Dean Winchester
He came to, face pressed into burning sand. His eyes flew open, and he scrambled up to get his chest off of the hot, dry dust. He quickly was up on two feet, but even so the burning ground boiled his feet.
He blinked and looked around.
The red, fiery canyon spread out before him, like a perversion of Utah's beautiful gorges. The air was red, the ground was red, and fire creeped up the sides of the canyon walls like decoration. Ashes fell from the sky, and immediately Dean started coughing from the rancid air.
In the canyon walls were doorways, simple holes carved into the sizes, from which echoed out screams. They sounded terrible, as if being torn limb from limb.
When Dean looked out to the distance, he saw pale grey, wispy forms of humans. They were floating around, looking to the sky, crying.
For a brief second, Dean Winchester gave a frown, and thought 'Well, for hell, this isn't so bad.'
Then a demon rounded the corner.
It didn't look like a human with black eyes. This was its' true form, the blackened withered husk of a human. It's skin was black as tar, it's muscles gone, the blackened eyes rotting out from inside the skull. Blond hair fell in wet dark strands, and little remained of the woman's tattered clothes. She wore a sinister grin as she stood up straight.
"Look what we have here," she hissed, and took off straight for Dean. For a perverse moment, Dean was amused. There were zombies in hell.
Dean turned on his heel and bolted the other direction, praying that the canyon he saw would not have an end. He followed the twisting, turning passages of the narrowing gorge, avoiding turning into any of the caverns lest he get lost in the darkness.
He heard the demon find a friend, and then another, and soon a crowd of demons was chasing him almost lazily as they jeered.
"Give up!" they called. "Come and play with us!"
Dean chanced a glance backwards, and as soon as he did he snapped his head forward and resisted the urge to retch.
The demons behind him were all in some state of horror. Some looked like rotting corpses, zombies chasing languidly behind him no matter how fast he ran, whereas others looked like true demons, horns growing from their foreheads and their skeletons visible and on fire, surrounded by a blackened smoke. It looked like the inside of someone when they were killed with Ruby's knife.
He reached the end of this cavern and tried to turn left into a cave, but from the cave emerged another fiery demon tugging two people in chains along behind him. They looked like slaves - unclothed, whipped, and barely remaining upright as they were walked along. They were human, although their backs were flayed and red blood seeped from the wounds.
Dean was cornered, and the crowd came to a stop as they investigated him.
"Dean Winchester," one hissed as it came forward. His hair was falling out, his skin also peeling off like blackened tar to reveal a reddened skeleton peeking out from underneath. "We are surprised to see you here."
"Not that surprised," another demon mumbled.
The demon in front held out his hands, and a pair of chains was offered to him. Dean grit his teeth and offered his hands, seeing no way to fight his way out of a horde of demons in their natural territory. This is what he signed up for, after all.
"We are going to have some fun," he hissed, as the chains clamped shut around Dean Winchester's wrists.
The crowd dissipated, demons filtering off through the hallways as he was led through one. The darkness was consuming, and the heat inside the tunnel was already threatening to burn Dean's skin off, coming up in painful bubbles.
He was led through the darkness for some time when he heard the unlocking of an old cell that he was unceremoniously thrown into. He fell against the stone floor, unable to brace his fall. The demon wordlessly locked the door and left, leaving Dean to the absolute blackness.
He patted his way around the cell walls, finding nothing but stone bricks and wetness. It was thicker than water, and he resisted considering what the wetness was. The walls were hot on all sides, and Dean had to be careful to sit on his clothes to avoid his legs being burned.
Dean also resisted wondering what they were waiting for. He was no stranger, he knew what went on in the bowels of the pit. There was nothing anymore for him, no valiant rescue coming, so he tried to content himself with what was happening in this moment. Sammy was alive and Sammy was safe, and sitting here on the floor in the heat wasn't so bad.
Dean Winchester
Dean fell into a surprisingly relaxed state, not asleep but sitting against the wall waiting for something to happen. It did, when a red light began leaking in through the cracks in the wall, as he pawed his way around the cell.
He also realized that the cell walls were moving. There was no door or windows, but the stone cell walls were ever slowly closing in on him.
Just like fucking Star Wars, Dean thought sourly. He made a token effort to push inward on the walls, but in the back of his mind he knew there was no escaping whatever was happening here.
