A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Prompt

As she came to the bottom of the stairs and looked down the dungeon like corridor, Detective Grace Bell gasped in terror. Even with all the horrors that she witnessed in her 10 year police career, and there were many, she still found herself mentally unprepared for the sights, sounds and smells bombarding her senses. As she edged ever further into the creatures layer, emaciated almost skeletal like limbs weakly reached out from behind cast iron cell bars, their owners unable to talk through mouths that had been sown shut. They screamed without words through pained groans and torment etched faces. HELP ME. HELP ME.

The detective, had to rely on her years of training not to give into the temptation to drop everything, including her weapon and her wits, and help, because doing so would leave her vulnerable to the beast that she had been tracking these many months, the beast that lurked somewhere in the darkness of this fetid dungeon.

A sound of movement from behind.

Detective Bell pivoted on the balls of her feet, but even as she spun she knew it was in vain. The beast was upon her. His warm breath menacingly heaved against the nape of her goose pimpled neck. A crunching blow from behind sent her world out of focus as she sank into the dark embrace of unconsciousness........

Grace groggily blinked her world back into view and found herself staring from behind the same bars as the living skeletons. A panicked scream for help was stifled by a searing pain, she reached in the darkness for her lips and found they had been sown shut. She was trapped, caged and without a voice.

As chains clanked and bolts locked, a triumphant echoing laugh permeated through the dungeon and A cracked growling voice whispered "Welcome home my Grace. Welcome home"