scare her, but for all she knew she had been locked in some sort of storage closet.

She stood up and realized that her legs were wobbly. She simultaneously came to the understanding that she needed a bathroom, as she had to urgently deal with both of nature’s calls, and was quite possibly about to make a rather vocal deposit in the porcelain piggy bank. Her stomach protested the height changed and was insisting that she eject its contents as soon as possible.

Sarah searched frantically for a door but found no means of egress. “If you are looking for a door, then your search is quite futile, Ah assure you,” said the ragged skeleton as it stood from the chair. “You are my prisoner, and you will go nowhere without my say or supervision.” It stepped forward and grabbed her wrist in a grip like an iron vise. His hollow eyes stared into hers, “You will eat when Ah say eat, you will urinate when Ah tell you to, and you will defecate on my say so. Do I make myself clear?”

Sarah nodded and then vomited on his robes. She was sure that some had splatted up onto his teeth, but she couldn’t look. “I don’t mean to be crude, but unless you tell me to do those last few things you mentioned I’m going to do the same thing to you in about the exact same order.”

The skeleton dropped her to the floor and examined its robes. It pulled the parts covered in sick away from its body and then gestured to a wall. The metal surface rippled like water and a doorway appeared that led directly to a restroom. She picked herself up and ran inside. Sarah was a touch miffed when the door did not close behind her, but at least the skeletal man turned his back on her. She relieved herself and then washed up. When she exited the bathroom she found Skeletor seated on his chair once more. He put up a hand to keep her away.

“Let us begin again, my name is Poe. Poe Machiavelli. Ah, am better known throughout the copious cosmoses, as the Horseman. Ah have slain a probable googolplexian amount of lives, and I have no qualms about adding yet another body to my count.” His outstretched palm closed into a fist and he pointed a finger at her so that he had no illusions about who he was going to be adding to the pile of bodies. “Ah saved your life,” he shook his head and waggled a finger in the air, “No, Ah shall amend that statement. Ah saved you from an apocalypse, but you died anyway. Ah was, however, able to resurrect you. It was simply minor damage.”

Sarah swallowed hard, “Why did you save me?”

“Because your boyfriend, a mistuh Declan Mason, has been pining away for you since your planet was destroyed, and Ah aim to manipulate him into helping me or killing him so that he cannot interfere with my plans. Ah went back in time to retrieve you, and you will do as Ah say or Ah will kill you repeatedly, and bring you back to life until you have lost your mind. Do you understand me?”

“I’m your huckleberry,” was all she said. She could not tell, but the Horseman smiled.