• Auroras' eyes snapped open. She brushed a few strands of her long brown hair out of her eyes before looking around. She was sitting in a boat, similar to a Viking one she had seen in a text book in school. She looked down and saw that she was wearing the same blue-ish hospital gown she was wearing before she was brought here. ... Where ever 'here' was ...

    Aurora looked around. She was the only person on the boat, bar the cloaked stranger standing at the front of their vessel holding what looked like an oar. Aurora couldn't see his face as he had pulled the hood over his head.

    The stranger turned to face Aurora.

    'Boat 62. Cause of Death: Accidental Death, Heart Failure.'

    His voice was rough like gravel, but sharp, cold and cutting like a knife. Then Auroras' brain registered what she had just been told.

    'W - wait a sec! D - does that mean I'm dead?' She asked with a slight stammer.

    The strangers eyes flicked back to Aurora. The man didn't have an pupils - only an iris, as red as blood and as hard as steel.

    'Of course,' came the (If you'll excuse the pun) grave reply. 'You are dead. No living mortal has been down here in millenia.' He paused. 'They didn't last very long either,' He added as an after thought.

    He said no more and began rowing with, not an oar as Aurora had first thought, but a long pole with a curved blade at the end. Aurora pressed a hand to her chest with a slight air of urgencey. She almost sobbed as she felt her ice cold flesh and the lack of pulse. A lone tear tracked its lonely way down her cheek as she thought about all the things she would miss ... her friends, her family ... and what she had done in her life to end up in Hell.

    A small gas lamp hung at the top of the boat, illuminating their passage with a sickly pale green light. Aurora looked around and found that they were traveling down what appeared to be a river inside a cave. As she looked up at the roof of the cave, he was hit square in the forehead with a droplet of red water. Aurora frowned and dabbed her fingers in the liquid. She squinted at it in the poor light. Aurora almost shrieked out loud as she realised that the water was blood. She wiped it on her gown, leaving an ugly red smear. Aurora shuddered.

    The ceiling was sprinkled with stalagmites which, although it might have just been her imagnation, or the fact that she had just died, looked eerily like sets of teeth grinning. She ripped her gaze from the roof of the cave and that train of thought and looked forwards. She noticed they were approaching a bank of grey sand, but it was still some way away. She looked at the water. It was black, and felt like oil, she discovered after trailing her fingers through it. Aurora thought she saw a shimmer of movement, but she blinked and the moment passed.

    The stranger noticed what she was doing and yelled.

    'NO!'

    But it was too late as a pale tentacle had shot out of the water and fixed itself around her wrist. Aurora (Not that she would ever admit it) shrieked as the tentacle pulled her towards the river, but managed to keep her balance as the boat rocked wildly.

    At least, until a skeletal hand snuck up behind her and grabbed her other wrist. Auroras' eyes barely had time to register a skull with water logged scraps of skin clinging losely to the bones before she was dragged down into the murky, oily depths of the river.

    The corpse opened its jaws and bit down on Auroras' wrist, tearing open the pale, un-blemished skin and spilling her blood into the water and the dead things mouth, while the tentacle contented itself with squeezing her ribcage until Aurora heard at least one of her ribs snap with the pressure.

    Aurora fought back feebly, feeling the strength in her body drain away. Just as she was about to surrender herself to the grasp of the creatures a huge electrical pulse ripped its way through her body. The horrors of the lake darted backward, shrieking with pain.

    They darted back for Aurora, unwilling to give up on their pray so easily. A millisecond before they fixed themselves back onto her Auroras' vision went black, and the pain disappeared.

    ----

    Auroras eyes fluttered open. The room was blurred and bright. A buzzing noise started.

    'Can ... hear ...?' the buzz faded in and out, like a badly tuned radio. At the lack of responce the buzz tried again.

    'Can you hear me?' the buzz had turned into a calm, soothing voice.

    'Uhh ...' Aurora rasped.

    A damp flanel was pressed to her lips. A trickle of water dribbled into her mouth and down her throat.

    'Try again.' the voice said.

    Aurora licked her lips, smoothing over the rough, cracked skin. She took in a shallow breath.

    'Oww.'