This is my entry for part two of ScienceFiction's High Tech challenge: The Damsel in Distress. I know it's not much, but you can't write a whole lot with a 300 word limit.

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"Come, Carolina, come," she coaxes, beckoning me down the stairs with a slender finger, whitened from lack of sunlight. 

"But Auntie Ixilda...Mommy told me not to go in your basement," I whimper, stepping away from the trapdoor. 

"It is not a basement," my aunt shakes her head vigorously, looking offended. "It is my life's work. It is a source of power! Your filthy Protector mother could never see that. But, it doesn't matter now. Lisa's gone now. Now, you're all mine!" 

"B-but...Mommy's coming back...right?" I instantly regret the question, fearing Ixilda's answer. 

"Dead people don't come back, Carolina," she spits. 

I stand back, looking shocked. Dead. That's a new word. I've heard people say Mommy's gone away for a while, and that they don't know when she'll be back, but no one's ever said she was dead. Dead sounds so final, so heartbreaking...

"Now, look, Carolina!" My crazed aunt steps forward, grabbing my chin and turning it, forcing me to stare into the black, misty room before me. "Look into the darkness!" She shrieks with mad ecstasy. "Gaze upon what will one day be yours!"

I awake with a start, taking a full minute to untangle myself from my twisted sheets. 

I try as hard as humanly possible to dispel the image of what I had seen from my mind, yet, it is imprinted across the backs of my eyelids as clear as the day I saw it. 

The day I first laid my eyes upon the horrible, unnatural thing my aunt keeps under her ground floor apartment.

The Darkener. 

"Hey Carrie, you alright?" My roommate, Isabella, turns on the lamp between our beds. "I heard you scream." 

"Yeah, I'm fine," I smile weakly. 

"You should really try to get some sleep," she says with concern. "Finals are in two days." 

"I know," I sigh.

If only she knew that exams are the least of my problems. 

I roll onto my back, pulling my knees up to my chest in fear.

As much as I tell myself that I haven't seen her in ten years and she likely doesn't remember me at all, I know that Ixilda will do everything in her power to find me. 

After all, I'm her only living relation. 

I'm the heir to the Darkener.