AUTHOR'S NOTE: HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE FIRST CHAPTER. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO GIVE FEEDBACK AND CRITICISM WHERE NECESSARY.
When we are born, we have nothing. When we die, we leave with nothing. Everything in between, is up to you. Inside the darkness of your mind resides the agonist of your being. Around the edge of darkness rests the shadow, and in the shadow there is power. Do not fear the shadow. Embrace it. For it is you.
David awoke with an ear-splitting headache and a strange dryness on his tongue. Oh god it was like he got skull fucked by a death claw. His ears rang like the obnoxious garbles of some sadistic muse. He tried to get his wits about him but everything was wavy, uncertain of its own solidity. The room swam in many directions at once, it was worse than the worst drunk he had ever had. What was happening?
He sat up from the cold steel he lay on and waited for the dizziness to wear off. When it did he began to notice things. First off he wasn't in his serving clothes anymore. Instead he was clothed in a drab jumpsuit with the number 33 patch on the chest. Secondly and more importantly, he was in some sort of cage. Not a conventional cage; this one had four solid walls of the same grey drab he was wearing. There was a single rectangular window through which David could see nothing but a section of empty hallway. A solid looking door next to it and a single chair were the only fixtures. There were halogen lights in each of the corners. Suddenly there was a whooshing of air and the door opened.
A man carrying a clipboard and wearing a labcoat walked in with two armed guards in tow. He was what you would think of as a a scientist, clean cut and almost soft looking. His hair was slightly long but well kept. He wore thin, wire frame glasses. The guards were not like that. They were both clad head to toe in some dark shell that David could only guess was Power Armor. Their faces were expressionless masks of mystery. Hoses came out of either side of their metal cheeks and looped around to some sort of canister on their back. They both carried sinister looking laser rifles. Who were these guys?
"Ah," the man in the labcoat said a little too cheerfully. "You're awake."
"Where am I?" David asked, his mouth very dry. It was little more than a croak.
"I wouldn't worry about that right now." Labcoat smiled and grabbed the rooms only chair. He sat down in it next to David and smiled that creepy smile. "How are you feeling?"
How was he feeling? He had been knocked unconscious, kidnapped by some strange force and was starting to think he was part of a fucking lab experiment. Things were really looking up for him.
"Where am I?" Barely a whisper. Where was his spit?
Labcoat frowned. "Now David, it's rude to answer a question with a question. Now please, tell me how you feel."
Rude? Who was this asshat and how did he know his name? Why couldn't he find the power to stand up and choke this little prick until he stopped asking his pedantic questions and started answering some?
"I feel...like choking you." His gut tightened up, and he locked eyes on Labcoat like a hungry yao guai. The room suddenly began to feel very pressurized, all the little atoms in the air pressing into every inch of his tingling skin. His nape hairs stood up and the muses were crooning in his ear again. Do it, they whispered. Labcoat held his gaze, refusing to back down. Maybe he wasn't as soft as he looked. Maybe he was soft on the inside. David thought he would find out.
Something in his eyes must have given it away because the moment he shifted his weight to pounce on this questioning stranger and rip his throat out, the two goons stepped in between them and each put a hand on one of his shoulders. They shoved him down, but not too rough. Either they were very strong or he was very weak, because he was powerless in their grasp. He felt the white hot anger surging through him, the muses beckoning him to come forth and kill, to bask in the glory of their death, spill their blood upon the ground and write poems in their memory. He wrestled to break free and crush their stupid fucking skulls. Fuck them! Fuck this place! But he could do nothing but struggle.
Labcoat smirked, wrote something down on his clipboard and stood to leave as David thrashed about. He seemed unbothered by David's murderous intentions, as if he had suspected just as much to happen. But how? David was not typically a raging murderer, but something had consumed him. Something carnal and impulsive. Something he was not in control of. Suddenly the hands on his shoulders released him like the hands of God himself. He never felt so weak in his life. The room became wavy again and he struggled to keep himself sitting. The anger that had run hot under his skin had passed, leaving only a feeling of intense pressure and lethargy. The three men left without a word, and while they had come bearing questions it was David who felt he had questions that demanded answers. Who were those men? Where was he? Was he going to die here? Why did his emotion erupt and attempt to swallow him whole? All these and more swam through his mind as he attempted to make sense of everything. He lay down on the cold floor while the room span and span and tried to make the feeling go away, but it wouldn't. So he just lay there in misery watching the waves crash all around him. He felt like the captain of a sinking ship, the world crashing down around him and all he could do was try to keep his head above water. All he could do was hope for the tide to wash him ashore. He felt so powerless. So worthless.
Eventually he was brought food. It was canned and tasted horrible but he ate it anyway. No one else came to visit him, and he wasn't sure how long he was kept in that quiet hell. With no way to tell the time day and night became fond memories and the only constant was the overwhelming silence and the crippling feeling of being held against your will, with no way to reach out into the world and ask for help. Completely at the mercy of another. He had trouble sleeping and anytime he did get to sleep he had strange dreams of chasing people down and eating them. The next few (days?) passed relatively the same, and then finally, when David was at the end of his rope and his very will to live was beginning to wilt, salvation came in the form of a chair.