It was maniacal, his laugh. The word insane had been used one too many times to describe it. Crazy. Psycho. Mental. Deranged. Lunatic. He'd heart it all before. Nutty. Batty. Loony. Unhinged. Soulless. They didn't hurt him. Apathetic. Callous. Tortured. Off the hook. Gone. He didn't care what they had had to say. Insanity, all of it.
They could just go to hell as far as he was concerned. They were just obstacles to his tortured mind. They weren't people, not at all. None of them were anything to him. They just didn't exist. Did he exist? Yes. Well, maybe. It didn't matter. He could move. He felt his feet under him, even though he didn't remember standing up. The smock rustled around his thighs, his pale legs and feet bare. He didn't care. He didn't much care about anything anymore. They asked them what he wanted most. He told them. They shrank away, leaving him on his own. He didn't notice, didn't care.
Part of it was the overbearing whiteness. It permeated everything. The squeaky fluorescent lights, the whitewashed walls, the crisp bedsheets, the nurses pale and covered in starchy white uniforms, even his hospital style smock was white. It was a waking dream, of course. Mental asylums didn't exist in the FAYZ. Even if they did, everyone would be gone, and going there would be pointless. So he dreamt of how it would be if the world whisked him off today. A mental asylum might be a welcome fate, then. Death would be even better.
No, but he was too good for death. Too necessary. No, he clarified to himself. He was unnecessary, but his powers were. Strange twist of fate it was. He wished he'd never had the powers, that he'd grow out of them, that he'd been normal and one of the crowd even now. But that was not to be true. And it was not his problems, but his power's problems to deal with. If he hadn't had the power, or not as strongly as he did, people wouldn't look to him for the guidance necessary. Someone else could behold of that unwelcome fate. He didn't want it. He never had. That was the one thing they had never understood, much less cared about.
The real boy stood at the edge of the jagged cliff in dirty jeans and an old, ratty t-shirt about three sizes too big for his frame, made small by continual starvation. He didn't really care. He could just throw himself over those rocks, into that abyss. Death. Death was safe. It was warm, welcoming, and beckoning. Always beckoning to him. It would be so easy, just so easy throw himself over. To make it obvious to everyone through his death that he was done playing hero, that he never wanted the job they had given him in the first place.
He took a step backwards. A second. Three more. Then he turned and took twenty paces. Even at his worst, at the power plant, he had been able to destroy the room, conquer his fear, and move on. Now, for some reason, he couldn't. Possibly it was because he couldn't find the source of his paranoia, fear, and insanity this time. Possibly he didn't want to. He laughed again. It seemed almost sad while being completely mad. It was an odd sound, the only sound in the silent night. He choked it off in a sob. Turning, he prepared to jump to his peaceful, merciful death to end his tortured existence.
A pale slug wrapped itself around his waist as he started to run, his momentum taking him momentarily off the ground. He looked, stupefied, at the slug. Then he started to thrash around in an effort to escape his pale prison. It was futile, of course, but the shattered glass that was the boy's mind insisted that if they only fought hard enough, they could leap over the cliff and meet death with a smile. Just like Mary, except that he'd already not taken the big poof.
He fell back to earth with a grunt, the slug still clutching tightly to his midsection. Obviously, it wasn't a slug. He want it to be nothing at all, just a figment of his imagination. It very well could be, it being the substance of his nightmares. But this hardened boy had lost his naivety long ago, banishing it to a cold, dark place from which it would never return. And so he forced himself to try to wrestle his way out of the tight hold.
He had seen a great deal in his young life. Many deaths, some quite gory and gruesome. He'd killed for some of them. Their ghosts he had made peace with, for the most part. Then there was that other incident, that other ghost. The first time he made his peace with part of it, but he knew he could never complete it. The next time he faced the ghost in all its heart-killing glory, and managed not to make peace with it, or himself over it. That had stuck with him. That ghost had broken him then.
