Intro:
A young male awakens in a dark, dank room. Trying to raise his hands he finds himself trapped to a cold, rusted steel chair by the wrists.
Panicking, he scans the room frantically for a tool that may aid his escape and only finding a set of lethal cutting implements strewn across a small, worn wooden table nearby.
The man then attempted to cry for help, though nothing came out and failed even to open his mouth, before quickly realising his lips had been sewn together with numerous stitches. Realising this pushed him over the edge and he began to thrash about furiously and desperately, hoping the locks binding him to the chair would somehow break, failing miserably to do so.
Muffled cries emanated from him, now fully realising the dangers that may face him.
Looking in front of him, he spotted a blood stained walkman dangling precariously from a piece of string that hung around a non working lighting fixture. The walkman displayed a countdown timer in red digital numbers, with it stating there was seventeen seconds left until something would happen, either to the man or around him.
He spotted an open door on the other side of the cold room and this alone rejuvenated fully his desires to escape unharmed. The seventeen seconds however flashed by, the walkman turned itself on and began to play what sounded like a pre-recorded message from the menacing whisper of a little girl:
"Welcome, Adam Blackwell to your ultimate test. A test that decides whether you live...or die..."
The recorded voice began and paused momentarily, allowing the man to take in the predicament he finds himself in.
The voice then continued:
"You mentioned that you were arrested recently for eavesdropping on children at a nearby school and bailed despite there being a case for you being a potential pervert..." The whispering voice paused again for similar reasons to the first time.
The man's muffled pleas for help were drowned out by the stitches that sewn his lips tightly together.
"Today you are being put to the test as your ultimate potential punishment. If you wish to live, listen to these instructions carefully....."
The voice paused for a third time, again allowing the man to take in what is being said, though the last words at this moment left him wide eyed in shock.....
"As stated, listening to what children do not know and have no right to eavesdrop on is a serious crime. The police have done little about your plight but you will be punished one way or another today, right now…"
The little girl's whispering voice paused a final time, preparing the man, wearing only his underwear in light of the potential ensuing bloodshed, for his biggest and maybe final shock of his young, now possibly wasted life…
"Your task is simple: You have been provided with a scalpel and with it, you must remove entirely both of your ears.
Be careful though, you have been given five minutes with which to do so. Failure to stay within the time limit will set off a bomb within your vicinity, which is rigged and fused to a timer…"
The voice explained carefully. The man, now sweating in pure fear looked over solemnly towards the rigged dark blue bomb sitting on a nearby desk and indeed fused to a timer displaying the same red digital numbers as the walkman had done before.
The recorded voice then signed off with one final, threatening message:
"We are watching your every move." It whispered before the walkman switched itself off automatically, and evidence of the final message pointed towards a security camera situated in each corner of the archaic room.
The restraints binding the man to the chair released seemingly on their own, allowing him to stand freely.
He immediately turned his attention to the door that he noted was open, and saw it shut just as he prepared to make a run for it, along with the dreadful sound of locks clicking into place.
The man fell to his knees and held his head in his hands, almost feeling the need to weep from his thoughts of the current situation he had to face.
To make matters that much worse, the timer on the bomb began its countdown, with each passing second represented by a high pitched bleep. The panicking man heard this and rose slowly to his bare feet again and frantically looked around for the all important scalpel.
"Four minutes thirty seconds." Chimed the girl's whispering voice through a nearby speaker bolted to a wall.
The man finally located the scalpel and staggered towards it, sweating by the bucket load. He picked it up off of the otherwise empty, decaying wooden desk that the bomb is also situated on.
He raised the scalpel to his right ear slowly and hesitantly. He allowed the edge of the blade to touch the tip of his ear and felt the cold thrill of fear dripping down the nape of his neck.
"Four minutes....." The whispering voice revealed.
With much heavy breathing and panicked grunts, the man, still hesitant, softly ran the blade along the top of his ear as if he was preparing himself, training almost.
After further delaying himself, and in a sudden rush of blood to the head, he began to saw into his ear, using the scalpel like a miniature hacksaw in an effort to get the job done. A slit quickly formed and blood flowed heavily from the self inflicted wound as the man tried to scream in pain but the stitches that fastened his lips together held firm, causing his intentions to sound like poor muffled attempts.
"Three minutes....." Hissed the whispering child's voice and let off an unsettlingly dark giggle.
The now tormented man fell to his knees almost in exhaustion, though he vigorously continued to cut into his own ear with the scalpel now halfway through, spilling another large amount of blood onto the floor and staining parts of his blonde hair as well as the entirety of that side of his head in sickly red.
Desperate not to lose his life, he continued on with it and finally after much slicing and sawing, his now severed right ear slowly peeled away from its former owner amid much squelching before finally landing with a thud into the vast pool of crimson blood below.
The wounded man attempted to scream in further pain, suffering and anarchy and this time, one by one the stitches sewing his lips shut loosened and snapped, painfully ripping off chunks of skin and causing more blood to pour down his chin like a small waterfall as well as into his mouth, staining his teeth red.
With a gurgled cry of pain, the physically weak man, still down on his knees drew the blood soaked scalpel upon the tip of his remaining ear with intent.
"One minute....." The child's whispering voice declared menacingly and concluded with a second unnerving giggle.
"Urgh fuck you!" The man exclaimed in response, drawing on his last reserves of strength and viciously began to hack and slice into the top of his remaining ear.
"Thirty seconds..." The voice taunted a final time. The man panicked ever more as he desperately cut into his ear as fast as he could as it began to grotesquely hang off of the man's head once he had reached halfway, with blood flowing down his body from the ever increasing wound, adding to the amount of crimson he has spilled with hacking his other ear off.
He looked with fear over at the timer on the bomb, displaying to him that his allocated time was up.
"No. No, no please...." The man begged for mercy at one of the security cameras in the corner of the room.
"Time's up...." A male voice uttered in a dark, unpleasant and sadistic tone of voice.
Signing off with a satisfied chuckle, the voice of the male had since been replaced with a click, then a temporary bleep, before nothing but deadly silence for the moment.
Then, the sudden sound of a deafening high pitched alarm emanated from the dark blue bomb for a few seconds to signal its intention, while the man's memories flashed before him harrowingly that proved to be his final moments of life as the bomb finally exploded.
The man's body followed suit, the limbs twisting graphically before vaporising itself into a huge shower of blood and gore.
In the aftermath, a vast pool of crimson blood aligned the floor, with many parts of what was once a man sat gore soaked within such as skull fragments, intestines and a severed arm with the bone sticking out the end of the stump.
It seemed to be another cheaply wasted life to those who would eventually see what is left of Adam Blackwell, but as with a number of cases in recent years there is more to it, that maybe the victim's life was already condemned to a pitiful waste after all.....