As the walls got closer, though, his token effort became a frantic scrambling, back against one wall and feet against the other, shoving for more space for his lungs to suck in air. He wanted to calm down and let it happen, knew fighting would make it worse, but the adrenaline pushed him on.
No matter how much he tried to resign himself to his fate, the panic seeping into his body kept him fighting against the slowly closing in walls. As they pushed in closer, pressing in on his shoulders, he laid on his side and made himself as small as possible, hoping to stave off the inevitable. He felt his fear and panic mount in his chest.
The panic turned to pain as the walls began to close in on his shoulders, and he felt his collarbone snap like a twig as his back became suddenly much thinner. He cried out from the pain, but just as soon as he did he felt his shoulder bones separate.
He began to scream as his back began to flatten out, but as he did the walls caught his hips and his hips similarly folded inward against the force of the sandstone walls. The pain danced up and down his back, but instead of passing out the torment of hell seemed to keep him even more lucid, feeling every spike that went up and down his nervous system.
Just as he was sure he would die, he suddenly was whole again in the empty cell. The cell was as it was, pitch black and whole. Dean was shaking on the hot floor, the memory of pain still dancing around his nervous system. He was shaking like a leaf, his nerves still spiking pain from his bones.
"What the fuck," he breathed to himself. "What the actual fuck."
He tried to calm down and sit against the cell wall, hoping something like that wouldn't happen again but knowing it would.
Dean Winchester
One moment Dean was in the cell with his eyes closed, and the next moment he heard a noise as he snapped them open. He stood in a concrete hallway, his footsteps echoing off of the smooth walls.
At the end of the hallway were demons, lined up behind what looked like stands. Each demon stood behind one of the stands, and hoisted a gun up on the stand. Some demons had large machine guns, belts coiled up on the floor, and others had brought in a variety of small guns.
Makarov, Dean listed off in his head. M16, Kriss, AK47, he named from rote memory.
The thoughts flew out of his head, though, when they pointed them at him. He looked to the right and left, and saw he was the only target they could be aiming for. Fear shot through him like an electric charge, but he had no time to run.
A round pierced his shoulder, cutting clean through his body and leaving blood pouring out both sides. Another round lodged itself in his chest, making his heart beat wildly against the aluminum rock now lodged in the empty space in his heart. Birdshot flew into his body, covering him in bloody holes. Rounds tore into him, one after another, speeding up in intensity as time went on.
Dean body was nothing but holes, and as the noise receded the awful pain filled him as he dropped to his knees. He coughed up blood, knew he absolutely should be dead right now, but the bullets kept piling up in his body -
Dean came to in the cell again, again completely whole and body filled with the memory of pain. He was starting to see a pattern.
He was on the edge of a forest and demons were chasing him, chasing him through a field as he ran down a Virginia hill. The demons jeered, and he heard their cries as their medieval weaponry clanged. He was dressed in peasants clothes, and couldn't spare the time to think that this was all a preposterous game to them. He was too busy running.
He dived behind shelter and they ran past, but he knew before long they would find him. Their spears drove into his chest and broke his ribs, maces rammed into his shoulder and crushed his bones to dust –
It was over, and Dean was in his cell again. He sighed, the pain fading away again, and he felt a little bit of relief.
At first, Dean relished when he was left alone in his hot cell and wasn't trapped in some sort of hallucination or game. It was peace and silence.
But as time wore on, Dean hated when he was left alone. Screams sometimes danced along the edges of his pitch black cell, and he would swear he could see movement on the edges of his vision. None of this was real, so who was to say if there was a demon really there or not.
Sometimes the silence was deafening, and all Dean could hear was his harsh breathing in the wet cell. It began to haunt him, wondering where he was, wondering whether or not they would come for him again.
It was then that he sometimes hoped they would come for him, when it wasn't enough to walk around his prison and examine all of the cracks in the wall.
He knew the exact dimensions, the roughness, the number of bricks in the cell when he got up and began counting and cataloguing. It comforted him to know and understand this small part of his prison.
Dean Winchester
There was no night and there was no day, so Dean couldn't say how long he'd been trapped in that cell. There was not even an urge for him to sleep.