The boy's wild eyes dashed around the cliff area and the surrounding forest, pupils dilated with fear, to find where the owner of the slug had come from. Right behind him, he realized. He turned around, and a pair of eyes glinted in the false light of moon and stars. He turned back around, shutting his eyes against the sight now burned so thoroughly into his being. He curled up against himself, rocking lightly to try to rid himself of the image. The effort became worse than the moot try it was when his assailant laughed, and drew the pinioned, floundering boy in, reeling him in with the slug he had for an arm.
The laugh he emitted was terrible; the only one worse would have been that of the boy in front of him. He stopped the other boy just about back where he was, if marginally closer to the cliff face. He'd plowed helplessly through thorn bushes and sticky sap from trees and animal droppings in a dizzying twist to get back to where he was. His eyes were tightly shut and his hands curled into instinctive fists. It was him. It was the ghost he could not bury in the graveyard of his mind. It was him. And he was back for more.
Once he had settled on the ground, tears stinging the corners of his fearful eyes, he threw away a ball of light. It arced away and landed roughly halfway between him and his assailant, if a bit closer to the assailant. Steel eyes mad with satisfaction and pain met the tortured blue ones of the boy who had created the light, but only for a moment because the blue-eyed boy looked away. He felt himself quail and noted detachedly that he had nothing left inside of him to steel himself to task with.
The problem laid within the boys. Both were broken, shattered remnants of their former selves. The steely eyed boy, Drake Merwin, had once been beaten up in an extremely violent manner in an alley by a group of bully-boys. He had bruises on his abdomen that hurt so badly he could barely move, and he was crying. It had happened again, and a third time, and then Drake punched back, harder and stronger than any of the boys. He had liked the feeling of power, and grasped on it by taking out people who had annoyed him, regardless of serious wrongs. Then came the guns. They came with an even greater sense of power. That neighbor of his had been oh so annoying, so Drake had decided to shut him up. He shot him then, and crossed over the line he had dangled in front of for so long a time. He had become so addicted to the rush it had taken over his sense. The results of that beating had scarred him, the withdrawal and scorn and the fact that he no longer had sufficient power to deal with them, and the complete polar change to the power he now wielded had broken his humanity and stole it from him.
The other boy, the scared blue-eyed one, was named Sam Temple. After Drake had been sent away to Coates and the FAYZ wall had gone up, Drake once again had the opportunity to start his mad grabs for power. He had loved the rush when he beat those kids to death. He had also loved beating up Sam at the power plant, but got angry because he didn't get to finish. Sam became his target. The second time they had met up, Drake had had nothing to threaten Sam with so they had fought, but Sam had emerged raw, whipped, and bleeding with the knowledge Drake was just fine. The third time had been a bit more carefully set up. Drake had somehow managed to lure out and capture Dekka. He had tied her arms together and bound them and her legs to one of the few still-upright streetlight poles. He had taken his time whipping her while he waited for Sam to come and 'save the day'. Then came the threat of Drake taking Dekka's life, and Sam became compliant, now a spectator to his own beating. Afterwards, Drake had forced Sam to watch, relishing in his pain, as he took Dekka's life. That feeling, once again, of having no control over the situation, especially such a one, and being forced to watch his friend's death, both of them with such grievous injuries, had broken him for good.
The only way they differed that truly mattered was how they had each reacted. Drake had lost whatever remnants of a conscious he had, and became a sadistic machine when it came to human torture and lives. He became stronger. Sam had been terrified. He cried more often and moved out of town so he might be able to deal with it all. Instead he had curled in on himself, becoming easy prey for such as Drake.
Drake was not happy with his Sam's latest development. Sure, Sam wasn't a slave to him, but it felt like that sometimes to Drake. Sam was his. Who was Sam or anyone else to decide anything about Sam without his approval? His power over Sam permeated everything about them. Only he could decide whether Sam got whipped. Only he could decide whether Sam got to enjoy some of Drake's more personal games. And, perhaps most of all, only he could decide whether Sam had the right to die. He had broken him fair and square, and that gave him the right to enjoy that power over Sam.
