Once Felix and the cart were through the entrance, the door slammed behind him, causing Felix to nearly jump out of the rags wrapped around his feet. He turned around and sure enough his only escape was closed off. He wanted to back out of this new task. He wanted to forget about the cart and forget about feeding whatever was in the cell with him. He wanted to run up to the door, hammer his fists against it, and plead to be let out. But that of course wasn’t a good idea. First of all, there wasn’t any certainty that the guards would let him out. They could have been ordered to only release Felix once the task was complete and be punished if they released him too early. Even if they weren’t ordered to do so, Felix had a bad feeling about them. He had seen guards like them before. They take pleasure in the misery and fear of others, especially slaves. If he begged them to open the door, they might just keep Felix in there longer. And let’s not forget that if Felix failed to accomplish the new task he was given, Lord William would punish him severely.
Felix sighed and looked down at the meat and giant water bowl in the cart. So, either I finish my responsibility by feeding a monster with the possibility of getting eaten myself, or I can decide not to feed the dangerous monster and definitely get punished, or maybe even killed, by a different monster. Either way, the options didn’t look good.
Felix looked back up and scanned the room. The cell was the biggest room he had ever seen. He imagined what this cell alone would have looked like in a side to side comparison to the whole castle, but he had troubles doing so. He wasn’t good with numbers, but the height of the room alone was over two hundred feet tall. The length and width of the room was even larger. Only half of the room was lit with candles on the wall while the other half, the back half of the cell, was covered in darkness that the light just couldn’t penetrate. Even with the front half of the cell being lit by candles, it was still impossible for that light to brighten the entirety of his half of the cell.
Felix stared at the dark half of the cell and noticed a white horizontal line painted on the floor right before the rest of the cell got dark. That’s why there isn’t any light on the other half of the cell. The monster is on that side, and no one bothered to light candles on that side of the cell. Maybe the monster is too dangerous for people to go near and they couldn’t light the candles.
Felix focused his eyes on the dark half and searched for any signs of the creature, but the darkness was just too thick. The creature, whatever it was, could have been hiding anywhere on the other side of the cell. For all I know, it could be right at the very dge of the darkness waiting for me to mess up and go over the line so that it could just snatch me up and eat me.
He also didn’t even know the size of the creature; it could be as little as an imp or as massive as a dragon. However, due to the size of the cell Lord William decided to put the creature in, Felix had a bad feeling that it was one of the giant species of monsters. He didn’t know any stories about gentle giant monsters. In fact, the only stories he knew were the stories his master and the soldiers and guards told him about monsters that enjoyed eating slaves, especially little children slaves. Felix cringed. He imagined his master sacrificing him to a massive beast camouflaged in shadow just to give his master’s pet a treat for behaving. Felix realized being that sacrificed to the creature wasn’t far from the truth of what Lord William was capable of. Felix closed his eyes and pushed the nightmare away.
When he opened his eyes, he saw movement in one of the far back corners, but the movement was slight and he didn’t know if it was just a shadow deceiving him. Nevertheless, Felix fixated on the corner. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and a shape formed. He thought he could see the outline of the creature, or at least part of it. His eyes deciphered colors: a bluish color and white. It could have been an oddly colored pillar or structure, if it weren’t for the fact that it was shuttering frequently. He couldn’t tell what part of the creature he was seeing, but the white part was on top of the bluish color to make the bluish part look roughly the shape of a horseshoe. But whatever Felix was seeing, it only confirmed his fears that the creature was one of the giant monsters, because the base of whatever he was seeing hovered at least ten, maybe fifteen, feet above the stone floor.
It wasn’t until the part of the creature he was seeing began to twist around that Felix was able to figure out what it was. Both the white and the blue twisted separately; the white twisted at a faster rate, but both still turned at a slow pace. The white revealed more of the blue that was under it. Actually, only the top of the white part moved at a faster rate. The bottom of the white seemed to cling against the bluish part. The white twisted and more of the blue revealed itself, and this time, it formed the profile of a face. I was looking at the creature’s back! The bluish color is its skin and the white is its hair! Its face and neck are blue too. But what Felix didn’t understand was that he didn’t see a lower half of the creature. Was it a different color? Did the lower half look human like the upper half did? It was still hard for Felix to tell, but he could see the faint bluish outline of the upper half of the creature and it did look human-like, just much larger. The head turned more and the creature’s eyes were revealed.
