A/N: I have no idea where this one came from. I do know I've been watching Saw lately, and I always did have an unnatural hang-up about this particular detective, so…
If you're looking for a strong character, this is not your kind of story. Also, try not to dig too deep in search of a plot. I hope you will all read it anyway, if only for the shameless and gratuitous violence. The original version was actually a lot more violent, but I've toned it down some. That should tell you something about how bad the other version was.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but Allison, and her brother I guess.
The first feeling of disquiet appeared almost immediately, as she first took in her surroundings in fact.
The room she was in was unusual for an interrogation room. She noticed that right away. It held a single table and two chairs, which was normal enough. But it had no windows – and subsequently no fresh air – no mirror that other detectives could watch an interrogation through, and no camera's. In short, it looked nothing like she had expected it to.
Then there was the fact that when she had been escorted to the room, the police station had seemingly been deserted. The nameless officer that had escorted her had refused to answer any questions and had simply left her in the room. She hadn't seen him since. She shivered for some unknown reason before scolding herself.
'Don't be so stupid,' she thought. 'Of course the place is deserted. It's close to ten at night. Everyone's gone home.'
'But then why are you here?' that feeling – that voice – of disquiet spoke up. 'Why now? Why couldn't this wait until tomorrow?'
She shook the thoughts off with an effort when the door to the room opened and a male detective stepped in.
An objective observer might have called him handsome, in a rugged sort of way. Said observer might also have acknowledged his strong physique, not overly muscular but solid.
But Allison wasn't an objective observer. She was a young woman who had never broken the law in her life. A young woman who dutifully paid her taxes each year. A young woman who had been hauled out of her apartment late at night by police officers, and was now sitting in a strange room in a deserted police station. She was scared and she wanted to go home.
And even if she had been in the right state of mind to appreciate a man's looks, his eyes would have put her off. There was something there that she couldn't quite place, something off, something wrong.
'Predator,' that newly discovered voice of disquiet whispered.
She also didn't like the way he was looking at her. Like he was sizing her up. There was an arrogance in his smirk, a smugness that made her uneasy. Like he knew something she didn't. As she looked down at the folder the detective – for that was surely what he was – had in front of him, she thought that judging by the thickness of the folder, he might very well know several things about her that she didn't know herself.
'Is that all about me?' Allison thought, a bewildered frown on her face.
The detective in front of her opened the folder and took out a picture, which he placed in front of her. She started as she recognized the man in the picture and the detective smirked, having seen her reaction.
"You know him," the detective said. It wasn't a question.
She thought about denying it, telling the detective she had no idea who it was, but thought better of it. He obviously knew who the man in the picture was to her already and the look on this detective's face was not one of patience and understanding. She had a feeling that lying would not go down well. She nodded slowly.
"Where is he?" the detective asked, leaning over the table a little.
"I don't know," she answered truthfully.
"You don't know?" the detective repeated, his eyebrows going up. "So…" he took out another picture and placed it in front of her. "This isn't you?"
Allison looked down at the picture and recognized both her brother and herself in it. They were standing outside her apartment and had been photographed from some distance.
"That's not you?" the detective asked again, his voice soft but his tone definitely mocking.
"It is, but…" she began.
"It is you," he cut in. "And you know where your scumbag brother is."
"No," she denied, shaking her head. "This is an old picture."
"Sweetheart, this picture was taken last week," the detective said.
And at those words, her earlier feeling of disquiet came back, flooding her like a tidal wave. The picture hadn't been taken the week before, it had been taken years earlier. And chances were, the detective knew that.
"I haven't seen my brother in years," she said, completely truthful once again.
A half smile appeared on the man's face at that and he shook his head. "You're lying."
Her heart slammed in her chest when he said that. She wasn't lying, but he didn't believe her. How was she going to make him believe her if the truth wouldn't suffice?
"You're gonna tell me exactly where I can find your brother," the detective said, leaning back in his chair. "And you're gonna tell me now, before I lose my patience."