He knew it had been a long time, though, when he found he couldn't picture his father's face. He could remember everything about him, how his last words made him feel proud, and scared, but he couldn't remember the exact way his nose looked or what color his eyes even were. He knew they must be brown, but his eyes were green and Sam's were blue, so maybe they weren't.
The thought of it killed him.
It was then that Dean realized he would be here forever, so long that he would forget who he was and where he came from. He knew that demons used to be human, but until now had resisted thinking about how such a thing came to be.
He thought he could see the path laid out before him. They'd strip him of who he was, and give him a new identity.
Well, not Dean. He didn't need to remember much, just that he would never hurt anyone else, for Sam and Bobby and Dad and himself. He figured that was simple enough to hold on to, no matter how long eternity ended up being.
Hell, Dean thought hysterically, Revelations says God comes and destroys hell. Maybe he'll free me and it won't be eternity after all.
Dean Winchester
It was during the wretched silence that a new demon walked through the stone door into his cell.
"Dean Winchester," it cooed.
Dean backed up against the wall, but had the decency to scowl. "What, I don't get an introduction?" he rasped, throat dry with disuse. Damn, it had been a long time since he spoke last.
"I'm Allistair," it said smoothly, and the cell blazed to life when torches that weren't there before lit.
It was the shape of a human, with horrid pale eyes and blackened, foggy, translucent… skin? The fire glinted off of it in red, and horns were clearly protruding from it's head. It's skeleton was glowing, on fire.
It was far more disgusting than the comics; it wore no clothes, with the skin of a monster and the horns and claws of a killer, dripping in blood. It looked more like a zombie or monster than it did a comic book demon with it's scarred, clawed skin and twisted posture.
"You're horrible," Dean sneered, repelled.
He gestured to himself. "You flatter me, Dean."
"You guys get tridents too?" Dean mocked.
"Well, we don't have tails," It said smoothly, "But we do have weapons."
Suddenly, to the right, appeared a tray of, what do you know, weapons. Dean looked around and saw a rack behind him, with cuffs at the corners. His heart rate sped up, and he knew by this point his bravado was limited.
"Oh, looks like you know what comes next," he said smoothly. "Looks like the hallucinations got to you?"
Dean set his face and said nothing.
The demon, Allistair, waved his hand and Dean flew onto the rack, the cuffs snapping around his limbs quickly. Panic fluttered in his chest, and Dean fought the restraints even though he knew there was no fighting.
Allistair picked up a jagged knife, and pressed it to Dean's now naked chest. "You know what happens here, right?" it said, etheral white eyes boring into him.
Then he began cutting.
Dean Winchester
Dean was on the rack, made whole by Allistair, when suddenly he turned around.
His clothes were still on, but he felt them being cut off. 'Why wouldn't they just dissapear?' Dean asked, but the hand he felt behind him was his answer.
His thoughts jumped to high gear, quickly spiraling out of control as panic overtook him. He started freaking out, anxiety making his throat constrict.
It isn't pain. It isn't anymore pain, it won't be pain.
It can't possibly be as bad as the pain.
"What do you say, Dean?" the voice purred, a hand running down his leg.
Dean closed his eyes. It isn't pain.
Dean Winchester
"Are you sure you don't want to accept?" Allistair cooed. "You won't make it much longer."
It had been years since he met Allistair, years since Allistair started in on what became his campaign. Get off the rack, turn the knife on someone else and it won't be on you.
Damn the demon, this demon was right. He wouldn't make it much longer.
But he couldn't give in. He couldn't; he couldn't do something like that. It was wrong. Dean Winchester would never do that.
These days, Dean couldn't always remember why.
He knew Sammy wouldn't want him to, he knew Bobby wouldn't want him too. He couldn't do it; for them. He couldn't remember Sammy or Bobby, but he remembered that he couldn't do it for them.
But Dean remembered he was Dean Winchester, and Sammy and Bobby were his family. So he wouldn't.
"No," Dean said, limply. "I can't."
Dean's skin knit together again, fresh and brand-new.
"Well, all right then," Allistair said cordially, as he slid his sharp knife over Dean's torso. "But I'm curious, Deano… why?"
"Fuck off," Dean rasped. Don't give him anything.
"Is it for those boys, upstairs? Bobby and little Sammy?"
Don't you dare breathe a word about Sammy.
"You know they can't save you, not from here," he reasoned, cutting Dean's skin open with precision.
