SAW: OUTLAW
by Ulquiorra9000
A/N: This chapter will pretty much be a bridge between chapters 1 and 3... and an excuse to see another trap!
TRAP TWO: Heavy Drinker
The afternoon sun washed its heat across the desert terrain, making the air roil and waver like water over the dusty ground, rocks, and dry bushes. Sheriff Richard Simmons ignored the uncomfortable surroundings as he urged his horse to run faster, the animal galloping tirelessly toward the upcoming town. Richard squinted his eyes against the airborne sand and bright sun, focusing on the clustered buildings ahead. Before he got there, another horse-bound person departed from the town and moved to intercept Richard. Not surprised by the rider's urgency, Richard slowed his horse to a halt, letting the other person approach. It was the town's sheriff, a tanned man with crow's feet at the corners of his eyes an a bushy brown mustache.
"Are you Richard Simmons? The one investigating the Jigsaw Killer?" the sheriff asked urgently as he pulled the reins to bring his horse to a halt. The animal skidded into place, blinking curiously.
Richard tipped his wide-brimmed hat, the bandaged cuts on his arms still tingling. "Yeah, that's me. Joe Peterson, sheriff?"
"Right," sheriff Peterson said gruffly, then pointed to a hill outside his town. A vulture swooped overhead, its wide shadow sliding quickly across the hot ground. "It's up there. Follow me. You'll want to see this."
Gut squirming in anxiety, Richard urged his horse forward and joined sheriff Peterson across the landscape to the hill, and as they drew closer, Richard saw a hastily-constructed roof supported on four wooden poles, and a coffin-sized device underneath. Peterson's horse galloped right up to the scene, under the shade of the roof and next to the bed-like device. Richard joined him, dismounting his horse and walking up to the device, frowning.
Peterson looked at it, too. "Poor fella. Jigsaw claims another one."
"I'd say so," Richard agreed grimly, looking at the puzzle piece-shaped branding mark on the victim's exposed chest. The body lay prone in the trap, fat but unmoving. Apparently, he had died only yesterday.
*o*o*o*o*
Earlier...
Harry's eyes snapped open, staring overhead at a wooden roof. He groaned, aware that he was lying down, and that his head was still buzzing from last night's drinking spree. Oh man... it was worth it, though. Harry tried to sit up, but oddly, his wrists couldn't move, and his neck was bound, too. Trying to focus thought the alcohol-induced haze, Harry's eyes widened as he suddenly realized what was going on.
"Hey! Hey! Where am I? Where is everybody?" Panic rising in his throat, Harry whipped his head this way and that, his chest heaving. His head was inside a square glass box without a lid, and looking down, Harry saw that his neck was poking through a wooden panel, and dark cloth was stuffed in there, making the seal airtight. Harry couldn't see the rest of his body, but he felt that he was lying on a wooden platform and his wrists were apparently bound in iron cuffs nailed to the wood. Try as he might, his wrists wouldn't come free, and the wood panel holding his neck in place was beyond breaking through.
Breathing hard, Harry ground his teeth and shouted, "Is this someone's idea of a joke? Let me out of here! Can't anyone hear me?"
The sound of spurred cowboy boots walking across the ground made Harry's breath catch in his throat, and he turned his head to the right to see a man approaching, entering the shade of the wooden roof. A black cloth was over his mouth, but his gravely, hoarse voice carried perfectly well. "Hello, Harry, or as they call you, 'Dirty Harry'. I want to play a game."
Harry forced a weak grin. "Hey, don't be like that. Can you let me out? Some bastard must have put me here and..."
The man chuckled, and the quality of the laugh chilled Harry to the bone. "You spend every day and every night of your life in one saloon or another, drowning your life in alcohol, not realizing what a gift life is. You live as though there were no tomorrow. And if you cannot win my game, there really will be no tomorrow for you."
Harry shuddered, his jaw trembling. "N... no! Are you the Jigsaw Killer? That outlaw everyone keeps talkin' about? You're worth a lotta money, you know!"
"Oh, no one will find us here, I promise you that," Jigsaw told him, then walked over to the head section of Harry's trap. "By sundown, I will be gone, and you will walk away with a new appreciation for your life... or you will be dead."
