This is just a short oneshot I came up with at the dead of night, the time when I usually feel most inspired. Well, it was more like 8 o'clock but oh well. Hope you enjoy this little story. I certainly enjoyed writing it. Hehheheheh...
Prison of Flesh
Prison. He loathed it. The filth-caked walls of his tiny cell seemed to close around him day after day. How he much hated it. The contents of his miserable room weren't any better. The straws that layered the miserable excuses of a bed was so flea-ridden he slept on the floor instead. Every time he laid his head down on the ground, it felt like he was kneeling before the corpse of his father once more. But that wasn't the worst of it.
The horrid conditions he could tolerate. It was the boredom that got to him. It gnawed away at him, the same way a rat would gnaw away at a rotting corpse. Then it would drill its way beneath his skin, and let the sickness spread. The endless hours spent sitting on the cold dead stone floor, staring out a pathetic excuse of a window. The only thing he could see from it was one dirty ray of light. But even that didn't stay for long. Once winter became, the light was extinguished. And with the darkness, the cold came. Not as if he noticed it. His life had been winter ever since the time when fires choked out all light from his life. The darkness helped a bit more. With it, he wasn't required to see what manners of filth had found its way to his cell each day. But then again, staring into a blackened void didn't amuse him for too long. He did that enough each day. So once again, he had to find something else to fill up the empty hours.
Vengeance. The thought of it was the one thing that kept him going. Vengeance, Blood, and lots of it! The darkness of his mind was filled with the thought of revenge. It beckoned him close. Closer, and closer. One day he would finally taste her scent, the scent of death that belong to the maiden known as Revenge.
Sleeping was an alternative, for the times when the mere thought of revenge would drive him into a maddening hunger. always Yeah, as if it would help, when every time you fall asleep, nightmares come to greet you. And the fact that his "bed" was made out of thorns didn't help much either. Of course, his bed wasn't really made of thorns. He didn't have to suffer torture every hour of the day. However, the time spent on that came pretty close to taking up all of his waking hours.
Endless beatings and stabbings delivered with all kinds of fun stuff. You probably couldn't even conjure up an image of half of them, even in your sickest and darkest dreams. It was amazing to both the other prisoners and the guards that the man still got out of bed each day. But then again, this man is a Hero. Graduated from the guild itself and at the top of his class as well. Powerful, vicious, and merciless. His infamous murders were known across the land. And ever since he had cruelly slain his fellow student apprentice Whisper in the Arena his thirst for blood had grown tenfold. Hell, he deserved to be in prison. But no one ever caught him. Until now.
How this mistake occurred is something still being speculated. But that doesn't matter. The capture of this Hero, more beast than man, was eclipsed by a far greater event. His vengeance.
Some say when the Warden let the Hero into his room after his triumph in the annual race, the Hero attacked the Warden and stole the keys. There were rumors that he gouged out the Warden's eyes with his thumbs. But no one could tell. The corpse didn't look much like the original body after the Hero had taken back his weapons and started carving up the Warden. After he had finished his work on the Warden, he got busy with the rest of the guards. For a year, he had been subject to horrific tortures and beatings. Now, the Hero was finally having his vengeance. And it tasted sweeter than the two eyeballs he had torn out of the Warden's sockets.
Steel tore into flesh, and from the flesh came blood. Glorious, oceans of blood, spilling out and drowning the floor of the prison in a sea of red. It was satisfying beyond words. Hell, it was even better than the cold, hard feel of the gold in his hands he had won from killing Whisper. Hell, it felt even better than the time when he drove that same blade into Whisper's gut. Now that was saying something.
The retribution ended as swiftly and abruptly as it came. All of the debts of the year the guards owed the he were returned in that one cruel night. The debts, paid with their lives. And as the Hero left the graveyard, once a prison, he couldn't help but feel one tiny ounce of regret. If only Jack of Blades could've seen what he had done with his precious puppets. He smiled to himself at the thought. But then again, Jack of Blades would see the horrific murders, soon enough. He would see them all right. See them from the eye in his left socket as he tore out the one from the right and feasted upon it.