He's wrong. Sammy's coming to save me.
"Do you even remember them, Dean?" Allistair leaned in, his breath rancid on Dean's face. "Do you remember little Sammy?" he said as he drove the knife in.
Dean coughed up blood, blinking away tears. I love him, and that's enough.
Nameless
The demon was standing over him, jagged implements piercing his skin as they were drug along. He was screaming hysterically, felt like his throat was going to be torn out as the knife rumbled along his ribs, drug along his sternum, plunged into his gut.
The demon was talking but he wasn't listening, he was screaming, screaming, screaming.
Nameless
Two men stood before him, a demon tied to a rack in between them.
"Dean," the taller one insisted, "We need the information. This demon might know how to get you out of hell." He couldn't look directly at him, it hurt; he looked away.
He looked down and saw a knife in his hands, silver and gleaming, and turned it around in his palm. What was he doing holding this knife?
"Dean," The shorter man said. He was wearing a ballcap and it tugged at something inside him. "It won't give up the information willingly."
"Do it, Dean!" the tall man insisted. His tone was becoming angry, and he didn't want him to hurt him. But he didn't know what he was supposed to do.
"Wow, he's really fargone," The tall man remarked. "You need to get the information out of her, Dean!" he insisted. "Use the knife on her."
He didn't want to hurt the innocent girl inside of her.
"The girl is dead already, she was shot in the chest," The shorter man said. "There's nothing to lose."
He didn't want to disappoint them, he felt. He remembered doing this before, demons strapped to chairs, "Where's Lillith hiding?"
He sunk the knife into her arm and everything faded away, leaving the girl strapped to a rack in a cell just like his.
He immediately backed up and dropped the knife, hands shaking as she pleaded with him not to hurt her.
"I don't know if that will count, since it's only a technicality," Allistair was saying to another demon behind him.
He turned around, and found another demon even larger, more fiery, more blackened smoke and backed up against the wall. "Please," he started pleading. "I can't hurt her, please don't hurt me."
"The least we can do is try the ritual and see if it takes," the other demon said in a decidedly more feminine voice. "It has to be done on earth so it will be a while; for now, continue to try and get him to do it voluntarily."
They wanted him to hurt the girl, but he wasn't going to hurt her, he wasn't going to hurt anyone. He wasn't going to fall for their tricks and hurt anyone else, no matter what the situation looked like.
"It's not going to work," Allistair insisted.
Nameless
"It's me, Sam," his tall frame jeered. His shaggy hair covered his blue eyes, and he stood over him in the humid and hot stone cell. He stood on the fourth block from the left side, and he knew exactly what that block looked like.
Not Sammy, he thought almost frantically. Sammy would never hurt me.
Sam did hurt him, Sam put his arms in a vice and twisted until it was bent the wrong way, bent back in on itself and snapped into a thousand pieces like a wet tree branch.
He closed his eyes and the pain continued, white hot. He didn't hold back, he writhed away and screamed.
Sam's voice was in his ears, oddly familiar and far too painful. He wished it would stop, would take a thousand times more pain to make it stop.
Nameless
He was in his cell, alone.
"Dean, you need to do what Allistair wants," Sam's voice rang through the cell. He was sitting cross-legged in front of him, wearing the same clothes as the day he died.
I can't, he thought. Not again.
"Yes you can," Sam said. "You're both in hell, it's going to happen to her anyways, why not you? If you do it, you won't be in pain."
No, I'll be a demon and I'll have let my family down.
"It's not letting us down to want the pain to end," Sam insisted.
Us was wrong; this was Sam and he was fighting for Sammy, not this.
Sam rolled his eyes, and suddenly he vanished.
Dean Winchester
Dean was lucid, a crisp moment of clarity cutting in, as it so rarely did anymore.
Dean felt the frayed edges of his mind, felt the memories threaten to slip away again. Keep it together, Winchester, His rational mind reasoned. Sam is coming for you.
But Dean was no fool. He knew you didn't keep it together in hell. You either went mad or became a demon, and Dean was never going to become a demon.
But Sammy's coming, Dean thought frenetically.
The surrounding screaming echoed off of the impossibly large cave, bounced around in Dean's skull.
You know he might not get you out, The rational part of Dean thought to himself. Not in time, at least.
