Trapped
The trap door latched with a click.
"Dammit!" Shael voiced silently. "Why did I ever follow them in here? They're going to kill me when they find out."
The elf could still hear movement in the store above her, Jafe and Jelmon, the two little jerks that lived at the edge of the forest, and always hid in the trees and threw gava nuts at her when she walked the path by their house on the way to her uncle's. Oh yes, she thought she was so smart.. so sneaky. Gonna catch them breaking into the mercantile, and...
"And what, Shael?" she mused aloud. "Talk them into giving up?"
The elf shook her head. "Oh yeah, The Great Warrior Ravenspur tried to subdue two thieves, only to duck into the cellar at the first creak of a floorboard."
"What a dolt I am," she says, sighing herself to the floor.
"Oh well, only a few hours until the store opens. I'll just wait here until those two leave, and then..." The elf's face fell. "And then I'll have to explain what I was doing in here. Oh gods, Odell will never believe me," she said, burying her face in her hands.
Two hours soon turned into four... then eight, as a terrified Shael huddled in the darkness of her prison, her eyes frantically following the patterns of scurrying red, trying to keep them all in her sights, even as she felt
their oily fur brush against her back. All the while she wondered why Odell hadn't opened his shop.. why no one had come looking for her, and knowing the reason: Nobody knew where she was.
The hours drug on... eight more... then twelve... Shael struggled to stay awake - afraid the rats would eat her if she didn't, while her stomach felt as if to gnaw it's way from her body. She'd searched for food... but found only burlap bags, and cloth... buckets. Once, she thought she heard someone upstairs, and although she'd cried for help so long her voice was barely above a whisper, she screamed as loud as she could. No one came. It was just her... and the rats. They stared at her with their beady little eyes glowing red. And the spiders.. walking across her bare flesh like she was part of the earthen floor, leaving gooseflesh in their wake until Shael was never really sure whether they were off of her or not.
Thirty-eight hours after she'd hidden in the cellar, the shopkeeper - who'd fallen ill, and had been unable to work - opened the trap door.
She'd not been able to handle closed spaces ever since...