Felix became too stunned to do much of anything. Those eyes were like nothing he had ever seen before, and it wasn’t just because each of those eyes was large enough to encompass at least two adult sized fists. Those giant irises were the color of rubies. Felix was frozen in awe and could only stare up at those magnificent, yet terrifying eyes, and those eyes never looked away from him. The skin on the back of Felix’s next as well as all down his back prickled, as if multiple needles stung him like an angry swarm of wasps, and Felix knew it was all because of those eyes. He looked away, but that didn’t stop the prickling. He still knew that its eyes were on him.
How long had it been since he entered the cell? This is taking too long. I need to finish this task so I can finish my other duties on time so that I can eat dinner. Lord William’s slaves didn’t get three meals, only breakfast and dinner. In between those two meals, the slave had to finish all of their tasks. If they didn’t finish on time, they didn’t get dinner, because slaves aren’t allowed a late dinner. If they’re not there when dinner is served, they get nothing.
Felix pushed the cart towards the darkness, but his eyes switch his gaze from the creature to the white line in the floor and then back to the creature and so on and so forth. He didn’t want to lose sight of either of them, because he wanted to know where the creature was at all times as well as make that he didn’t accidentally cross over the line. His heart throbbed faster and harder against his chest. More sweat trickled out of his skin which still prickled. His legs grew weaker than they already were. The fear was overwhelming, but Felix pushed on. He expected the creature to move, maybe approach the line where he was heading just to put Felix in an even worst predicament, but it didn’t. It just stood in the corner staring back at Felix with ruby eyes. Every time Felix glanced back up at those eyes, he witnessed something in them that seemed familiar, but he pushed that thought aside. He needed to keep focus. If he lost his head, he could end up dead.
He reached the white line and stopped right in front of it. The creature stayed where it was. Felix looked at the meat in the cart and the water bowl. Now, how am I going to do this?
The creature was going to need to be able to reach the food and water, but he couldn’t just push the cart across the line and be done with it. The cart would be needed for the next meal. As for the large bowl of water, he could always bring a large container of water and fill the bowl up when he came back. But he still needed it to be in reach of the creature which meant-
Felix gulped and looked back at the corner of the cell. The creature sill stared back at him from the dark corner. Felix picked up the bowl of water and walked over to line. His hands shook and the water in the bowl rippled and some splashed over the edge. He knelt down in front of the line and looked at the creature. It was still where he last saw it. Felix reached over the line with only his arms and set the water bowl on the floor. As soon as it was down, Felix retracted his hand quickly, but the creature didn’t move from its spot.
He walked back over to the cart and pushed it over the line and lifted his end of the cart so that it tipped forward. The meat spilled out of the cart and onto the floor. Once the cart was empty, Felix set his end of the cart down and the wheels smacked the rocky floor. Felix looked back over. The creature still didn’t move.
Felix was relieved, but that relief quickly died when he tried to pull the cart. The cart didn’t budge. The wheels were caught on something and no matter how much he pulled, how much high he lifted his end of the cart, or how much he swiveled the cart, the cart didn’t move. The sweat on Felix’s hands caused him to lose his grip mid pull and he fell backwards. He didn’t fall on a rocky surface, but whatever he fell on wasn’t thick enough to soften the fall.
He groaned and tried to sit back up, but something sticky beneath him kept him on the groan. “What?” he muttered as he tried to move his arms and legs, but they too were stuck. He turned his head as much as he could and saw that he was on some kind of white sticky substance it almost looked like an oversized version of… Cobwebs!
He followed the cobweb he was stuck on and it continued to stretch out into the darkness. Oh no!
“Help! Help!” he screamed. “I’m trapped in its web. Please, someone!”
That was when he heard large chains scrapping against stone. And that’s when the creature’s eyes grew nearer.