Prison Island Break
Co-Written By Breech Loader and SonicFrank
Harley: To 'Drunk Henchmen', we're sorry but no, we'd rather you didn't post a chapter elsewhere. It's not like isn't free and anonymous to use, and we'd have to say yes to everybody regarding all chapters. Still, anybody is welcome to discuss Prison Island Break anywhere they please, or link back to the fic.
SonicFrank: Now… Some of you wondered what was wrong with Shadow. This chapter you find out. If you find it a little convoluted and confusing, it's meant to be. After all, it is in Shadow's head. We hope you like it anyway.
Harley: Though I dare say you'll just be saying, 'Wow!' This chapter is NASTY.
Chapter Thirty-Five: P.T.S.D.
Shadow had paid up to all the inmates who had betted on the outcome of the fight and won. He had made a healthy profit, and two inmates had proven unable of paying up, so he'd had the pleasure of breaking both of the arms of one, and stabbing the other.
He did not, however, feel at all well. Watching Sonic fight Knuckles had dragged him into one of the worst flashbacks he'd ever had. Fortunately nobody had noticed, but he still felt sick. His thoughts wouldn't stay on track. He hardly dared to close his eyes in case he fell asleep – perchance to dream... After the brutal battle he sustained with Knuckles, Sonic had been taken to the infirmary, and would remain there for two days at least. Knuckles was in another wing's infirmary to keep them from fighting. Tails was probably suffering from bullies, but that wasn't Shadow's concern. The black and red hedgehog had other things to worry about...
"I'm not crazy," he told the cell. His head hurt. It had been steadily getting worse over the last two days. He now felt like somebody was treading on it. He closed the cell door and lay on his bunk, sweating, "Maria... father... help me..." he whispered, desperately trying to get his head straight...
Crazy, sane, there was really very little difference between the two. Insanity was generally much better organized though. He had an idea. It required a lot of crazy to work. But he wasn't crazy... right?
Shadow clutched at his head...
"Y'know what I love about the Hole..?" He could hear that voice... that dastardly, wicked voice. Scourge's voice, sounding so clear he might have been in Shadows' own cell, "It's always so... dark. Which brings light to the... Miniscule people in your head... The ones you never pay attention to. You can see them so clearly here... And they sound delicious, Baby..."
Shadow shuddered. He was feared across the prison, with only a handful of convicts not afraid, and even then they held a grisly kind of respect for the kind of monster who could survive alone for as long as Shadow had without giving in and joining one of the cliques for protection. But even beasts have standards; Shadow would have wound up face-down in a gutter years ago if he didn't. Scourge however, had no inhibitions at all...
He remembered Hole Number Three. Okay, so maybe he shouldn't have tried to escape. But Solitary was Solitary. You were supposed to be alone. And there was hardly room for one person in a Hole, let alone two. This couldn't be good. Even as the door was unlocked by guards with tasers, he braced himself against the doorway, trying to keep them from forcing him in. But with a quick shock to the spine, he was pushed in rapidly, the door slammed behind him, and him in almost complete darkness, with only a slit in the door and a slot at floor level, the higher to let passing guards look in on the prisoner and the lower to pass food through to them. And as he slammed a furious fist into the metal door, he felt somebody else in the Hole...
Shadow remembered him breathing. There was a musk to his breath, a deliberate grimace of laughter wedged between each short inhalation. Then he heard him lick his lips. "Oooo! Haha, mmmmm. Look, Mama! My Happy Meal came with a toy!" Shadow felt cold, bare fingertips touch his muzzle, "And I think it has... Buttons..."
Shadow had jammed an elbow back without hesitating, feeling it make solid contact with somebody's ribcage. It was one thing to get along with other inmates just enough to keep them from whaling on you. It was another to let them touch you. There was a gasp, and he turned, squinting in the very dim light. It was another hedgehog, a green one. And he stank of everything, "Keep the fuck away from me," he told the other prisoner sharply, glaring at him.
There was a cough, and even in the low light, Shadow could see that there was also a grin. "Jolly WOW! It's a brand-new action figure! And it talks! Guess it's time I... break it in!" Shadow didn't want to remember. There were some parts that terrified him because he couldn't remember them in detail, and others so scarring because the memories were intact. Scourge treated him like a worthless stuffed animal... A plush toy that bled.