Drake drew Sam in until he was quite close. The 'slug' crawled up his abdomen, his chest, his shoulders, and the leading end could possibly choke off his bloodstream via his throat. Sam gulped, his Adam's apple twitching as the stinging bile carried itself past. His struggles were as ferociously useless as usual, but they got to be an annoyance at times. And so Drake spoke the first words of the night. "Tch. Stop moving, Sammy-boy, or I'll kill you right here and now." Sam went limp so quickly it was almost comical. In fact, Drake did laugh. But that was only to be expected, of course.
The boy was scared of something. The question was was he scared of Drake, or was he scared of how he would react around Drake? Good question, he mused. A bit of both, maybe? He hadn't been completely unwilling last time, either. Sam had tried to make himself think that everything and nothing was wrong, but the slightly older male could not continue to delude himself any longer about anything with Drake when Drake had shattered to little pieces that petty illusion.
Which was how the boys had found themselves on that cliff, after all. It would have taken that much time for Sam to recover and pick up the nerve to get there. Drake had never really believed Sam would have the guts to throw him over, but insanity did weird things to a person and he wasn't taking any chances with him. Toying with him was so much fun, after all, and finding a new playmate would be more than just problematic. Plus any new playmate just wouldn't be Sam. That made a little bit of difference in Drake's mind, else he would have just watched him throw himself off the cliff with mild amusement and glee as he screamed, hitting the sharp rocks at the foot.
Sam swallowed, his adam's apple bobbling through the pale twists of the tentacle again, and Sam had broken out into a cold sweat. He couldn't run now, subject to Drake's whim. If he did, he would most likely live, or just die very, very slowly and painfully. He was too fearful at this point in time, in this mental state, to take that sort of punishment. He hadn't been himself since that first incident, true, but after he was forced by Caine, who was being controlled by Drake's master, the Darkness, at the time and therefore not in control of himself, to see what happened to Dekka, he was loathe to suffer such a fate. It would break him further, if possible, into less than the undistinct pieces of his former half-gone self.
Drake grinned and his tongue flashed over his lips, licking them in anticipation, as he flung Sam into a tree, in the opposite direction of the cliff. Sam, not expecting the bout of sudden violence, flung bodily into the tree. He twitched on the ground, head lolling on the rough tree bark, winded. He was only starting to gasp for breath when Drake reached him. He stared at those frightfully animated grey eyes a moment on the face of the boy above him, then turned away.
Sam pushed his body as far into the dirt as he could manage. Drake still leered above him. They were dealing with fight or flight instincts, after all, and unsurprisingly Sam wanted to flee, to be anywhere else in that moment. But he couldn't be. Drake had straddled him in that moment of weakness, and there was no avenue of escape, no space to burrow or roll away. The tree and dirt were at his back, and Drake was at the rest of his sides. The dirt was packed and fraught with tree roots from the old trees.
Sam slumped again, this time closing his eyes and turning his face to the side. There was nothing he could do now, except take what Merwin had to dish out. The last thing he saw for a while was Drake's mad smile-ish facial expression.
The sting of the first whip was muted. Drake wasn't trying to hit him too hard yet. He would play now, and hurt later. After all, he had the leisure to do what he wanted now that Sam couldn't go and throw himself to his death. Sam was wiggling, about to turn on his side and roll away, and Drake had to make him know innately just who had the power at the moment, and just who was trapped.
There was little that disgusted Drake more than acts of goodness. And Sam had performed a lot of them. Sure, some of them had to do with him, but that was another story. Sam had been the good guy, a little goody two-shoes. That was part of what had drawn Drake to him in the first place. Goody two-shoes tended to be more innocent, and more innocent children screamed more. Could anyone ever forget that Drake Merwin was a sadistic psychopath?
Sam's goody two-shoeyness went against his philosophy. So Sam deserved to suffer. And who better to administer the suffering than him? That, ladies and gentlemen of the FAYZ, is how Drake's head works. Scary, isn't it? I thought so.
For all Drake was calm and collected, Sam was freaking out. Phrases like Run! or Blast him and get out of here! and NononononononononoNONONONO- swirled around his head as if stirred by a spoon. He was staying rigidly still, not even moving his arms to protect his face or his vulnerable belly. Not taking the risk. He was lucky that his legs had already been crossed, or he'd have given Drake another particularly painful target. He just shut his eyes and waited in terror that threatened to boil over and feed the madness. Who know? It might already be.
