Enigma Nocturne

* * *


Part Four.


Jore awoke in darkness, shivering. He felt like he was standing up, but his legs were spread apart. His back pressed against a cold, metal surface of some kind, and his arms were above him somewhere. He tried to move, but realized with a wave of panic that he couldn’t feel his hands, arms, legs or feet at all, and he struggled against invisible, untouchable binds weakly as he began to regain clearer consciousness.

He gasped in stuffy air, feeling his shoulders stretch painfully as he tried to pull his entirely numb hands out of the metal binds he now knew were there… But it was hopeless, and Jore shivered again as he gave up trying to free himself. He was cold. Very, very cold. He was sure his limbs had turned numb hours ago… how long had he been out? The last thing he remembered was…

“Ah, you’re awake,” Mr. Nairicks’ chillingly emotionless voice said out of the darkness. Jore couldn’t figure out exactly where the Headmaster’s soft voice was coming from, and he looked all around, trying to see through the pitch-blackness, to no avail. Frustrated, he pulled once more at his binds, feeling a very distant hint of pain in his hands, but nothing more. “Don’t strain yourself, Mr. Meili,” Mr. Nairicks’ advised, and then he laughed, ever so softly. The Headmaster’s dark, mocking tone sent shivers down Jore’s already ice-cold spine. He shut his eyes as tight as possible, and then tried not to scream in fear and frustration as he suddenly heard the Headmaster’s approaching steps, echoing through the darkness on what sounded like concrete.

“I was worried when you didn’t wake up again right away,” Mr. Nairicks said calmly, his voice growing nearer with his footsteps, “Although after the first hour I was glad. It gave me more time to… prepare.” The footsteps stopped, and the echoes faded. Jore’s faulty sense of distance in this darkness thought that the Headmaster had stopped about ten feet away from him.

Jore swallowed. He had to calm down, and play it cool. His mind couldn’t have imagined a worse situation, and now he knew that anything could happen. He had to be careful. “Um…p-prepare what, sir?” He choked out, his voice raspy from the past few hours spent unconscious in the cold.

“Why, this, of course,” Mr. Nairicks’ said smoothly, and in a few moments, very dim, white light pushed back the darkness. Jore’s eyes strained to see in the dimness, and he blinked repeatedly as he took in his surroundings.

He was bound vertically to a metal slab up against a wall, about a foot above the floor. The room he was in was very large, roughly hexagonal, and it had very high, raftered ceilings. The walls were plain concrete, and there were a few rugs covering the concrete floor here and there, under some dark wooden tables. A few shelves, whose contents Jore couldn’t quite glimpse, lined all of the walls except the one that Jore was bound to. The dim light was coming from a gas fireplace in the middle of the room, and also from a few candles in random places on the floor and tables.

“Welcome to my real office, Mr. Meili,” Mr. Nairicks said, gesturing to the room around them. “Or… may I call you Jore?”
Jore looked anywhere but at the Headmaster, and nodded silently. His heart pounded in his ears as the Headmaster stepped closer and closer to him, until he was only about a foot away, and for once Jore was on his eye level.
“Look at me,” Mr. Nairicks commanded, and Jore forced his head up, and his eyes met the Headmaster’s. As always, Jore was never prepared for the intensity of Mr. Nairicks’ sharp, steel gaze. It speared his consciousness, carrying the poison of an inhuman power that made Jore’s face turn sheet-white, his eyes widen, and his jaw lock in the inability to scream.

Jore was bound… he was trapped… he was at the mercy of a no doubt psychotic Headmaster, and there was no one… not one person… that could come to his rescue.


* * *