And that was right. Dean had figured out by now that time moved along rather quickly in hell. Hell wasn't quite as real, lacking the cutting edge of reality, the crisp quality of existence. It was years in between night and day of earth, Allistair taking the time to apprise him of how little time passed.
Sam and Bobby didn't have enough time to figure out an escape plan. By the time they had one, Dean knew he wouldn't be Dean anymore.
I'm so sorry, Dean thought brokenly, feeling his mind slipping away. I can't hold on much longer.
The heat of the pit made Dean's skin bubble off of him, the stench of charred flesh filling his senses.
Dean's resolve was weakening. He didn't care anymore, didn't care about them "breaking" him. This wasn't earth, there was no war. Dean had no secrets he was protecting. There was no escape, not even death. His last hope was Sammy.
Dean gave in, and opened his mouth in an unholy cry. He did as he had never done in life, baring his pain to the world, completely indifferent to people reveling in his screams.
He heard Allistair laugh, but didn't hear Allistair taunt him for giving in, didn't care anymore.
I'm so sorry Sammy, he thought, as his mind dissolved. Please forgive me.
Nameless
He began fighting to escape, wildly, frantically, screaming as he jerked against his bindings.
"Finally giving up, huh?" He taunted. "Realizing there's no escape?"
Please just get away from me, let me go please!
A nail was driven through his hand into the wooden rack upon which he was secured, and he howled like a trapped animal.
"So I ask you, Dean Winchester," he hissed, horrible, evil. "Will you accept my offer?"
No. Sammy's coming.
His face was grabbed, jerked, looking into the eyes of pure darkness. "Will you get off the rack?"
He closed his eyes tightly, turned away. Can't.
He was let go of just as roughly, cast away. "I can't believe you'd be so stubborn Dean…. Do you know what happens to people who refuse long enough?"
Don't care. Doesn't matter.
"They wither away into nothing, Dean. Into the spirits you hear screaming outside," he gestured with his knife to the opening in his cave. "Mindless, disgusting animals," he spat.
The knife was held to the man's throat suddenly. "Do you want to spend eternity like that, Dean? Or like one of us, powerful and strong and alive."
"I'll never be like one of you!"
His memory rang, his voice full of strength he lost long ago.
He said nothing. Don't give him anything.
He stood up, disgusted. "I can't believe you, Dean. Can't believe a hunter like you would choose a life like that," he spat.
He drove a nail through the man's other hand, vindictiveness lacing his features. "You're running out of chances to change your mind, Dean. I'd take it, while you still have time."
Instead the man screamed, feeling the blood pool in his palms.
Nameless
He was chained to a cinderblock wall with iron shackles which groaned with age every time they moved. He was hanging, as if crucified, the damage already taking place on his body. Shoulders popped out of socket, his ribcage fracturing with the effort it took to breathe, his legs numb with blood loss.
Crucifixion was considered the most painful punishment invented, and when he remembered this punishment later he'd believe it.
For now, he was within the confines of his mind. The pain was distant and his senses dulled as he drifted, watching what was happening to his soul. Don't let them see, don't let them know.
The man's eyes started blankly ahead, betraying no thoughts to anyone. He didn't know, but it didn't matter. Demons here read your mind.
He prayed his prayer, and heard it gently come out of his mouth. "Hang on, Sammy's coming… Sammy…"
The pain would finally recede and things would go dark, only for a nail to be driven through his hand, bringing him screeching back to existence. He felt his torn vocal chords protest as his cries ripped through them, blood draining down his throat.
"Couldn't have you drifting off there," the demon cooed.
This one was a frail man in life, his soul spindly and thin with gaunt features reminiscent of a drug user. His skin was ashen, fingernails long and unkempt, his eyes permanently black.
His voice dropped a pitch. "Nobody sleeps in hell."
The demon slammed another nail into the other hand, sending shockwaves of pain down a dying and immobile arm. The man was acutely aware of the sinews in his hands separating, tried to hold onto the blood as it pooled in his hands and ran down to the floor.
The man's shaking started up in full force, terrified of what would happen the next time he unwittingly slept.
He felt the limb die, felt the nerve endings light up in agony as the blood pooled in the bottom of his limbs. He was forced to feel the death well after it happened, felt his toes as they blackened and died, smelled them as they rotted away.
