My goal? To see how dark and disturbing I could get in one little side story.

Playlist? Every song ever by Hollywood Undead and the OST for Suckerpunch.

Enjoy?

Don't stop. Can't stop. If he stops, he dies. Goddammit, he can't breathe. He's been running too long – too much; he legs feel like they're on fire. He feels like he can't keep running. But he can't stop, either. He can't keep going, and he can't stop. What does he do?

His hood falls down from his head, pool around his neck, and his make-up runs with the sweat dripping down his face. Fear pumps through his body, replacing the blood he's already lost – he blinks back involuntary tears as they form in the corners of his eyes. He cranes his neck to look behind him, and when he sees that he isn't being followed, he dips inside of an alleyway off St. Charles and slumps against a wall, lets himself breathe. He can't stay too long, however, so after counting to ten he gets up and starts running again. He has to at least try getting to the police station.

"Daisya," comes a small, female voice. His breath hitches at the familiarity of it and he clenches his fist to keep from yelling or doing anything too stupid. "Oh, Daisya." Where is her voice coming from? Wait. He looks to the side sharply – to the street. There, in a black car, not far from him at all. The windows are tinted dark, but it's driving slowly and the window is cracked just so. She must be in there. They all must be in there.

"Fuck," he murmurs, tripping a bit over his own feet. He isn't far now. Just a few blocks off. Just a few blocks. He goes to turn a corner, to slip through the alleyways, when he sees a person blocking the exit. Big and imposing, with dark skin and golden eyes. NOAH. He goes to turn, to leave the alleyway the way he came, but someone is blocking that end too. Shorter, with hair white as snow and a bandana, this guy doesn't look nearly as formidable. If he's going to try to get away, he's going to try through him.

As he's a soccer player, he's good at running, faking – he makes his way forward, towards the white-haired one, and moves like he's going to go around him to the left, but fakes to the right at the last second. It's no use though; the NOAH member stops him as if he can read his mind. Letting out a noise, Daisya sweeps his dominant leg out, to attack his roadblock. He ducks like it's nothing, like he always knew Daisya would do that.

The noise he makes this time is more strangled; a more helpless edge tinges it. "We're gonna make a lesson outta you," the big one says, almost sounding happy. Daisya shivers and turns on his heel, figures the big one will be less agile. He has to get out of this. He isn't going to die. He can't die and leave the other three, not after what happened with the old man. If he goes down as well, what will that show them?

He tries. He really does. He tries and he tries and he tries with so much desperation in his veins there is nothing else in his world. Slumping to the ground in pure fatigue, he lets out a groan and digs his fingernails into the cement. They can't win. They can't. No. Of course they can't. The bad guys never win. They never – they never…

The small girl is there. She smiles at him, brightly, and wraps thin arms around his neck. "You're his brother. I'm sorry to have to do this now, but you see, we need a few things to take form. And you're gonna be our catalyst."

"Do-do you even know what that big word means, little girl?" Daisya asks wearily, with a confidence he doesn't feel.

She laughs. "You're funny," she tells him, drawing closer to embrace him. "It's really such a shame we have to kill you."

He knew that's what they were going to do – he isn't stupid and he knew, but there is something about hearing it aloud. About that being confirmed. About being told he's going to be murdered. His fingernails dig into the cement further to keep himself from screaming and he feels them crack, feels the pain rush up his arms and the blood run from his fingers. If he yells and gets anyone else caught in this, they'll just die too. If he's going to escape, he's going to do it on his own.

But he sees no way to do that.

There are at least a dozen people surrounding him. He has no chances. In his current state, he'd probably lose to the small girl. After being hit on the head like that, he feels dizzy and sick to his stomach.

That's when he thinks the one thing he's been trying to avoid thinking.

It's hopeless. I'm going to die. They've won.

Inhaling a shaky breath, he resigns himself to that, doesn't fight as they pick up him by his arms. He is dead weight to them, but they still have no trouble. They drag him from the alleyway to a car behind a building, his feet dragging and his fingers still bleeding.