Harry's eyes tracked Jigsaw in horror as the outlaw moved what sounded like a wheeled cart, out of his vision range. Then, a barrel mounted on a wooden frame was rolled over Harry's head, a metal nozzle pointing at his face.
"To survive, you need only do what you do too much: drink, Harry," Jigsaw warned him. "This barrel has enough liquor in it to drown you, but if you can drink enough of it, the barrel will run dry and your mouth will not be submerged, and you will be freed. Let the game begin."
As he finished speaking, Jigsaw twisted a knob on the barrel, and clear liquid leaked from the barrel's nozzle and splashed onto Harry's face, making the drunkard spit it out and turn his head. "Hey! Too fast!" he objected. However, Jigsaw increased the flow a little more, and the cool liquor continued to flow over Harry's cheek and start to accumulate on the glass box's bottom. Realizing that he had no choice, Harry turned his head back upright and opened his mouth, catching the liquid in his mouth and gulping it down. He kept gulping as the liquor kept coming, one mouthful after another. His stomach began to feel full, but the liquor flowed on and on, so Harry kept drinking it. However, dribbles of the liquor kept escaping and slowly filled up the glass box, making the clear liquid creep halfway up Harry's ear level.
Come on. How much is there? Harry wondered as his heart raced and his nerves chilled with the fear of death. He felt his hair grow damp and clump from the steadily rising liquor, but he swallowed down another mouthful, praying for this to end. He tried to take a breath and gulp another mouthful, but he accidentally inhaled some drink, and his lungs burned as he hacked and coughed the liquor out. The liquor relentlessly continued to pour from the nozzle, making the box's liquid level rise halfway up Harry's cheeks, encroaching toward his mouth. "Oh God... oh God..." Harry swallowed some more liquor, but his stomach felt fit to burst and his face ached, and he merely coughed in the pool of drink, too weak to keep up.
The barrel must be almost empty by now, driving Harry to drink faster. He turned and drew in liquid from the box, but he ran out of breath and reflexively breathed in, drawing liquid into his lungs. Squirming in burning pain, Harry rattled the wooden bed as he tried to fight his way out of the nearly-full box, but his whole head was submerged, and he shut his eyes against the stinging alcohol even as his lungs burned for air. Harry's mouth opened wide, and his throat and lungs were filled. His vision flickered and faded to black, and the last thing he felt was the cool sensation of the alcohol bathing his head.
*o*o*o*o*
Richard's gaze drifted from the victim's puzzle-piece brand to his head, which was in what seemed like a water-filled glass box, the man's black hair drifting around in the liquid. The liquid was only an inch deep from evaporation, but Richard could tell that the box had once been full, drowning the victim in liquid. Richard leaned closer, pushing away a cart-mounted barrel over the man's head, and sniffed the water... it was actually alcohol. This man had been drowned in liquor?
"He was known as Dirty Harry around here, the heavy drinker," Peterson supplied. "Poor bastard. He wasn't good for much... but he didn't deserve this."
"No. He didn't." Richard shook his head and looked up at the other sheriff. "Listen. I've got a family. My brother, and his wife and two children. Actually, they're grown up, but I haven't heard from them in a long time. I fear for them. Jigsaw is still loose, and I admit... my brother and his family aren't the nicest of people. I have to find Jigsaw before he gets them!"
Peterson looked shocked. "In... in that case, you should see this. Funny how you mention your family." He handed over a piece of paper, and Richard read it with terror. Sheriff Richard, you survived my dynamite trap, but the game isn't over yet. Your brother and his family break the law and run around with criminals, and have done nothing good or selfless for anyone in this hard land. If you want to see them again, you must find them. Find ME.
The bottom of the paper was a map to an old ghost town and a picture of a puzzle piece, and Richard crumpled the paper and thew it on the ground. "He has them! My... my brother's family!"
"Are you going to pursue them? It could be dangerous..." Peterson said uncertainly. Richard glared at him.
"Of course. And I need your help. This could be it. Will you help me take down Jigsaw? This land needs heroes like us."
Peterson gulped and nodded, but his eyes were hard. "Very well. I'll bring my men. In good time, that bastard will twist in the wind."