Drake didn't do anything to Sam right away. He had had his plan, this plan for this very night so very certain in his head before he had sought out the prey. He was just waiting, just as it was. He fed off the terror he exuded. In fact, he practically oozed fear, and Drake delighted in it.
Soon enough, Drake once again wrapped his whip hand around Sam's hips. He drew in the nearly-emaciated form of the former leader until his hair hung down in Sam face, ticking his cheeks. Sam went wide eyed as Drake leaned in closer. First Drake bit his cheek, then higher-the skin to the sides of his eyes. A bead of blood dripped into Drake's waiting mouth. He moved. His forehead. The spot between his eyes. The tip of his nose, closing his nasal airway.
Eventually Sam gasped for air, choking and sobbing all the while. He did try to scream once, for all the good it would do in that lonesome place, so Drake pressed against his mouth, biting on his tongue with the intention of removing it from his body. The noise was much muted and degenerated into more sobbing. Drake was getting excited, feeling the feel of teeth-on-teeth and tasting the copper of blood, so he bit down harder. The noise level dropped even more as Sam moaned from the pain, twitching.
Drake withdrew, leaving Sam to flop backwards heavily as his half bitten-off tongue lolled from his mouth, drooling red blood. He didn't want to kill him then. He nearly did in a fit of blood lust, but he regained control at the last second. Instead he just started ripping off Sam's hair. He hadn't cut it in months, and it was shaggy enough for Drake to get a good grip on it as he pulled.
It could be one piece or just repeatedly yanking a bunch. All Sam knew is that before soon his head was a playground of half-seconds of searing agony and continuous pounding. He tried to keep his whimpers quiet, but he wasn't really thinking. His mind had gone black after Drake had beaten the resistance out of him, but even in that state he knew better than to feed the fire so blatantly burning him alive.
They weren't far from the cliff, but it seemed an eternity away from where they were. Sam made his decision in his instant. It would be slow, painful, and torturous, but he would have to try. There was nothing else left to him.
In the next few hours Drake had tested many tortures on him. He had ripped Sam's ears off, poked at his feet with dirty, sharp fingernails and sharper thorn-headed sticks. He had rolled through the thornbed and been scratched and kicked and punched to broken bones, and even shot through one knee. All the while, Drake's whip hand slashed out, painting criss-crossing lines bright red all over Sam's body.
If he hadn't been already so far off the edge, the pain would likely have driven Sam insane. He tried to stay in his dream of mental hospitals and doctors to sedate him and sweet dreamlessness. Of happier times before the FAYZ or during the blessed period of peace he had spent at Lake Tromonto while Caine played with Perdido Beach. Even if he had had started the process of going over before then, he was in much better shape than he was now.
Sam had tried to hurt Drake too. He had managed to push him into the thorns and land a couple kicks before he got dizzy from the lack of nutrition and collapsed, ceding control back over to the sadist. He was certain he had broken one of Drake's ribs. The thought had an edge of savage happiness equal to his fear for a moment that cut clean through to his vocal cords as he let out a loud howl. His tongue was completely gone, but this howl needed no words. It's anguished, pained tone spoke for itself.
Somewhere in the darkness nearby, Drake grinned at his victim and the fingers covered in the victim's blood. He let out an equally mad laugh, manufactured from genuine delight.
Sam turned towards the sound, barreling into the larger boy as hard as he could. They were so close to the cliff at that moment, just so close. Drake wrapped his whip around Sam to keep his balance, but Sam did not stop. He stumbled off the cliff in a reasonable parody of a jump, taking Drake with them.
Had anyone been there to see, they would have found two bodies entangled on the sharp rocks lubricated by the foamy seawater, pierced in dozens of places. There was no Dekka waiting to save their lives this time. And Sam: insane, tortured beyond belief, crazy Sam had gotten just what he had told the creepy adults in white he wanted. Only that he would never want again.