"I want to see light," thought Ufthak and would surely have been scorned for the rest of his life had anyone heard him. But there was no one to hear him, and what was left of his life was not bound to last long; for he was a captive in Shelob’s Lair, taken by Her whose hunger knew no bounds.

It was not that Ufthak wasn’t used to darkness. Being an Orc, he found solace not in the searing, scorching heat of the sun, nor under the piercing gaze of the stars; it was the soft, cool dark of his home that pleased him. Yet he hated the suffocating air of the caverns where only Her Ladyship reigned and would have gladly avoided the place altogether if not for the orders of whoever was ruling the Orcs at the time. Many times had he sneaked through the passages of Her realm without so much as catching sight of the great spider moving smoothly at the edges of his vision, but one day his luck had deserted him to Her.

Of course the others had looked for Ufthak when nothing was heard of him. And of course, when they had finally found him hanging in a corner, tied by Shelob’s cords, they had simply laughed and walked away with whatever light they had been carrying with them.

They had left him in that blind darkness to die, and he could not even curse after them. With time, Her poison wore off and Ufthak found himself able to move again – and entirely too weak to break the cobwebs that held him above the filthy ground. His head felt as though it was going to burst from all the blood flowing down to it and refusing to go back up.

"I wonder if the lads will ever come back for me," he thought even as he knew that they never would. There was no Orc in Cirith Ungol brave enough to take back what Her Ladyship had claimed as Her own, and he knew that also. And yet, as the true absence of light seeped slowly into every bone and pore of his body and robbed him of what little courage he had to begin with, Ufthak insisted to himself that soon they would be back with weapons that could cut Shelob’s web; surely they could make this one exception, just this one time.

Could they not...?

Another hour passed, and the mere discomfort of having what felt like every single drop of blood in his body pack into his head turned into real pain. Ufthak tried to move again, to somehow loosen the cords enough for him to escape. He was breathing in short gasps, eyes searching in vain for the one who could move and see in this Unlight; but in this darkness, his eyes were useless. Ufthak was struggling against the grip of the web and the failing of his senses with all strength his weak, feeble body still held.

"She’s forgotten me, but I’m still going to die here!" Cursing the other Orcs for abandoning him, Ufthak clawed the cobweb with despair he had never felt before. The stagnant air felt heavy in his lungs. It seemed as if the unbearably foul smell of Shelob’s Lair was getting stronger with every frightened gasp, every terrified heartbeat; the weakening of the Orc’s body seemed to be summoning things greedier than any Orc that had lived or died in Cirith Ungol.

Ufthak was now fighting his imprisonment with a frenzied need to run away, to live perhaps one more day in a world where Orcs were dying every single hour of every single day, new ones being bred to take their places and die in turn. He thought not of what happened to Orcs after they were dead, nor what perilous mission he would be sent on if ever he should break free and return to his home; he could only think of the cutting pain in his head and the numbness that was settling to the rest of his body.

He twisted in the air one more time, wasting in that frustrated movement his last bit of strength. A shard of light cutting across his vision followed the new, sharper pain ensuing that last attempt at freeing himself, and he suddenly felt incredibly nauseous. A sour taste filled his mouth, and before Ufthak could stop himself, a gagging noise escaped his throat.

A weak sound it was, and swallowed at once by the all-devouring dark – and yet it seemed to fill the deafening silence with its echo. Ufthak made no other sound; he went completely limp with fear, listening to the silence. Nothing he could hear except for the pounding of his heart. Drops of cold sweat formed somewhere on his skin, but he could hardly feel their chilly touch at that point. He did not move anymore. The only light he knew he had the chance of seeing would be the dim glitter beyond the eyes of that hunter in the darkness...

And the darkness was hungry.

Author's Note:

Now why would I be writing a fic about a character who’s so minor he didn’t even appear in the LOTR, and was only mentioned once by a fellow Orc? ...you do know you should never ask a fanfiction author anything that stupid, right?