Following her decision, she inhaled the moldy, stale air, coughed and sighed. With fear gone, her complexion improved. A bush of red on her cheeks and strength in her movement, she followed the man. Her tears fell to give space to sanity. The emptiness of the tunnel shifted from hostility to company.

Ria slapped her hands and rubbed them, her eyes wandering around. The splashing sound came again and she followed. Dragging her feet -to dampen the resistance- she walked. The cold no longer froze her body, it refreshed her instead. The stench no more made her frown. No, that didn’t change. The stench was too much, especially in this part of the sewer. The penetrating scent of something decomposing had the tunnel filled. It was really vulgar.

She walked for ten minutes straight, with her hands covering her nose, but there was still no sign of the man. She was determined nonetheless. “I’m not giving up. I am going to leave. You can’t keep me caged. Not again.”

Then she saw it. Not the man, no. Over the slow water current, the camel coat was floating away from her, trailed at a few feet of distance by the hat.

“No…” She mumbled and her hands fell to her sides.

“No, no, NO!” her echoes yelled behind her as she haphazardly ran toward the clothes. The water tried to hold her back, it certainly resisted her emotional energy, but its feeble chains couldn’t stop her.

“It can’t be. It can’t be…” she chanted, passing by the hat, as she came to stop behind the coat, which kept floating away of her. Her trembling hands pulled the half drenched, half submerged coat out of the water and looked at it incredulously. It was the same camel-colored coat. There was no doubt about it.

“But…” she said in shock. No much time had passed since she had made the decision to see the end of her struggle. She needed time, however; Valuable time to further steel her heart for future troubles. Her resolve was made of glass sheets and wet mud. It wasn’t yet strong. Just a single nudge of emotions, of circumstances, of another bump on the road, a difficulty, and her fake construct started crumbling like her confidence.

“What is happening?” she asked. Her eyes moved from the clothes to the sewer. The darkness -once again- had everything around her in its grasp. The silence was jarring once again. The water was freezing cold. The tunnel was constraining and her mind started wavering. The dread was live again. Her shivers detailed of her condition. The sewer had a hold on her once again.

She imagined a naked man standing in the darkness staring at her; Lust brimming in his eyes, desire dripping from his tongue, and hunger festering his inside. She took a step back. The coat fell from her hands. The sound made her jump. She splashed and squished away. Tumbling she fell in the sewer and the muddy water swallowed her body. With only her head outside, she saw the hats brim. It was slowly being carried away by the flow. Rotating round and round, it was moving away from her.

“God, help me!” she mumbled, clenching a bottle her hands had found on the drowned floor. Her chest rose and fell as she sat there waiting. She longed for her friends, her pillow, for the comfort of her bed. She wanted to sleep. She was tired. She was hungry and was slowly growing lucid and lethargic. She almost wanted something to charge toward her shearing the darkness with its burning ferocity and take her down for her sins.

She almost wanted to close her eyes, but something from her past, the echoes of young laughter and the whispers of a dreadful promise, kept her awake. Her fear kept her caged. The lifelessness of the sewer was haunting enough. However, Ria wasn’t broken yet. This wasn’t enough. Her eyes closed for a moment. She needed time to think. But her mind didn’t want her in control. In the darkness, she saw something. The image of a wooden floor stained by something red and bubbling passed by her mind. She breathed sharply. Her eyes opened a second later and goosebumps erupted all over her body.

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“Who is there?” she yelled.

And then the hat rose.

The water followed it. Something humongous tore through the calm muddy water and stood up in front of her. The erupting water fell back, most splashed back into the stream, while some fell on her head. Ria chocked. Her eyes refused to believe. Her past and the reality, her dreams, and the present, mixed together in front of her eyes to create the illusion of a ghost looming over her. Through revoltingly large and yellow glowing eyes, it stared.

Leaning toward her face, it opened its extended jaw, full of gleaming white, dagger-sharp teeth. Scales donned its body, a tail, she saw, flipping behind its broad, light-yellow scaled chest. She sat in the water shell shocked, stunned, breathless, as the beast slashed his clawed hand at her and ripped her shoulder into pieces, ripped her flesh off her body, and tore her head off her neck.

Ria hiccupped as the thoughts zipped through her head, as the possible future burned through her thoughts. Eyes in eyes, it exhaled a puff of steam on her face, and then spoke…

“BOO!” It said. Ria fell backward in the water, unconscious.

Sometime later, she woke up. Drenched but clothed, scared but complete. Her eyes darted everywhere to look out for her assailant. Was it her assailant, however? It hadn’t eaten her… Yet. Nor was she raped.

At least I can’t feel it. She thought. She was scared, but not frantic. She felt awake. Refreshed.

She was out of the waist-high water -Yes, she was- and now sat uncomfortably on a relatively dry piece of flat bricked floor. Uncomfortably she sat because she couldn’t believe she was alive. “How, where…” stumbling through her words she stood. Disbelieving, still not understanding how she was alive, she tried to take a step forward when she heard something.

“Jou awake, girl?”

“Huh?”

“I have to say, ghough I love to scare ghe pepole who are sent to me home, jou is the first bun who fell unbonsbious. Girl, I…”

There it was, the big yellow, scaled, clawed, jawed, crocodile, with a bulging belly, donning an open buttoned coat and a dripping hat -the same ones from before-, walking toward her on its hind legs, while flossing her monstrous teeth. Thank God, the overlord of fear, that this unexpected spectacle left Ria so dumbstruck that she couldn’t lose unconscious again.

“Whag in God’s name are jou saying?” The crocodile said when it heard Ria mumble. Ria snickered, then she looked around, and started walking away.

“Jhese bloody day walkers… Ugh, make me want to shtomp my feetch. Jou shtop foolish girl and come bahk. Don’t jou wansht to leabe?” the croc screamed as if afraid of losing sight of Ria. It pondered -pouting her non-existent lips and shaking her bulging tummy with her clawed hands- whether to run after Ria or not. Ria stopped. It sighed in happiness and clapped its forelimbs upon seeing that it wouldn’t have to run after the foolish girl.

“You… are real?” Ria turned around and asked.

“Of courshe, I am.” The croc said.

“And you can talk?”

“-Ever shince my birth, girl. Now bome on, we have to gho backe, it’s almost time…” The croc trailed off and started walking way.

“You said something about leaving? Ria said. “I don’t want to waste your time… but you have to tell me, please. I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

The croc stopped to look back at her, squinting. “Didn’t the old dog above tell you the rules, hmm?”

“What rules?” Ria said, stupefied.

“Don’t tell me jou drank his…" The croc said uncomfortably, “before he told jou the rulez?”

“Yes…”

“Oh, he duped Jou…” it said, “That old trickster… he did jou good. Jou poor, poor child. Well, it’s noh like jou have any choice now, hmm.”

“What is happening? Tell me. I was partying with my friend and…” It interrupted Ria.

“We can talk while waking. Follow me.”

Don’t go. Ria’s mind said. I know him. You can’t believe what it's saying.

A feverish desire to stay alive grew inside her. She looked at the crocodile slowly trailing away and looked back at the emptiness. A stream of dirty stinking water flowed behind her, edging away into the darkness. Ria knew she was stuck. And she knew it was a bad idea. But she had no choice. Even though her heart raced inside her chest to walk away, she followed the croc.

Frightened as she was, she still needed to know. She needed to find the exit. And eerie as it may sound, the talking crocodile was her only hint.