He hung his head and sobbed, cried, screamed as the motion tore his ribcage into shreds against the nails. "Please, Sammy, please come get me!"
Nameless
"This is no fun anymore," He lamented.
White hot searing pain ripped through his side.
The man screamed.
"You're just an animal now," he said dryly.
The pain reached inside him, fell outside of him. The man felt his organs fall out the side of his body, intimately familiar with their feel as they slid away.
The man kept screaming, his need for air forgotten in hell.
"I'm disappointed in you," he tutted. "You had such promise…."
The man kept screaming, crying. He could feel his humanity slipping away.
"But no," he sighed. "Another one of them," he said, scorn lacing his voice.
The knife was driven through his heart.
The man couldn't scream; he was drowning, drowning in his own blood.
"Shoulda' known," he huffed, and then left the cell.
Nameless
He was running.
His feet were pierced with sharp shards of jagged gravel with each step down the path. It was dusk, except instead of the beautiful red of a sunset were flames in the distance, impossibly high flames, enough to engulf a skyscraper. The edge of the sky was red from the heat, and it radiated up through the ground, burning his feet and making him sweat.
Behind him were demons, tirelessly chasing after him. He could hear their snarling, could hear their screams as they never stopped, never slowed. If he didn't run fast enough, they would attack him with their pitchforks, spears, and swords that they carried with them. They were all competing to be the first one to attack the man who kept running.
It was too hot; his vision swam as he ran, yet he didn't pass out from the heat. He felt his feet begin to blister, but knew the pain from blistered, cut feet and a fever was much better compared to what would happen if the horde behind him caught up with him. They were leathery creatures, ashes and flesh and blood dripping off of their bodies, leaving red footprints as they ran.
He looked up and the path ahead ended; he turned and bolted into the pitch black forest next to him, praying that he could find shelter before the demons caught him. As he ran, sticks and thorns catching in his legs, he saw a cabin.
The man bolted inside, and quickly threw the bolt, looking around for more defense. He saw nothing but old plywood, good enough to reinforce the door. The demons began hacking into the door, axes and maces quickly breaking the weak dry plywood of the hut.
Panic filled his heart, reached up into his chest, his throat, and he felt his breathing involuntarily quicken. His stomach lurched, and he retched in the cabin, but the action is in vain in hell. He doubles over with the pain, wrapping his arms around his stomach.
"Sammy, please save me," he whispers over and over, the name a prayer. "Sammy please save me."
The monsters found their way in, and the man's last breath is a cry for Sammy as he's torn apart and devoured, feeling each demon's claw as they rake through him and laugh, bathing in his blood.
Nameless
He suddenly appeared in a different room than his old one. This one was white, blindingly white.
"I'm done with this one," He said roughly, voice everywhere.
The man pitched forward, scarred feet landing on cold, unforgiving tile as his knees crashed. It was warm, got on the man's hands as he touched the wound. Can't feel a thing.
"It's a waste of our time," he said.
The door slammed, metal scraping metal as a deadbolt was thrown behind him.
He heard their steps recede as they left, growing more distant.
Am I alone?
He sat on the floor of the empty room, bleeding, unmoving.
They'll be back.
Don't let them get anything.
You won't get anything from me.
Sammy's coming to save me.
The floor was smooth, too smooth beneath the cracked and dried blood on his hands.
Time streched on, irrelevant, unmoving.
The endless present stretched before him, spent in a white room.
After many hours the man sat up, looked around at the blindingly white room.
It was made of porcelain tile, all porcelain tile perfectly clean as it streched across the walls and the ceiling. Empty and bare, all white tile except for the iron door.
He turned to the door, saw it was solid, saw it was locked, bolted shut securely. There's never an escape.
"You know what happens when you try," His voice hissed into his mind.
On the other side, there was a solitary window. Through this small barred window he could see the fields of hell, laid out before him.
Ghosts wandered the landscape, pale and uncertain as they stumbled along, their grief causing them to fall in pain.
They screamed, endlessly screaming, howling into the dark.
The sky was black, blacker than any night, tinted red with the fire that rose from the very ground itself. It burned, burned the feet of any who weren't demon as they stumbled along in their misery.
There were people left to die, beaten and bloodied on the roadside, blood gurgling from their mouth as they retched into the fiery dirt.
