I thought I was dreaming

Mason carried me to bed, and I was out like a light. His warm, solid body was beside mine.

When I heard what sounded like a soft whimper again, I woke all the way up. Did he have another girl here?

Turning my head, I looked over and saw he was sleeping. Moving as quietly as I could, I slid from beneath the comforter and got out of bed.

Swiping my blue robe from the floor, I padded to the door, slipping out just to be met with a wet nose thrusting into my hand.

Grabbing Max by his collar, I led him away from the room. He was the only one of the dogs that followed me around. I had no idea if Max was his name or not; Mason never told me, and it fit enough.

“Stay here,” I whispered when we got outside the door Mason had led me through before. Max cocked his head, but fortunately didn’t make a whiny fuss.

Slowly exhaling, I gripped the knob and slipped inside. There had definitely been noises coming from inside the room, and sure enough, there was a brunette in the same position the blonde had been.

When did he bring her here? How long ago was it? From the smell alone, she had urinated on herself more than once.

She began to plead behind the gag strap the second she saw me. I shushed her as loud as I could, hoping she understood my silent plea for her to shut up. Creeping up to the chair, I gently touched her arm.

“I need you to stay really quiet, okay?”

Of course, I didn’t get a response, but she seemed to get the message. Searching the outside of the chair, I looked for the button he had hit before, finding it on the other side.

I felt like Jigsaw had sent me to play a game. I swallowed my laugh, not wanting to freak out the girl in the chair any more than she already was.

It wasn’t until after I hit the button that I realized why he had slit the blonde’s neck first. The restraints sprang free, gouging out chunks of skin in the process.

“I’m sorry,” I stressed, wincing at her pain. Staring down at her bloody wrists, I wondered how the hell was I going to get the one off her face.

“Just hang on,” I soothed, before rushing around the room. There were a variety of tools I had never seen before. With no time to examine them, I grabbed what looked like hedge clippers and raced back to the chair.

“I’m just going to cut your head free,” I explained, lining up the clippers with the strap. They cut through without any issues, but the main part of the strap was still stuck to the girl’s face. Oh well, there wasn’t anything I could do about that.

She was already using me to pull herself from the chair when it dawned on me; I wasn’t sure if the doors would open or not. Mason had got out of the basement somehow. That was her best hope.

“Come on; we have to move fast.”

Aside from her bleeding limbs, the girl could walk just fine. I only prayed she didn’t drop dead in the hallway from loss of blood.

Max was no longer outside, but the bedroom door was still cracked as I left it. We moved together, quickly but silently down the hall. My stomach was doing the hula-hoop, sneaking past the room.

We made it to the bottom of the stairs and passed the front door when a throat cleared from the darkened drawing room. I froze. The brunette let out a muffled shriek and took off.

Mason said one word in the language he’d used before, and the response was instant. The brunette made it a few steps before three black blurs raced through the foyer and launched themselves at her.

I watched in awestruck horror as she was quite literally torn apart. The foyer was filled with the sound of snapping jaws, snarls, and garbled screams. I watched bloody white teeth sinking into flesh.

They turned her body into a rag doll. One took a right, the other took a left, shaking their heads furiously back and forth, pulling in opposite directions. Bloodied saliva flew through the air. It was Max that delivered the final blow, going straight to the woman’s neck.

A potent smell of dog and death permeated the air. A mess of what used to be a human being was all that was left behind when Mason called his hellhounds off. I knelt on the floor, transfixed by the brutality.

“Unless you want to learn about anatomy, I suggest you follow me to grab a shovel,” he mused from the doorway.