Numb
By Emilee Petersmark

She waited with a smile.

Her open eyes glittered in the frigid moonlight, as pale and empty as the ice encasing her lonely domain. On her back with her hands on her stomach, she stared up blankly, watching the blue light of a low-hanging moon drift through the cloudy ceiling, hazy with snow.

It had been so long since she had seen the moon, the sun, or anything other than that sallow light sifting through into her world.

In the beginning, her world had been dark as pitch, her open eyes unable to see any color other than the consuming black that threatened to swallow her forever. For so long she had stared into the void, unable to tell up from down, herself from the ice.

It had burned at first. The ice bit at her skin like fire, torturing her nerves; her fingers and toes became rock-hard and useless, fusing together with the intensity of the cold; every breath she drew froze inside of her lungs until they refused to move; even her tears of pain froze in the corners of her eyes and stabbed relentlessly at the sensitive flesh.

Her last memories of the world of light and warmth were fleeting and full of fear. She remembered strangers' hands grabbing at her arms and legs, thick fingers gripping her hair and causing painful bruises on her abdomen. She remembered a chill on her exposed skin as they tore her clothes away, scratching to get at the soft, vulnerable flesh.

And when they were finished pulling her apart, they pushed her into this hole, where she lay still and in an excruciating amount of pain.

They had thrown her down here with no remorse, no hesitation or sympathy-- they simply threw her into the freezing, stinging pit where the chill itself stabbed at her like knives. She counted every moment in a rage, vehemently wishing for them to pay for the lifetime of pain she was forced to feel with a smile on her face.

How long had she been locked away in this cold prison? How many years crawled by inside the numb existence she'd been forced into? How many years until she could frown, feel the sunlight on her face, wiggle her fingers and toes?

Eventually, it became too cold to hurt. It became too cold to breathe or struggle or cry. She let her body become stiff. She let her skin shrink and become wrinkled. She let her body shut down.

. Except for one thing-- her brain refused to die. Despite the blankness of her world, her mind had always been awake.

The first thoughts to cross her mind when she was thrust into the darkness were blood tainted; the taste of cruel vengeance had made the corners of her mouth twitch upward in an unmistakable, though demented, grin. A grin that froze before she could wince in pain.

Through her forced entrapment, she brooded and contemplated-- her mind reaching out into the distance beyond the walls of snow and ice, becoming embittered and abandoned within the recesses of her frozen realm. She saw the faces of the ones who placed her in this icy tomb, saw them ripped into tiny pieces as slowly as possible. She heard their screams and their sobs and their pleas for mercy. She smelled the decay-- acidic and pungent amongst the coppery smell of blood. She felt their life ooze from their bodies, warm and sticky on her rigid, ruined hands.

Soon, she became as bitter and brittle as her artic encasement. She hated the people who banished her to this awful, frozen Hell-- hated them for every minute, every second spent in agony.

And so, it seemed that by biding her time dreaming of revenge did she enable herself to stay alive until hope reappeared one day out of the blue.

Distantly, so very distantly, the darkness began to chip away. With heavy, ice-engorged eyes, she watched as the snow and ice above her fade slowly into a pale light. Suddenly, her world had a top and a bottom.

All she had to do was to wait for the light to grow and descend upon her forgotten remains. It would be no task at all-- she had become accustomed to waiting.

And after what seemed like a small eternity, coming to nearly the very last ounce of her patience, the time had finally arrived. Shadows moved across the thin layer of ice that separated her from the delicious-looking moonlight and the night sky, and muffled voices came through in low tones. Oh, her freedom was so close-- her deranged dreams of revenge were dancing vividly in her head. With the sun on her face, she would find those who locked her in the ground. She would make them pay, just like she had wanted to for so long.

Her frozen body tingled with anticipation.

Kk-rraaack!

The groaning of the ice was audible as another large portion lifted from over her-- her ceiling was so thin now that she could easily make out rubber designs on the underside of her liberators' shoes.

She would have laughed, had her skin not been frozen tight and stiff across her face, locking her jaw in a silent, petrified grin.

No, it would not be long now.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It had been eleven long years since fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Norton had disappeared without a trace from her quiet home in Juno, Alaska.

On February 22, 1967, she was found dead, locked deep in a block of ice beneath the frozen waters of Eel Lake. It had taken a rescue crew nearly a month to excavate and recover her body (which was magnificently preserved by the ice).

Once freed from the tomb of ice and thawed as much as possible, her remains were sent to local forensic laboratories for a thorough autopsy. Elizabeth was found to be tortured and raped, lacerations and bruises still visible on her leathery skin; she was thrown into the lake alive, where she drowned, froze, and became trapped within the ice.

Everything about the body seemed to be explained-- the bruises, the lack of clothing.

The only thing that no one could find an answer to was why Elizabeth Norton was found beaten, raped, frozen, and smiling.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Her autopsy was painless-- with open eyes she saw the sterile metal implements sticking out of the hole in her chest, but her petrified body had long since been unable to feel this sort of hurt.

For the first time in eleven years, she had wanted so badly to feel the pain. She was out in the open, with the sun on her face-- why could she not feel its warmth? The men in white coats would brush her skin with their fingers, searching for bruises, yet she could feel none of it.

After over a decade of numbness, the desire for some sort of sensation was beginning to drive her insane.

This was what she had waited for; for so long she lay in a coffin of snow, praying for a world of touch and taste and smell and sound. Now she was finally free of her prison and her body still refused to react.

She wanted to cry, wail, scream aloud that she wasn't dead-- but her body remained unresponsive, and no one saw past the mangled, frozen limbs and the still heart, blind to the fact that her mind was very much alive and trapped within an unmoving body. They simply closed the surgical incisions and covered her with a white sheet, leaving her in the dark once again.

Then, nearly two weeks later, they dug for her yet another hole in the cold ground and threw her in.

She would have cried had the ice in her eyes not burned away her tear glands. She was back in the frigid ground, surrounded by ice and buried far away from the sun.

But she could not cry, or close her eyes, or move her face-- and so she was locked in a frozen prison yet again, with a grin on her face.

Even the cruel irony in her smile left her numb.