Bulb

You follow them up two flights and enter a wondrous room, with a large domed ceiling above. Although the bulb-shaped cupola has no windows the interior is well-lit, very different from the yellowed gas lamps you’ve grown used to at Leadmere Manor.

In the center of the room is a table piled with delights. Your thirst hurries you forward where your hosts ply you with sparkling wine, cakes, and fresh fruit. When you’re somewhat sated you finally have a chance to look around and notice that the room hums with activity. All around are servants dressed much like yourself, but unlike at Leadmere their faces wear looks of content.

You have also noticed the curtained alcoves all around the room and the woman points one out as yours. She pulls you over and shows you one with a comfortable little bed and dresser contained within, which she says is waiting for you, but you remind her again that you cannot stay long.

“Nonsense, dear child,” she says. “Your term with the Leadmeres is over. You shall serve us now and be all the happier for it.”

You smile at this, sure that you will wake up back at Leadmere soon enough. However time passes and you are still here, only now you have been drafted into ironing and mending. The only ones who speak to you are your hosts, who believe themselves to be your master and mistress no matter what you say to the contrary. No one else will speak to you, they only smile serenely and go about their business.

That night you refuse to go to bed at the appointed hour and that is when the mask of civility slips. When you try to run from the room armed guards appear and drag you to face your mistress. When she speaks to you now she does not seem nearly so lovely as she once did. Her features are sharper and when she moves quickly, you catch glimpse of a grey, sunken face below suddenly translucent skin.

At first you resist, but that is when you learn that those who misbehave are sent to live and toil in dark caves below the city, far worse places than the Leadmere basements. After only a few days spent with the incessant scurrying and slithering of rats and insects, you are willing.

You begin your life of service upstairs and find that they do not demand mere duty and obedience; everyone must also appear contented. You remain in the same room, with at least a dozen others all too frightened to speak, rarely ever glimpsing the outside world unless you are taken to be punished.

Over time your absolute captivity wears on you so much that you would welcome death, but your new masters will never grant that release. Instead they introduce various tortures that you will do anything to end, at least until apathy takes over again.

By the time the newest lost soul from Leadmere arrives you barely notice. It never even occurs to you to try and save him from this same fate.

THE END

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This is part of the story Beneath Leadmere Manor, written for @calluna’s 9th Tell a Story to Me Contest, based on the prompt, “Deep below ground, a portal opens…,” as well as the #freewrite prompt by @mariannewest: bulb.

Photo by Ibrahim Rifath.