Investigate the Door at the End of the Hallway

The door at the end of the hallway swung open easily on well-lubricated hinges, not making a sound. Beyond it was an exercise room, housing a pair of treadmills, a weight bench and three well-organized piles of weights, and, most odd by far, an above-ground pool filling the room from wall to wall. I took the opportunity to examine the room and found that it had been recently cleaned and smelled only of the ubiquitous rubber mats designed to protect the floors of gyms from weights accidentally or deliberately dropped by the visitors.

Neither people nor cameras were present, which was a surprise, though there was an old stereo sitting against the wall opposite the pool. Testing it to see if I could learn anything from the radio stations available revealed that it wasn’t getting any signal, making me wonder if I was, once again, being kept underground. Seeing nothing else of interest, I proceeded to the only other door and pushed.

Through the door, was a short hallway. A single door was on the left and another on the right. I opened the left one.

The rubber-padded floor and unadorned walls of the gym were replaced with tiled surfaces as I stepped into the bathroom. There was a plain utilitarian sink and mirror beside a stall that provided a degree of privacy for the use of the toilet within. As I walked around the stall, I found a shower sized for multiple users, much like my high school locker room. What I didn’t expect to find was a body, gagged and blindfolded and hanging from handcuffs fastened to the shower head, leaving its weight to sag limply.

I approached cautiously, noting the presence of bruises that were probably eighteen to thirty-six hours old mottling his face and his hands going blue above the cuffs. As I watched, I caught the faintest rise and fall of his chest, meaning that he was still alive, if not particularly long for this world.

I untied the gag and blindfold, but the man didn’t respond. Next, I considered trying to break the cuffs from their anchor point, but I recalled something about blood clots forming when circulation was cut off and posing a risk of heart attack, so I did the only thing I could think of and brought in the ladder from the pool. I placed it next to the man and tried to sit his limp body on the stairs to reduce some of the strain while praying that I hadn’t loosed any clots that might stop his heart before I could get someone more knowledgeable to help him.

My stomach let out a growl to accompany the message my subconscious was sending my salivary glands and I had to close my eyes and **** myself to turn away from the disturbingly appealing sight of his bloated veins, which my vampiric side seemed to consider fair game.

Stumbling away as I felt my way out, I came back to the hall.

With no other routes available, I opened the other door in the hallway and was greeted by a darkened room, save for a single beam of light, shining down like a spotlight upon a large table.