@gosassypumpkin said: Alt!
Mr. Easton. That felt far too formal. The Dog Pit called him variations of it, but he was their boss and even then those were more nicknames than anything else. The man before him? Someone he’d met before - someone who didn’t need to address him like that.
Please, John, call me William...
Static. The man shifted, barely able to open his eyes. A hand reached for the white-hot pain burning his side but soon pulled his heavy restraints taut. Static. He tugged at the other arm’s matching restraints, a quiet, panicked cry building up in his throat. The spotlight aimed at him kicked on and, for the first time, the man saw the cruel machinery that held him, wrapping his rib cage like a vise - its controls the breathing mask strapped to his face. Static. And then a voice that confirmed the man’s worst fear.
Fingers over the earlier noted, recently stitched wound served as a momentary distraction from freshly cracked ribs and the dead body of the company janitor the man left behind. He barely had time to begin processing what had just happened before, in the next room, small screens set into a control panel instructed him to pick up the two handles before him. Tightly gripping the heavy handle attached to heavier chain, he stared through shatterproof glass at his secretary and file clerk, bound, gagged, and standing on a thin platform with barbed wire looped tightly about their necks. Static.
The last words ever heard by the newest file clerk echoed in the man’s head - pained tone almost as sharp as the wire that sliced his employee’s throat - as he stepped into the boiler room onto the walk a story above the office secretary. His side ached as he knelt and yelled to her, trying to determine if she was hurt. Static. He slowly looked over his shoulder to the screen by the door. Static.
Throughout harsh burns from the steam and even as he tried to rip out his own stitches, fighting the circular saw from his employee when she intended to cut the key to saving her life from his side, the man couldn’t stop thinking about each room’s greeting in the back of his mind. Hello, William. It was so simple, but it disgusted him. He wanted to be called by his name by family or friends or acquaintances - not by a fucking psychopath as some sort of reminder of what he had done.
Shaking it from his thoughts as best he could, he pressed on and pushed open the massive doors marked with an equally large painted red spiral. Behind bars the Dog Pit sat strapped to a playground carousel, spinning before a loaded shotgun. Static. The man gritted his teeth, refusing to take his gaze from his closest coworkers. Static. He couldn’t tell if his tears were from anger, pain, or sorrow. Static.
Sorrow. It was sorrow. He choked back another wave of tears, turned his back to both living and dead on the carousel, and sprinted for the exit. Everyone else still alive would get out fine, wouldn’t they? There was nothing he could do for them now - not anymore.
Though surprised to be stuck in a small room with chain link walls once the door shut behind him, that wasn’t as surprising as when the heavier walls behind the fence on either side dropped, showing the man his sister to the right. Static. The man froze. Static. In turning, he caught sight of his room’s ceiling - a grid of syringes connected to tubes leading to vats in the side rooms. Static. He turned. The voice he had come to loathe spoke, but it didn’t address him. It gave the option of mercy to the duo on the other side of his cage - a duo personally changed by a decision of his.
He begged. He’d gotten so far - he couldn’t lose now. He pleaded. The wife of the patient cried, telling him this was for her husband. But she couldn’t flip the switch. Movement towards the lever picked up in his periphery, the man threw himself back and to the floor, limbs flailing as he fell. As the patient’s son made his decision, the wall of needles swung down. The man felt his leg pinned before a searing pain shot through his skull upon its connection with the concrete floor. And, with that, he was out like a light, the last thing he heard his sister’s panicked shout.
The man shifted, barely able to open his eyes. What time was it? He sunk further under the covers. This had been one of his first nights free of nightmares since being abducted - he wasn’t about to let it get ruined by nothing. He turned over, still expecting to feel his right leg brush his left even though it had been months since he’d had both.
A breath. A sudden chill rocketed up his spine and his own breath caught in his throat. Maybe this was a nightmare. Maybe he was just imagining things. He could pass off imagining a breath or two, but not the familiar voice that seeped from the darkness by the door.
stormborns
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