Finding a Niche

Laura was squeezed into the niche. There was a gap of two feet above her and her feet were pressed up against the opposite wall which was three feet away from her. Even if she hadn't been bound she would have found it difficult to move. As well as the tape pressed to her mouth there was also tape wrapped round her midriff, knees, ankles and which also bound her hands behind her back.

Laura moaned through her gag and looked imploring at her captor, but all she could see of him were his hands as he spread cement along the low wall and placed one brick on top of another.

She was being walled up alive!

She didn't know who the man was when he'd called her out to the house he was renovating. Smith was his name. He'd shown her in and then last thing she'd known was something heavy crashing down on her head. When she'd woken up she'd found herself bound and squashed into the hole.

Laura wanted to move. Her legs ached from being squeezed up against the wall. Perhaps if she pulled up her legs she could turn round. Her legs though were pressed up against her her stomach and all she could do was just shuffle an inch and flex her feet. It was also causing her back to feel as though it was being stabbed. She stopped and breathed out the sides of her gag, causing it to make a noise like a kazoo. She also felt the sweat on her face.

She saw that the wall was getting higher. When she'd come round the bricks were level with her waist. Now they were creeping up so that they were level with her breasts. When the last brick was put in place then what?

She'd be left to die!

Laura started crying. This wasn't happening, yet here she was a woman of the twenty-first century with a diploma in business studies and working in the property market. She had an apartment; a mobile with access to texts; e-mail and voice mails and she was caught up in a ritual from the Middle Ages.

As Laura sobbed she realised that she needed the toilet. Someone was having a black joke at her expense: about to be killed and she wanted a wee.

She was also thirsty. She would die of dehydration as well as suffocation.

Laura thought of her friend Geoffrey. She hadn't seen him for a long time, but where as she lived in the present he'd lived in the past. She'd been impressed by his knowledge of history, art and literature especially when he'd talked about subjects she knew little of.

"There's a story by Edgar Allan Poe," he'd told her once: "The Cask of Amontillado". It's about a chap who's fed up of the antics of a so-called friend of his that he gets him drunk and walls him up alive." "Being buried alive features in several of his stories: "The Black Cat", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and of course there's one appropriately called: "The Premature Burial"". "You could say Poe had a bee in his bonnet about it, or should it be a bee in his coffin?"

"Oh My God it is like that weird story," Laura thought.

The wall was nearly finished. There were only four bricks to go in now.

Laura started shuffling, feeling the sticky sweat now on her chest and under her arms. Her breathing was increasing and she watched hypnotised as a brick was cemented and placed in the gap. Another brick was put in.

A third.

Then a forth.

The wall was finished.

She was alone in the cramped darkness. It was also silent. She could sense her captor was outside tidying up. Then she thought she had a gentle tapping on the wall. Someone had come to save her she thought.

But the wall didn't come crashing down. He was no doubt checking it was secure. She listened intently, her heart thumping in her ears. Was he still there? At least she wouldn't be alone if he was.

She listened but heard nothing.

He was obviously gone.

This hole in a half-completed house was her tomb now. Dark and silent. She was hot and sweating all over. Any air in the hole would turn stale and with the gag on her mouth to stifle her breathing she would probably be dead before it happened.

No one would know what had happened to her. No one would find her. The police would look for her. There would be appeals for information before interest would die away.

Laura started crying again. Despite the gag she howled as loud as she could and as she did so she felt her bladder release itself. Her bottom and thighs became damp and the smell of urine filled her nostrills.

THE END

23.05.12