The velvet warmth of the wine had been a lie. One moment, James was sinking into the cushions of Hazel's couch, watching the amber glow of the fireplace; the next, the world had dissolved into a sickening blur.
When consciousness finally returned, it didn't arrive with the sun. It arrived with a sharp, biting ache in his bones.
James blinked, but the room refused to come into focus. His head throbbed with a rhythmic, heavy pulse, and a wave of nausea rolled through him as he tried to sit up. The air was unnaturally thin and frigid. As his vision cleared in jagged patches, the reality of his situation hit him like a physical blow: he was stripped bare, his skin pale and pebbled with gooseflesh against the cold floor.
"What's wrong with me?" he rasped, his voice cracking. "I feel so... dizzy."
He scanned the perimeter. This wasn't Hazel's cozy apartment. This was a cavernous, industrial space, shadows stretching long and thin across the walls. "Where am I? Hazel?"
He pushed himself up, intent on reaching the heavy steel door across the room, but a sudden, violent jerk at his ankle sent him crashing back to the floor. The sound of clashing metal echoed through the silence. Heart hammering against his ribs, James looked down. A heavy iron shackle was clamped tight around his leg, connected to a chain that disappeared into a bolt in the floor.
"What is going on?" he cried out, his breath hitching. "Why am I tied up? It's so cold... God, it's so cold."
As if in response to his voice, the low hum he hadn't noticed before escalated into a roar. He looked up, squinting through the gloom. Perched high on the walls were five massive industrial air conditioning units. Their vents were angled downward, blasting pillars of sub-zero air directly into the center of the room.
He screamed for help, the sound tearing from his throat until his lungs burned, but the only answer was the steady, mechanical drone of the fans.
Desperation took hold. He scrambled toward the far side of the room where a bed sat—piled high with thick, woolen blankets—but the chain snapped taut just inches away. He lunged, fingers straining, his nails scratching at the floorboards, but the blankets remained an agonizing three feet out of reach.
He began to shake violently, his teeth chattering so hard it felt like they might shatter. In a fit of panicked rage, he grabbed a loose piece of debris from the floor and hurled it at the nearest AC unit. It clattered uselessly against the metal casing.
The cold was no longer just a sensation; it was a weight, crushing the life out of his limbs. His strength evaporated. James collapsed onto the freezing floor, curling into a ball to protect his core.
"I have to... I have to get out," he whispered, his voice fading into a rhythmic tremor.
But as the frost began to creep across the windows, his eyes drifted shut, his body succumbing to the icy dark.
The air in the room had transitioned from biting to lethal. James lay curled on the floor, his muscles locked in a violent, uncontrollable shimmy. Every time he exhaled, a thick plume of white vapor curled from his lips like ghostly smoke.
"Help me..." he wheezed, his mind fracturing. He wasn't even sure where he was anymore. "It's killing me... mother..."
The heavy thud of a deadbolt sliding back echoed through the chamber. The steel door groaned open, spilling a sliver of warm, yellow light across the frost-dusted floor. James squinted, his vision swimming. A silhouette stood there, framed by the doorway, before the rhythmic click-clack of heels began to approach.
Hazel stopped just inches from his shivering form. She moved with a slow, predatory grace, eventually bending down until her face was level with his.
"What do we have here?" she murmured, her voice smooth and terrifyingly calm.
James's heart gave a weak, painful flutter. "It's... you," he thought, though the words barely formed in his mind.
"Are you enjoying the breeze?" Hazel asked, a sharp, cruel tilt to her lips. She reached out, her fingers hovering just over his frozen skin without touching it. "You must be feeling quite comfortable, aren't you? Perhaps I should help you increase it?"
James tried to summon a plea, a scream, anything—but his jaw was locked tight. "I... I-it's... c-cold..." he managed to force through chattering teeth.
Hazel tilted her head, feigning confusion. "What? Are you worried about me?"
She stood up abruptly, her laughter ringing out—a sharp, melodic sound that lacked any trace of humanity. "Hahaha! Unfortunately, James, I don't feel the cold."
She looked down at him then, her expression shifting. The warmth he had seen in her apartment was gone, replaced by a gaze so vacant and icy that she looked like a stranger wearing Hazel's skin. In that moment, the woman standing over him wasn't a friend or a lover; she was a predator watching a bug struggle under a microscope.