The man turned, turned to face the inside of his tile room. His chest heaved, panic overtaking him.
I'm trapped.
In prison
Abandoned.
He felt tears explode out of him, collapsed on the floor of the white porcelain room as his fingers dragged along the ground, got caught on the drain on the floor, finally alone to express his madness.
"Sammy," he cried, face screwed up as he fell wholly to the floor. He remembered love, desperately clung to the emotion.
He didn't remember who his Sammy was, or what he looked like. The man tried, tried desperately to call to memory the face of the person above who he loved so much, but came up short.
He remembered the feeling in his chest, warm and big and strong. He remembered Sammy made him feel that way.
It was just a sliver now, his last memory. Sammy was coming to get him. Sammy will take the pain away; Sammy will make him feel warm.
"Sammy," he cried, curling up onto the tile floor. "Come save me."
Nameless
He could hear humming, just beyond the stark walls, as if whispering ghosts prowled the edge of the room, whispering into his ear over the distance.
Their words were inaudible, but he knew, he knew they were speaking of him. Speaking of the latest man who withered away into insanity.
He was free, pacing the room, running, desperately trying to escape their torment.
"You know what to do," they said, "how to make us go away."
No, hurts, please no more
Their words ran together, incoherent, insane
Please NO
"Please!" The man pounded the porcelain white walls desperately, bloodying his hands. "Please! Make it stop, please!"
His voice came out in scratches, a high-pitched wail, his voice breaking over and over.
The whispers ran together, words unintelligible, a stream of deep voices reminding him of what he didn't remember. They tore at something in his chest, he covered his ears, unable to get them to stop. He just wanted these voices to stop.
He cried out for their return, taking twisted ownership of his own agony. He was begging for them to come hurt him, to distract him from his insanity.
The man's wailing for someone to come was rewarded with a nameless demon entering, brandishing a white-hot knife.
There was no foreplay as he brought it down roughly on his skin, charring the flesh to a first-degree burn within seconds. He howled with agony, nothing more than a trapped animal, a creature going mad.
He was rewarded with the brand shoved down his throat, his tongue burned away and swelling shut, closing his airway; in the confines of hell, his lack of air did not matter, he felt only the pain they wanted him to feel.
And they wanted him to shut up, wanted him to feel the burning lancing across his skin.
Sammy, I'm sorry, he begged, screaming silently internally. Please forgive me.
Nameless
His cries echoed off of the porcelain prison, but this time he was not met with any demons to release him from the torture in his mind.
The crowds, the legions of people he couldn't save followed him like the army of the dead, whispering loud accusations in his ear of things he'd long since forgotten.
"You couldn't save me," they whispered in turn, invisible yet pressing in on him. He struggled against his bindings on the racks, the leather wearing away at his thin skin.
"You couldn't save me!" Their whispers rushed against his ears horrifying in their intensity.
"You let me die…"
"You let me rot."
Sammy's coming. I can't let go, because Sammy's coming.
"You're alone, you're trapped here, you can't even die…"
Remember. Sammy's coming.
He jerked against bindings, trying to escape the whispering, the taunting voices that didn't know, didn't know that he was coming.
His shoulder jerked forward, he threw himself forward, getting away from the voices, from the noise, trying to fight them because Sammy was going to save him and Sammy was coming.
But they didn't go; they drove further into his skull, piercing deeper, stop, no, please, stop… he moaned, crying, desperately trying to escape the torment.
Nameless
The silence was worse.
It pressed down, suffocating, tearing the life away from anything it touched.
He couldn't move, couldn't so much as lift a finger against the weight of the dead air.
Help. Escape.
The room blurred and spun, the sight of the solitary door fuzzy on the edges of his vision, blacking in and out.
Is there anything out there?
The room went blurry, rolled up.
Is there anything?
It pressed down on him, crushing him, killing him.
Sammy's coming.
The crushing didn't stop, never stopped.
It won't end. Never ends.
Pain danced through his awareness, his soul fighting his body, desperate to be free from the eternal pain.
He felt noise tear through his throat, ripping his vocal chords, pain lancing through his chest. He heard distantly the scream that escaped his lungs, voice long gone, his cry a chilling warning as tears escaped from his eyes.
He heard from far away the chorus of the dead, screaming with them.
