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Darkness reigned in the gloomy cellar, broken only by the trembling light of a candle.
The kidnapper approached his captive, holding in one hand a rotting woman's head, clutched by the hair.
The leathery skin clung to the bones, and the mouth open in a grimace of terror chilled the prisoner's blood.
She cried out in a wrenching scream, maddened by the certainty of her impending fate. She tried to sit up, but her ankles were still clamped in the stocks, and her arms were held upwards by shackles chained to the wall.
The man leaned over her, and in that moment she knew that this was not the demon himself, but a sinister servant of the evil one, an instrument of darkness. The real demon controlled him from the shadows.
With a dagger in his right hand, the kidnapper approached his helpless prey, reaching for his neck to sever the jugular vein. But just at that instant, a clatter echoed behind him.
Glass exploded as the police burst into the den, smashing the black-painted windows. The officers, dressed in blue, leapt inside, outnumbering the captor and wielding guns.
The kidnapper realised that it would be useless to resist with his simple knife. The nightmare was over, but the captive knew that the images of that rotting head and the grimace of terror would haunt her for the rest of her life, a constant reminder of the horror she had witnessed in that dark lair.