Chapter261: Ashes to Ashes

*Ella* I open my eyes, blinking into the eerie green light of the cramped room I was thrown into a few hours ago. The walls are made of stone and drip with condensation. I look up at the wooden ceiling where streaks of light filter down and cause the floor to dance with pockets of pale gray. The ceiling is a trap door; the room I’m in is an outdoor cellar. A set of slimy stairs lead up to the ceiling, the slime now covered with muddy footprints.  There’s nothing down here but me. No chair, bed, bathroom bucket, or food. The bastards who dragged me here stripped me of the coat I’d been wearing, and the chilly fall air bites into my skin. My hands, bound by iron shackles behind my back, are numb from the cold.  It’s raining now. Water has been dripping through the ceiling, but now rain pelts the wooden boards above my head so violently it rattles.  I close my eyes and imagine my studio, my paintings, mentally going through stacks of canvases and my inventory of paint. I’m just trying to