I half walked, half shuffled my way to the computer store. My boss called and asked if I could dis-assemble this harddrive that had some serious damage, and that he needed a clear way to the storage disk and didn't have the nimble fingers to do it himself. Not like it was 10 o'clock on a Friday, in effing Fort Dodge, so it wasn't incredibly dangerous for someone to be strollin' the streets alone or anything. Not at all. I had rolled my eyes and told him I'd be there in ten.

In short, I thought in annoyance at being pulled away from my lovely coding session, I was risking myself to fix some dumb computer that could SO wait for tomorrow. I shook the thoughts from my rusting think-pan and told myself to shut up. Arguing with myself in my own head was a terrible habit, probably worse since it tends to be pessimistic and an asshole.

I turned the final corner to the shop, when I heard a muffled grunt of pain coming from the alley to my left. It was dark, but a small streetlight illuminated the alley enough for me to see two men roughly shoving another guy, who was most definitely unconscious, into the back of a shitty looking, beat-up black van. After choking on how cliché that was, I quickly hid myself in the shadows.

Not fast enough.

One of the brutes grunted something to the other and looked my direction. The man then started stalking down the alley, and when I was sure he was headed my direction, I bolted out of my hiding place towards the shop as fast as I could. Just... a bit...farther... I struggled to think through the stress of exercise my body was unused to, just before pain exploded through my head and the world went dark.

I woke up, and was assaulted by the brightest damn light you have every seen.

"Ow…" I groaned while quickly snapping my eyes shut. My head hurt like hell, and I realized I was in a scary ass white room, surrounded by the brightest spotlights on the whole planet. And my hands were tied. To my ankles. Oh God this is some fucked up sex-slave oper-

"Hello, little snoop! Finally awake, I see." The most scarred, torn up man I have ever seen stepped from the other side of the incredibly bright spotlight that had been focused on me. I didn't even see any normal skin. The sterile, white outfit made him look like a demented doctor. Does that make my the patient? I wondered.

Meanwhile, while lost in my terrified and slow thoughts, Dr. Freaky had been talking.

"-and I thought for a while you'd been killed! No matter, Lad, just answer my questions truthfully and you won't be harmed." Out of thin air, it seemed, he pulled a bottle with a dropper in it. When the bottle was open, the clear liquid's vile smell premeated the room quickly and made me gag.

"Where are they hiding, Son?" The man carefully measured the dropper and didn't look at me.

"Who?" I tried not to stutter, or break into a lisp I had long before now had conquered at the stress, but this was a scene straight out of my scary movies and it crept me out. Immensely.

"The rest of your disgusting filth, of course." His wide grin showed me all the teeth, sharpened to points and rotten. His tone mocked his words, sickly sweet and kind.

"I don't know what you're-re talking about!" my voice cracked, and I tried to swallowed my fear "I don't even know what I thaw, okay, I don't know what you're talking about, and all I get is that I don't belong her-" my words were cut off by a slap.

"DON'T LIE TO ME YOU NASTY LITTLE CRETIN! Tell me where the Dark Heirs are hiding NOW! I have no time to listen to your obviously well-recited story. GIVE ME THE RINGBEARERS' LOCATION!" he screamed at me. With rough, glove-wearing fingers, he pulled my face upward and positioned the dropper over my eye. "Say something. NOW!" he let a drip of the dropper's contents fall into my left eye.

I burned. Hell was nothing compared to this. I jerked out of his grasp and writhed on the floor, struggling against my bindings. I shrieked, bloodcurdlingly. But the scarred man did not flinch.

"TELL ME MAGGOT! NOW, SCUM!" his foot connected with the side of my face, and I felt blood pouring from some wound. I was to busy screaming to hear his next question. Until some invisible power picked me up and threw me against the wall, facing the psychotic physician. His hand was cupped in the air, like the pressure on my throat, and I instinctively knew he was indirectly causing my pain. "Tell me, MY BOY, and will all be over." He grinned again. And what did I do?

Spat right in his face.

He jerked back, revolted, and I felt my knees touch the floor again, although I was still forced upright into the wall.

"Bleh! You disgusting piece of dirt! How DARE you? I will make you PAY!" He punctuated the roar by using whatever psychic mind voodoo held me to the wall to bite deeply into my ribcage, creating perfect twin slashes into my flesh. I whimpered, but my eye burning and my jaw being cracked didn't allow for much screaming. He continued to ask me nonsensical questions about 'Heirs of Darkness" and " Headquarters" each question punctuated by another set of symmetrical slices into my back, legs, and arms. A few times he re-applied the colorless poison to the eye, and I just wish he would figure out I didn't know anything and just killed me already.

A millennium or twenty later, he became bored with his little game, and left. I was released from whatever mind hold he had on me, but I had no power to move. I lay there, and waited to bleed out onto the perfect white floor. Of course, I should only be so lucky.

Two solemn looking women, also in pure white garb, wordlessly and expressionlessly cleaned my cuts. They poured warm water over my body, and a drip of this and that from small pouches in their belts, which scared the crap out of me with my previous experience with unknown substances and white-dressed people. A small mixture was laid over my now sightless left eye, and wrapped with clean dressings. Both upper arms, legs, and my whole torso were also wrapped in tight white bandages, over the shredded remains of my clothing. Setting off to clean the floor, they effortlessly lifted me and placed me on a dry blanket in the corner and given a small cup of water. Then the white dressed nurses left, leaving me to heal in this awful white room that not-so-long-ago was draped in my blood, when all I wanted was to die.

Twice a day, another Expressionless Lady would walk me to a bathroom to use the facilities, then gave me bread. I would be returned to my corner to continue brooding. Of course I couldn't do anything except doze, between sessions. Scar-Face came back and ripped open a few new wounds everyday, asking about the 'Heirs'. I still had no answer, and he promised to return the next day, and I counted the sessions to pass the time.

Seventeen sessions later, Smart Me noticed the small window at the edge of the hall I was led down every day. And I began to think, if the guard-nurse by the door was gone, could I get out that window? Just gotta wait for the right time…

And wait I did.