Allison stared at the detective for a long moment, her hands twisting in her lap. She felt hot and cold at that same time, her fear now physically making her sick. But there was only one thing she could say.
"I haven't seen my brother in years," she said again, trying to sound firm.
The detective stared at her for a long moment, his face completely blank before he gave her a nod and got to his feet, gathering the two pictures and putting them back in the folder, before picking it up. He stepped out of the room for a brief moment and came back in without the folder. As she watched him come back in and saw him lock the door, she had time to think that what she was fearing wasn't real. He wasn't really going to do anything to her. He was just trying to scare her, to get her to say things that weren't true in hopes of getting him off her back. As he stalked his way back to where she was still sitting frozen in place, she added in her mind that this was a police officer and they were in a police station, he couldn't hurt her in a police station. He simply couldn't.
But as he threw the little table into the corner with one hand and yanked her to her feet with both, she realized – with a certainty that made her stomach lurch – that not only was he going to hurt her, right there in the police station, he was probably going to seriously injure her in the process.
The first punch landed on her left cheekbone, sending her careening into the wall behind her. She had never been punched in her life and the pain was like nothing she had ever felt. The second punch landed in her abdomen and had her bending over, his arm the only thing that held her up. He grabbed her by the back of the head with one hand and gripped a handful of clothing with the other, before he sent her flying to the other side of the room, just barely missing the chair still standing in the center of the room.
Her breath still mostly gone from the punch to the abdomen, Allison let out a faint and hoarse cry of pain as she landed, her left cheek on fire, and a knot of pain in her stomach. She heard the scraping of chair legs on the ground and flinched when her assailant placed the chair over her prone form, the chair legs straddling her.
"Look at me," she heard him demand but she kept her eyes on the wall.
Her eyes flicked over the ceiling aimlessly and when they skimmed the top corner of the room, she saw something she hadn't before. There was a wire. Her stomach dropped when she realized what the wire meant. There had been a camera. It had been removed.
'He planned this,' her mind helpfully supplied and she felt her body go cold with terror.
"Look at me," he demanded again, his voice louder this time.
Allison turned her shell-shocked eyes to those of the detective sitting over her and was sickened to discover that he was smirking.
Another thought rose in her mind. 'He's enjoying this. He's not just doing this to get me to talk, he's loving every second of this.'
"Are you gonna tell me what I wanna know?" the detective asked her calmly.
How could she tell him? How could she tell him what she didn't know? Her face crumpled, a sob escaping her. "I don't know," she choked out. "I don't know."
He got up abruptly and grabbed the chair, setting it down a few feet away from them. Her eyes widened and her breathing accelerated as he stood over her, looking down at her with a cold expression on his face.
In her desperation to get away from him, Allison kicked out at him, hitting his leg with the heel of her foot, her flat shoe doing no damage. It didn't stop him, nor did it slow him down. What it did do was enrage him. He straddled her as she lay on the floor. He yanked her arms down and away from her head as she tried to protect herself from the blows she knew were coming.
He pummeled her as she lay there, unable to defend herself. Eventually he stopped hitting her and got off her, but he wasn't finished with her. He continued to beat her, slamming her repeatedly into the walls and kicking her as she lay on the floor. He choked her until black spots swam before her eyes, and she was on the verge of passing out.
When he finally let up, he once again demanded to be told what he wanted to know, but her mind was fractured and not functioning right. In her terror, she couldn't think straight enough to realize what she needed to do and so she did the only thing she could at that moment. She told the truth.
"I don't know where he is," she whispered, only heard by the detective because of the absence of other noise in the room.
The room went silent and remained so for a long moment.
"Have it your way," he finally spoke.
