A Deliverance

I sat at the wooden table, glancing around the semi-crowded room anxiously. Ellis stared at me, his brown skin and jet black hair contrasting his bright blue eyes. "Be patient," he sneered, "Because you if you aren't I have every reason to kill you."

I gulped. I looked at the white package, wrapped in pink ribbons with a bow to match. It looked so feminine and harmless, yet Ellis was threatening to kill me.

"Stop scaring him," Emma spat at him, smacking him over the side of the head, "He won't be able to spot Melinda if you're scaring him half to death every five seconds."

Ellis rolled his eyes. "Whatever," He smacked her hand away and turned his attention back to me. "I swear, if you screw this up for us, I will castrate you with an open flame." He suddenly shook and stood up. He pulled his phone out. "Yeah?" He spat into the phone. "Okay… Okay. Will do. Be right there." Ellis looked down at Emma. "We need to go outside. Brent is dropping something off for us. We need to go outside."

"What about him?" Emma asked, motioning her gaze towards me.

Ellis leaned down and put his face close to mine. "If you so happen to leave… Well, I guess you can assume we're going to kill you." With that, he pulled Emma up from her chair and dragged her out the door.

I sat, frightened and holding the package on my lap. How was I supposed to know who this Melinda was? What did she look like? What was in the box? Why did I have to get involved in this? I looked around at all the people around me, eating so casually, not aware of what danger I was in or what dangerous people had been in the same room as them. My mind seemed to freeze and burst into spasms as I tried to find out what I had to do.

Why did I have to end up here?

Then I realized someone was standing next to me. It was a female, dressed in what looked like pink under armor with a black shirt and shorts to match her jet black hair and bright green eyes.

"I'm Melinda," she said in a very delicate voice, "I think that package is for me?"

"Oh, uh…" I stuttered. "Yes, please take it." I quickly lifted the package up and handed it to Melinda.

She quickly took the box from me. With a smile, she said her thanks and walked away as quickly as she came by the table. I watched her walk to the back of the diner and up the stairs that led to the living space above.

As soon as she disappeared, Ellis and Emma returned. Ellis scanned me and realized the package was gone. Before he could react, I told him Melinda had came and took the package.

"What color hair did she have?" He asked.

"Brown," I replied.

Ellis's face turned multiple shades of red as I told him her hair color. "Melinda is blonde, not brown haired…"

"Well you could have told me that!" I retorted.

Ellis let out a furious roar and smashed his fists down on the table. The entire diner suddenly went silent and turned their attention to Ellis.

Emma took control of the conversation. "Which way did she go?!"

I pointed up the stairs that the girl walked up. Emma and Ellis sprinted up the stairs. After seeing everyone in the diner staring at me, I decided to follow. As I walked up the stairs, Ellis and Emma's footsteps echoed away and soon I was in a dark hallway all alone. The walls and floor were all wooden planks nailed together. I stood at the top of the staircase, looking back down to the diner below and heard nothing. There was a small light at the bottom but I didn't dare turn back. What if Ellis and Emma hunted me down and found me? I would be skinned…

At the end of the dimly lit hallway that was before me, there was single door at the end. I took a step and the boards under me creaked. I took a deep breath as my gut started twisting inside my body. Why did I feel so off center? Darkness or isolation never stopped me before. I proceeded to take equal, light steps down the hall. By the time I had reached the door at the end of the hall, I had a sour taste in my mouth.

I wrapped my hand around the cold door knob and slowly pulled the door open. "Ellis? Emma?" I called into the room on the other side. No answer. I opened the door all the way and stepped in. It was a bedroom. The only color was grey to match the cobwebs and dust littered over all of the objects in the room. The bed itself had a blanket of spiders everywhere. The blinds were torn and ragged, falling in front of a dusty window which could not be seen out of. Bookshelves were in corners and hanging over head, holding what seemed to be ancient books. They were smothered in dust and were possibly deteriorating.

In the far left corner of the room, though, was a mirror. While the mirror itself was dusty, something reflected off of it. It was something shiny. I walked over to the mirror and ran my hand down the side, feeling the basic outline of the mirror. "Nothing special," I said to myself, "Just a mirror." I used my sleeves to clean the dust off and got an oval, revealing the top half of my body.

On a second's notice, as soon as I took another deep breath, something grabbed my from behind and dragged me to the ground.