You're gonna be angry at me, aren't you guys?

Throwing him in the trunk, he is plunged into complete darkness.

When he sees light again, it is not for very long. He's blindfolded immediately and dragged from the car, his ankles and knees protesting from the very callous manner in which it's done. But that doesn't matter. Every inch of his body could be covered in needles and it wouldn't matter. He realizes this. A desperation settles in his once completely optimistic chest, unfamiliar and new. His optimism was never a front – he's meant every word he's ever said. But something about this feels weird and different and dark.

His throat is so dry it hurts, but when he tries to swallow, there's nothing. It's like swallowing fire. Or perhaps extremely hot air. It scorches even as it makes its way into his lungs.

He's shoved into a chair. He assumes it's a chair. It feels hard, has a back and arms. His limbs are all strapped to it, then his head is forced back and he feels a zip tie hold his throat to the back of the chair harshly. He chokes when he tries to swallow again, so just keeps his mouth open, breathes in and out as carefully, but as surely as he can. There are precise footsteps on linoleum. They stop near his chair, then the blindfold is carefully untied.

He blinks to the new light. The room looks fairly normal, but he can't turn his head even a little bit. He has one direct line of sight. Then there are two fingers prying his mouth open and his first instinct is to bite down. The man next to him 'tsk's and pulls away sharply, leaving Daisya to snap down harshly on his own teeth. Groaning in pain, he purses his lips, doesn't relent and let them open until a hand presses back on his forehead harshly, making the back of his head hit the top of the back of the chair – his throat stresses against the zip tie and he chokes, sputtering soundlessly. His mouth opens and his assailant comes into view – a dark skinned man with golden eyes and dark hair; a monocle seems so out of place, but sits over his right eye. Smiling a smile that doesn't reassure him at all, just shakes him to his very core, he fits something to Daisya's mouth, keeping it open.

Then he walks away and all Daisya can think is, What are they going to do to me?

Everything feels so wrong and he feels so violated. When someone returns, it's a handsome Portuguese man with a mole under his left eye. He bends over Daisya, chuckling and looking down at him. He holds his right hand in Daisya's line of sight, and there Daisya sees a small, purple butterfly slowly flapping its wings. "Would you like to know what it does? It's quite marvelous, really." Daisya obviously can't answer, so he goes on. "They're a type of parasite. Very rare butterflies indigenous to Portugal. You see, they enter through an orifice – such as the mouth – and from there they kind of…burrow. Rather like a rat. They get…pleasure out of digging and ultimately, eating. They'll eat whatever they want. Your heart, your stomach, your liver. It's kind of fun when they start with the lesser organs. That way the victim doesn't die so quickly."

Daisya wants to yell obscenities at the man, to call him sick and spit in his face, but all he can do is lie there, narrowing his eyes in a last show in insolence. It means nothing, and he doesn't actually feel anything like that, he just doesn't want them to know he's given up.

The man lowers his hand to Daisya's lips, and there is the start of the disgusting feeling of a creature crawling over and into his mouth, covering his tongue, fluttering down his throat – he'd almost gag if he could. Something is holding his tongue – pliers perhaps. He feels it crawl slowly down his windpipe and the pain is unbearable. If fire was in his lungs before, now it is liquid nitrogen. He tries making a noise, but nothing comes out. It hurts – so painful – so…

The pain is so intense he feels like he's losing his very sanity. The pliers release his tongue, but that barely registers.

"While that's going on," he hears the man say. He puts a cigarette between his lips and mutters, "You wanted a go, right Jasdevi? Go for it." He walks away, Daisya only knows because he can barely hear his retreating footsteps over the loud fluttering noise in his ears. It must be imagined, as he wouldn't be able to hear the butterfly deep in the recesses of his body, but he isn't thinking straight.

"Our turn!" Comes a voice. "Heehee, what do you think, Devit?"

"Well, I just got this new Smith and Wesson-"

"Me too, me too!"