He grabbed her ankle and dragged her into the middle of the room, before he straddled her again. She brought her arms up and braced herself for the blows she thought were coming. Her eyes flew open when he instead started pulling at her clothing. He opened her jeans and pulled it down a little. She began to struggle, scrambling to get away from him but it was useless. When she came off the ground a little, he slammed her back down and placed his left forearm over her chest, holding her down. He then went back to pulling at her jeans.
"No," she choked out. "No, please no."
He ignored her pleas and opened his own pants. The look in his eyes told her all she needed to know. He would rape her. And at that point, her mind finally supplied her with the only way out of this. Lie.
"I'll tell you where he is," she forced out, the words bitter on her tongue.
She had to remind herself that she didn't know where her brother was, that the information she was going to give the detective was false, and that she wasn't really betraying her brother.
For a moment the detective didn't move and she feared he would rape her anyway but then he moved, getting off her, leaving her to pull herself together.
Allison forced herself off the ground and shakily rearranged her clothes, her body screaming in pain and her breath coming in hitching sobs. She sat down on the chair when he motioned her to, barely aware she was doing it. He stood next to her, his hands braced on his knees as he leaned into her. She looked into his face, her eyes meeting his.
She had never been one to believe in stuff like the spirit and the soul as real and tangible things but looking into the cold eyes that would haunt her for the rest of her days, she knew without a doubt that this man had no soul, and if he had a spirit, it was a purely evil one.
"How could you do this?" she asked him, her voice no more than a whisper.
"I do what I have to," the detective said.
"No," she disagreed. "You enjoy this."
"Well maybe I do, maybe I don't, but it doesn't really matter," he said, his eyes flicking over the rest of her face. "You're gonna tell me what I wanna know, and then…" He brushed a strand of her hair off her face in a mockery of tenderness. "…you'll never have to see me again."
She nodded slowly and laboriously swallowed again. As she didn't know her brother's true location and she was by nature a terrible liar, she did the only thing she could do. She gave the monstrous detective her best guess. She told him of the last location she had known her brother to be in, years earlier, giving him all the details she could. It sounded convincing because it had been true once. She could only hope her brother hadn't gone back to that location.
The detective had straightened away from her as she talked, making his way to the discarded table and setting it in front of her again. When she was done giving him the information, he moved to the door of the small room. He unlocked the door and stepped out for a moment, coming back in with the folder. She watched as he walked to the table and dug around in the folder.
She attempted to swallow but the pain in her throat made it impossible. The inside of her throat felt like it was made out of cardboard. After two more attempts, she finally produced enough saliva to swallow. She flinched when the detective slapped a document down on the table in front of her, his eyes alight with cruelty. She flinched again when he shoved a pen at her and he smirked as he stepped around the table and stood next to her. He placed one hand on the back of the chair she sat in and his other hand on the table, next to the document.
"Sign it," he simply ordered.
She stared down at the document, trying to read what it said, but it was no use. Her vision was blurred, black spots invading it. It took her a moment to find her voice. "What is it?" she managed to croak.
"That's not your concern," the detective said, his face still perfectly calm and composed.
"But…I…I can't…" she stammered. "I can't."
"You can and you will," the detective said, his tone matter-of-fact.
Tears slid down Allison's bruised and aching face and she closed her eyes for a moment.
"You will pay for this," she whispered, her voice weak and hoarse.
The detective chuckled, his lips touching her ear as he whispered, "Not in your lifetime, little girl." He drew away and said, "Now sign the document or I'll knock you right back on that floor and this time I wont let you up until I'm done with you. I doubt you'll be moving much by then."
Knowing that he wasn't simply trying to scare her, she scrambled for the pen. She had held out for as long as she could. She had taken a brutal beating and had still found it within herself to refuse to sign an unknown document. Now, she could refuse no longer.
She would sign the paper, and hopefully that meant she'd get out of there with her life and what remained of her intact. And then, whatever the paper she had signed said, whether she went to prison or not, she would spend the rest of her days praying to a God she could have sworn she didn't believe in, that Detective Eric Mathews would get what he deserved.