When Caitlin had accepted her offer from Queen’s University with the intention of going on exchange to The Castle, a 15th century castle in East Sussex that the school owned, ending up shackled down in the dungeon was not exactly what she had in mind. The third year International Law and Politics major flinched as her back came in contact with the damp stone wall of the dungeon, sending another shiver through her body.

Just an hour ago, she had been returning back to the castle late at night after a long bus trip back from London, where she had been visiting some friends that had gone to school in the UK. It had been a joyful reunion and she had consumed enough drinks to make her tipsy, but she still was more than capable of getting back to the castle and her room. Carrying her duffle bag with a backpack slung over her shoulder, she’d walked past one of the castle janitors dressed in a black tank top, washed denim shorts and cherry red Doc Martens. Focused on just getting back to her room where her bed awaited her, she had no idea the janitor had set down his cleaning supplies and was following her deeper into the castle. Once she was down an isolated hallway, he had struck, clamping a chloroform cloth over her mouth and rendering her unconscious before accessing a secret passage to lead to the basement.

While the dungeons had been supposedly sealed off years ago, Caitlin was now finding out that they had been unsealed and were now in use once again for their original purposes. Her slim wrists were now encased in thick metal shackles, which looked in surprisingly new condition relative to the rest of the dungeon. The chains attached to the shackles were connected to a ring in the wall high above her head, forcing the poor girl onto her tiptoes to relieve the strain in her shoulders. Another set of cuffs secured her ankles over her boots with the connecting chain padlocked to a ring on the floor between her legs. She was unable to cry out too, as her mouth was filled with some kind of cloth and multiple strips of duct tape were plastered over her mouth to make sure it stayed there.

Caitlin had no idea how long she had been unconscious for, or how long she had been down in this dungeon. After pulling and tugging on the cuffs for a few minutes and concluding that without a key, they wouldn’t be coming off, she looked around the room that she now found herself in. She was one of four cells attached to the main corridor of the dungeon that she could see, although she suspected for a castle the size of The Castle, there was probably more out of sight. The air was damp and musty, causing her to wrinkle her nose whenever she had to breathe through it, and she could hear water dripping from somewhere adding to the ominous vibe of the dungeon. There were some more modern additions to the dungeon in the form of some small electric floodlights in each of the cells facing away from the wall the captives would normally be chained. Caitlin idly wondered where the outlets would have been installed in a castle built some 400 years ago.

A chill had also settled into her body and given that she was dressed for the UK summer heat, she did not have much protection. Although she did her best to keep her body away from the stone wall she was chained to, any contact that her bare skin made with the cold stone sent shivers through her body. Who could have done this? And why?

Caitlin had plenty of time to wonder, when she was not trying to shift her body around to generate some scrap of warmth through her body. She was suddenly thankful for her boots keeping her feet warm, as she had been considering sandals that probably would have fallen off when she was carried down her and she did not even want to think about how much colder she would have been in bare feet on the wet floor that looked somewhat recently washed. Or it was accumulated condensation from over a decade but she preferred to think it was washed.

She let out a quiet whimper, rubbing her thighs together as much as the chains would allow before she heard a door clang open and footsteps echoing off the stone walls. A thin figure stopped in front of her cell door, a jingle of keys sounded before the door was unlocked and he entered. As the figure moved closer and into the light, Caitlin’s eyes widened as she recognized one of the janitors of the Castle. He was one of the older ones, someone who had probably been looking after the Castle for a couple decades. But the haunting look in his eyes as he looked her up and down made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Not that the fact that he had her chained up and gagged was uncomfortable either. “Cold?” He asked his squirming captive, who nodded.

“Too bad.” He grumbled before pulling a water bottle from his back pocket. “Now don’t go doing something stupid like screaming for help. The dungeon is completely isolated and you have to go through secret passages to get down here. No one will hear you when I take off this gag.”

Caitlin whimpered before he tore the tape off of her mouth, causing her to yelp in pain as the adhesive tore off some skin with it. He allowed her to spit the cloth filling her mouth out onto the floor before tipping the bottle up and allowing her to drink. The cloth had dried out her mouth a lot more than she realized and soon the entire water bottle was empty. “P-please let me go.” She begged, hearing her voice crack.

He seemed to loom up over her. “Now why would I do that? After all the effort it took to carry you down here and get you chained up. I will NEVER let you go.”

She flinched at how his voice rose. “Why?” She croaked.

He had been turning away to fiddle with something but his head immediately snapped back around. “Why? Because for decades little sluts like you have pranced through the halls of this castle with no respect for the history that it stood for! My family was here for centuries until we had to sell it to that blasted school, and now all we get are students from across the ocean that are here for the novelty of it. Absolutely not.”

He was breathing hard now. “Once the intruders start disappearing, the Castle will soon become mine once again. That school will have to sell it, and I will be there to swoop in and pick it back up and restore the family to its former glory!”

Caitlin was now confused. “Don’t you need millions of dollars to buy this castle back?”

“How dare you underestimate the family!” He shouted, spit flying through the air. “We have our financial resources, having waited fifty years for this. And with more disappearances, the Castle will be shut down and have to be sold for cheap!”

She froze. “More?”

“Oh yes, you’re just the beginning. Soon these cells will be filled with other whiny girls just like you. Other girls from across the ocean with no respect for our glorious history.”

An evil smile crept across his face. “And if the Castle proves rather costly to reobtain, perhaps we can auction you pretties off. I know there are some rich royals in hiding that would pay quite a price for some sexy American girls.”

Caitlin opened her mouth to protest that he was insane and that she was Canadian but was interrupted by him showing a hard rubber sphere into her mouth. “Mmmmph!?” She exclaimed as he worked the straps behind her neck and strapped it tightly.

She immediately hated the way it jacked her jaws open, the way it tasted of rubber, and how the leather straps dug into her cheeks. Pushing the ball out of her mouth with her tongue proved futile and shaking her head in attempts to dislodge the strap did not produce any results. “There we go, nice and quiet.” He cackled, turning away from his captive and exiting the cell.

The cell door being slammed shut caused Caitlin to jump in her chains. “Don’t go anywhere.” He said with a grin, his footsteps fading away as he left her view. “You will have company soon enough.”