"Right, we just got these new Smith and Wesson's, and I was wondering about some of the specs on it. Like how it handles at certain distances, how powerful a bullet it shoots. Pretty standard things to wonder about." Daisya's vision is completely blurred. The pain isn't as intense in his chest anymore, but something feels really strange. Something tickles at the inside of his skin, like soft wings. He tries to breathe but finds it restricted. And breathing worsens the aches of pain, but how is he supposed to avoid breathing?

Everything is very quiet for a while save the imagined wings in his ears. Then he hears the loud bang of a pistol firing and pain shoots up his leg. He lets out a gnarled yell past his burning windpipe and finally the tears fall. Someone gets close to him again and there is pressure on his wounded leg.

"Not bad, not bad. Dug right through the bone, so that's good."

"Devit, be careful, don't kill him just yet."

"Awww, he's going to die anyway! That's not fair!"

"Not fair! Not fair!"

"I don't care what's not fair. The ballistics report from his wound might be traceable back to that gun. I don't care how hard you scraped off the serial number – it's not good news."

Everything in his body is weakening, breaking down. Is this what it's like to die? To feel everything ripped from you, slowly, but all at once? The pain starts again – the intensely hot one – somewhere in his stomach. It's as if the butterfly were ripping at flesh and muscle and lining with poison-tipped teeth. It's so excruciating, he can't hold back the rip of a scream from his throat. He isn't going to last much longer at all. But if only they would just kill him now and get this all over with.

"Do..u…any la…quests?"

That girlish voice…but he can't make out what she's said. It's all mangled and distorted in his head.

"Com…n…Daisya. Any las…ests?"

He can't do it. No matter how hard he tries to focus on her voice, on anything but the pain in his stomach, everything inside him rubs together like graters on raw flesh and draws him back. She leans over him, into his blurry sight and this time, clearer, she asks:

"Do you have any last requests?"

Kill him. Kill him now. Don't let the pain and the torture and degradation continue. He can't take it. He's happy, he's optimistic, he loves everyone, he loves his life, he has his soccer and his brothers and his friend, and there was that girl he was going to ask to dinner next Friday; kill him. End all those things. End every part of him, every ounce of his personality, of his soul – who he is. He doesn't want it anymore, those things don't matter. All that matters now is the peaceful blackness of death.

There is some talk of stitching, and there is perhaps some pressure on his bullet wound, but he's just grateful for the slow lessening of pain in his gut. With it, every ounce of his strength has left him. The strength to yell, to cry, even to have desperation – it's all melting away. He is a shell. And everything that he is is pain. The fact that he is so empty does not scare him, but rather he's grateful for it.

He feels his breath trickling away. Lessening with his emotions and a bit of his pain and all that he is. Trickling away with his thoughts and consciousness. It is like a small stream from his lips, dribbling down and disappearing into the big blurry nothingness that he sees. Gray. So much gray. So many blurred tones. Everything melting together.

This must be what it feels like to die, because he doesn't know what else it could be. It's not a simple or peaceful death like he'd always hoped it to be, but his ears have popped and he can't hear anything, can't really see anything, so it's almost like he's asleep. Like this is all a big dream. Or maybe just something his mind is conjuring up as he dies in his sleep, the melodramatic part of him needing some kind of dramatic exit, and perhaps this sates him. He can treat it like a film – like it isn't real.

He wonder's, briefly, if his final, final moment will be painful – what it will be like to actually die. Will it be intense, or will it be boring and dull? Does it matter? He gathers some semblance of thought to keep him sane. He is sure he will know the moment when he is dying and then he can prepare. Death will not catch him off guard, of that he's su–

Oh man. I hate forced irony. But you know, I had to do it. I had to. The story ends like that on purpose, if you don't get it. I imagine a sudden death is something like this. You're thinking and you're thinking and then suddenly - you're not. I don't believe in ghosts, souls, spirits - anything like that. That's just it. You're dead.