It had been months, and, in my depression over Sondra going missing, I had thrown myself to the ocean, hoping it would claim me and deliver me from the isolation. Something had claimed me from the ocean, though not quite the robed man with a sickle I had hoped for. Instead, what had taken me held me for six months and used me to it's own ends before dumping mi unconscious body here.

Yes, of all places, the creature or creatures that had claimed me left me in the basement, naked and forgotten... forgotten. Slowly I came to and opened my eyes. Was losing Sondra a dream? The past few months had been forgotten, maybe the few before it were a dream? And I had now woken to a nightmare.

Not, as one would expect, the nightmare of the basement, such was so routine that it really didn't classify as a nightmare anymore. The nightmare was Sondra. Was she alive? There was no telling how long I had been "away" this time, and if Sondra wasn't still gone her self, had she forgotten too? Had I become Meru?

Just outside the Basement door, there was a very familiar voice, raised in anger at the other speaker, another female, whose voice was much softer, but there was a slight edge in her voice that suggested that she had heard similar arguments before…

“I’m telling you the truth, Jackie! I mean…just look at my uniform! Do you think I did this shit to myself?”

“Well, it’s possible that—“

“Bullshit! What do you think this white shit I have all over me is…Elmer’s Fucking Glue? I’m telling you, I got raped!”

“By a monster…”

“Yes, by a monster, you stupid bitch! You think a staff member was stupid enough to do this? Even those dumb fucks have brains enough not to try that shit on a student!”

“Miss Van Ryan, I shall have to ask you to lower your voice and stop using such profane language. You are disturbing the other classes, and I don’t think that the teachers, or the other students in this school would appreciate being so disrupted—“

“Oh, please! Don’t give me that high-and-mighty teacher bullshit, Jackie! You’re not my English professor…Your a fucking TA…a god damn student teacher, that’s all! Do you even have a teaching degree yet? A major…or even minor in English?”

“Well, no, but—“

“Then, until you do, stop acting like you have the right to boss me around like I’m one of your fucking students!”

“Look, Sondra…I like you a lot. You are a very good student when you show up in class on time and you get most of your work done in the appointed timeframe. But, as Miss Anderson’s Teacher Assistant, I am still authorized to order you to descend down the Basement at once.”

“Or else…?”

“Or else I am afraid I am going to have to force you down.”

“You wouldn’t dare…”

“I’m sorry, Sondra, but I’m afraid you leave me no choice.”

“Unhand me, you stupid biiiiaaah!”

And down she came, tumbling down the stairs like a limp sack of grain, until she hit the bottom of the stairs with a loud thump. The battered and bruised blonde’s head thunked against the hard cold floor, and the last thing she saw in the gloom before everything started to fade was a pair of glowing red eyes looking down at her from the top of the stairs.

“Enjoy your ssstay, Misss Van Ryan.” Spoke a very mocking serpentine voice, coming from up above, followed by the sound of a heavy wooden door slamming shut. And then everything went black...

And in the gloom, which was about as thick what someone might refer to as a ‘pea soup’ fog…if one cared to look hard enough at the battered cum-stained girl in the tattered uniform who laid in a crumpled up heap on the floor…then, amongst all the other things about this student that might stand out, even through the smoky atmosphere that dominated this most awful of places…something shone brightly, something coming from a finger belonging to a hand that in turn was attached to one outstretched arm.

If one looked closely enough, then, even in this gloomy room, it might be possible to make out a very familiar ring attached to the ring finger of the wearer…

Van Ryan? It was my last name now, but I swore I heard Sondra's voice, and then that name... It had to be, just had to be. It reached out through the darkness of the nightmares, of the lost and confused me and pulled me slowly into the waking world. The room was dark, I think, when my eyes slowly opened. Or, it seemed dark. Maybe my eyes weren't really open? There didn't seem to be shape to the dark... but breathing. I heard breathing. Felt a presence.

So, with what groggy strength I had left, I took a gamble. A gamble that I was right,a gamble that my emotional calvraly had come, and in a whisper laden with weariness, I spoke four simple words, "I promised, didn't I?"

Groaning with pain as she tried to get up, Sondra fell back several times, cursing through gritted teeth as she struggled with all her might to regain her footing. Then, she herd a familiar voice in the gloom. It was the sound of this voice, the voice of her long-missing wife, that gave Sondra the edge she needed, to summon every ounce of strength she possessed…and though she was still aching horribly from the ‘trip’ down the stairs to the Basement, the ever-resilient blonde forced herself back on her feet.

Following the sound to where she believed the source to be and squinted as she peered through the gloom, she could just make out the features of a naked body, and as she kneeled down on the ground to look closer, Sondra could see that it did appear to be her wonderful, sweet Linnis laying before her.

