Danny Eidetic

Chapter Two

Five Weeks Later…

Bright, fluorescent lights flickered into life for the first time in a while. Thanks to his ghostly DNA, Vlad possessed excellent night vision, however the chamber which he now entered, had been shrouded in such intense darkness on his last visit that even he had been unable to make out the dark drawings that covered the floor, the walls and the ceiling. He suppressed a gasp as thousands of haughty Sam Masons glared at him. He bent a little closer to examine what exactly they had been drawn with. He sniffed delicately, and the rusty scent of blood flooded his sensitive nasal passage. Vlad grinned wickedly, eyes rolling back in their sockets as he pushed both hands in the drawings, rubbing the carefully traced lines together until his hands dripped with green tinged blood.

The maniacal laughter that followed this action roused the individual lying hunched in the corner, and a metallic squeaking could be heard beneath the laughter as the stand the IV hung from followed the figures movement. The needle buried deep in the boys arm kept him alive – but just. He hovered so close to starvation that Vlad no longer bothered with spectral handcuffs, for the emaciated teen barely had the energy to sit up – let alone use ghost-powers.

Danny slowly turned over, eyes watering in pain as light, long absent from his view, burned his retina. But the sight that met his eyes was far more torturous than the brightness. Vlad stood over him, with an unshaven face, dark rings under his eyes, a very tatty suit and blood drenched hands. His blood. Had he have known speech, had he of known Danny Phantom, he might just then have cracked a witty one liner. But these things were beyond him. He had but one word in his vocabulary: badger. But this word itself inspired fear. It was the word the monster before him uttered before the pain began.

"Badger….." The monsters voice pushed through the thumping of his heart in his ears. Danny closed his eyes, willing himself out of the room, trying to remember a time without the pain. A girl's face entered his mind. Her purple eyes intense as they stared at him. She did not speak, and Danny wondered who this beauty was. Tears trickled down her cheeks, but hers was the face he saw when he sought comfort, her loveliness a bane in the cruel world he inhabited.

Hypnotised by her face, he barely felt the pain as the monster dragged him by the wrist with enough force to break the brittle bones that attached his arm to his hand. His raw and bleeding skin scraped over the metal floor, wounds reopening and nerves screaming in protest. But Danny was a world away, safe and happy with the black haired girl and more importantly, oblivious to where the monster was taking him.

He eventually became aware as several electrodes were implanted in his flesh, their metallic hooks gaining purchase on his tendons in the absence of his muscles. Danny moaned and writhed, tears slipping from his eyes as they burrowed in. But he knew this was not the worst of it. He tried to block the memory of the last time he had been in this room, but the high voltage that coursed through him beat him to it. His frail body jerked and twitched and his eyes rolled back in their sockets.

Time passed.

His mind was growing fuzzy as the torture continued. Where was he again?

A face with green eyes and white hair flashed in his vision, but it was gone and forgotten before he could identify it.

The girl's face again, this time with a look of determination and hope.

Finally, his thoughts crashed to a halt as darkness flooded in and he lost consciousness.

Vlad switched the camera off as Danny's trembling body stilled. With no apparent rush, he switched off the generator power and the barbs in the boy's skin neutralised. He then wheeled the teen back into the dark room and threw him without care to the floor.

He returned to the video room. The man selected a tape from only a week before and pushed it into the player. The figure on it was almost unrecognisable. He was clothed only in the singed remains of jeans, which were stained with blood and fused to his skin in many places. The rest of his skin was a mottled collection of black and purple bruises, weeping wounds, half healed cuts, and ragged burns. Both eyes with swollen shut and his hair had been completely burnt away. Only Vlad could have known that this was Danny Fenton.

Vlad's eyes lit up as a familiar scene played out. Since the boy didn't have anymore skin to mark, he had decided on electrotherapy. It had worked surprisingly well. The half-ghost had enjoyed almost two hours of it before the boy passed out. In fact, rewatching the tape had been enough to keep his mind off his next session with the boy, which he was prolonging so as to draw out his suffering as long as possible. It was more difficult of course, now that the boys accelerated healing had slowed to an almost human rate, but that could not be avoided.

He pressed the rewind button, and continued replaying the tape over and over as his eyes became more and more bloodshot. Eventually his head dropped to his chest as he fell asleep, dreams of his next causing Danny pain pulling a smile onto his lips.





HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?

A tear slid down Sam's face as the poster on her milk carton brought on a fresh wave of pain. It had been so long since he had disappeared, and they still had no idea where he was. There was no telling where Vlad might have taken him, or if he was even still alive. A survey of his mansion ruins had proved fruitless and scouring the city had had similar results. She wiped her eyes and poured some milk into her quadruple shot coffee. An all day search was the only thing that would uncover Danny, and she needed lots of caffeine if she was going to manage this.

Giving up on stemming the flow of tears, she carried her mug over to the table, where she would sit; not talking to her parents on either side of her, drinking away her misery. She never made it to the table. Instead, her drink slipped from her hand, smashing loudly on the wooden floor and splashing her Doc Martins with hot liquid. She paid this not the slightest attention however, as the image in her mind persisted. It was Danny. Or at least she thought it was. His hair was gone, and his face was bruised, bleeding and swollen so it was hard to tell. Only his blue eyes gave any hint of his identity. Sam staggered and fell as the vision pressed down on her. "Badger…." She heard through the fog of her mind. Danny's expression became terrified, and she cried out, from both the agony in his face, and her own pain.

Her sight returned, greeting her with her own cut and bloody hands. She'd fallen onto the shards of her broken cup. Brushing the blood away, she jumped to her feet and sprinted out the door. A cry tearing from her lips.

Her parents exchanged a glance as she ran off in the direction of Tucker's house.

A thousand miles away, Danny whispered a single word. "Sam…"

So what do you guys think? Did you like it? (I will accept yes/no reviews….)

Am I being too cruel to poor Danny?

Blondine