“Linny, my love, is—is that really you?” Sondra asked, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not the girl she was addressing was really who she seemed to be.

…Or was this just dream? Or an illusion…Some sort of trick conjured up by one of the cruel and sadistic demons that inhabited this cruel and beautiful island? Could I…should I really believe that this was all real?

Was anything here ever real? Ever really real? Or was everything just an illusory world, like in the Matrix movies…made to seem like a reality to us students. Was every friend I ever made… every pleasure I have ever experienced…just a fabricated reality, created as some sort of sick, twisted joke by Niceman and his cronies?

What was truth…what was a lie? Where did the dream end and the reality begin? Where does the reality end and the dream begin? How do I separate one from the other?

It is all so confusing to me now…Nothing makes any sense anymore, and perhaps it never really did…

I slowly sat up and, seeing the faint glint of her ring in the darkness, took her hand. She had been gone so long, all the questions she now asked herself I had asked over the months before... I imagined, though I was gone just as long.

"I made you a promise, once, remember?" I asked softly, using her hand to help myself to my feet, "That I would come back, no matter what. That you'd never relive Meru. Never. Do you remember?"

I used her hand to pull her into a hug, and from the stickiness of it, I gathered that one, if not both, of us had been recently raped.

"I came home, because I love you, and I'd rather be killed by these things than be taken from you forever. And, if you can't trust in your wife, who can you trust?"

Forcing those horrid thoughts from her mind, Sondra wrapped her arms around her lover in a warm, sweet embrace, ignoring the sticky monster cum that squished between their bodies. “I remember, Linny…I remember everything. I remember the promises that we made, the vows that we took…Something had happened to both of us…something that had taken us away from each other once again.”

“To where…for what purpose…for how long exactly…None of these questions can I answer. But now the two of us are back together again, and right now I don’t give a damn about the questions or what those answers might be. Right now, all I care about is that I have you in my arms once more.”

“I do trust you, Linny, more than I would ever trust anybody else, and I’m sorry if I have made you think otherwise.”

"I know it's hard here.. they've used you as a trap for me... but the only thing I trust, the only thing here that's tangible to me is our love... is what we have... and we both came through hell to get back into one another's arms..."

There were a few facts, like my near-self-annihilations, that I figured were best left unsaid.

“I’m so happy that you’re back, Linny. It’s been so long since we’ve been in each other’s arms like this…Too long…Now that you’re back, I don’t ever wanna let go again. I just want to hold you like this forever and ever…I want to make love to you, Linny, I wanna make love to you so bad that it hurts…But I would much rather we had a more…pleasant setting to do it in. Any chance we can get out of this hellhole and find some place a little less…dismal?”

There were things that Sondra had on her mind, but she wasn’t quite sure that now would be the best time to share them. Now that she had Linnis back in her arms after all this time, she was not prepared to lose her again because of her own stupidity…

"Mmm" I nodded and put an arm over her shoulder. We had to get out of here before our reunion attracted any undue attention, but a smile did cross my face. "We met here, remember?"

A smile crossed Sondra's face as she remembered the first time she met Linnis. "How could I forget, my love? I had been sent down here because my Math teacher had caught me masturbating in class again. Nothing new, there."

"I had expected some ugly-ass monster to be waiting for me, and instead I found two sexy ladies making out at the bottom of the stairs. The scene was so hot that I just tore out of my uniform and started masturbating right there on the stairs as I watched you and Maria going at it."

Sondra giggled as she recalled more of their first meeting. "I believe the very first words out of your mouth when we first met were, 'Hey, there. I’m Linnis, and I think I’m going to bury my face between your legs now, if you don’t mind'." Sondra laughed again and gave Linnis a deep and passionate kiss on the lips before adding, "It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, a relationship that soon became even more special."

I kissed back tenderly, Sondra was the one I was most tender to, most affectionate. Sure, there was rabid desire, but it was tempered with love in a way I had with no one else. "I was a bit blunt, but you're just so sexy... and with that simple line, started our journey that would end in the most beautiful and eternal type of love."

"My sentiments exactly, dear Linny." A thoughtful expression crossed Sondra's face as she added, "It's amazing that so many wonderful things could come from a single chance encounter in a cold, damp basement. You know, I wonder if things would have been different under other circumstances...If I hadn't been sent down to the Basement at that very same day, and at that very same time that you and Maria were down here making out, would we have ended up where we are now?"

"Impossible to say. You gave me a lot of courage," Linnis smiled brightly, "I don't know if I'd been nearly as bold."

"It takes a lot of courage to survive in this horrid place...a lot of courage and a lot of faith, my love," Sondra replied, arms wrapped around Linnis as she tenderly hugged her wife, "Both of which I admit that I find myself lacking at times."