Shadow narrowed his eyes, glaring harder at the green hedgehog. The smell of shit, and piss, and cum, was almost visible. Shadow knew that he kept his own slacks fairly clean, even if they got cut up a bit over time, and some blood on them, but Scourge's were filthy and torn up. Now there was a kind of similarity between the blue eyes of Scourge, and his own red eyes. In there, though, he'd seen no likeness. The likeness had increased. But now... then... all he knew was that it was important not to break. You didn't get shoved in Solitary because you were nice, "I said no," he growled, not breaking eye contact.
"And I say... YUM!" It was hard to piece together. He'd heard of Scourge prior to being thrown in with him, but he had yet to learn how 'persuasive' the psycho was first-hand. The green psycho had a way of inflicting pain with his fingers that the ebony hedgehog had never fathomed; he felt his eyelids getting pulled, the fur on his neck getting torn off while the wall welcomed his head with a few bumps, his spines pushed in to where they snapped and dug into the same flesh they were rooted in. And that voice... That menacing, venomous voice that haunted him at night, almost as much as his memories of Maria.
Fight back. Never, ever, ever make it easy, because if it's easy they'll do it again. If it's hard, they won't be so eager next time. That was what Shadow had learned from the women he'd killed. He managed to twist, punching, clawing and kicking back with a howl of rage, "I bet you tortured little animals for fun when you were a kid!" he snarled, kicking Scourge very accurately in the crotch, "Well guess what; I did too!" He bit down on Scourge's grasping hand hard, only letting go when he tasted blood, and not even bothering to spit it out.
Horror had a funny way of making him feel helpless. Throughout his lifetime, Shadow had given countless people something to fear. But those tricks... even the painful ones... didn't seem to work on this green denizen of pure malice. No matter what damage was inflicted, Scourge would never stop laughing, or toying, or talking to someone who wasn't there. Shadow recalled times that he had been pinned against the floor, and against the wall, and against the other wall, and even against the ceiling since the place was so small. But how was it possible that all the memories were jumbled and contorted as if they were one? As if they all took place at the same terrible time? "Y'know what, Mommy?" Scourge continued, mocking Shadow as if he weren't a life-form worth talking to, instead an object for his entertainment, "I think if I fluff it up enough, it'll sing..."
"Shut up, shut up, shut UP!" Shadow yelled at him, realizing that somehow in this confined space he had been shoved up against the wall on his knees. He kicked out, trying to get out of the corner, "Keep... the Hell... away from me, you fucking psycho!" he screamed. He tensed up, gathering himself, then slammed himself backward hard, managing to ram Scourge away from him, and onto his back, with Shadow on top briefly.
Scourge reeked so bad of wretched body odor that Shadow could almost feel his eyes burning. As if that wasn't bad enough, the perverse hedgehog also had a thing for eye-gouging, shoving two fingers in Shadow's eyes that very nearly damaged them permanently. "Ooooh, but Grandma... What big red eyes you have, Baby!" Shadow felt himself getting back-handed in the face. The recollection of exactly how Scourge managed to get him on his back again was diluted, but he knew it was definitely not by asking nicely.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Shadow heard himself scream, struggling and kicking and just trying and trying to get the green hedgehog off him and keep him off, "I'm SHADOW ROBOTNIK!" The inmates in the main prison would have decided that he wasn't worth the trouble by now. They seemed to have some sense of pain. Scourge didn't seem to care, no matter where Shadow hit him or how hard. At most he laughed a bit and kept on going. He never bothered to answer Shadow's angry questions.
It was all dreams in his head. All of it... all just dreams... dreams that could become real at any given moment, "This is the Real World," he managed, feeling like his brain was flickering on and off like a light switch, "Out there? That's where they're living the dream. That's where they're dead. This is the Real World... you can tell because it all hurts so much..."
Shadow hadn't known this certain brand of pain until Mephiles had put him in the Hole with Scourge for the first time. By God, the green devil never seemed to sleep. Broken instances of the filthy hedgehog's funk careening over Shadow's body came to his mind in awful tremors, stretching and molding his mind painfully. That voice wouldn't go away. Singing, laughing, humming, cackling... He liked to sing children's songs. That somehow added to the obscene horror...
"I'm not your toy!" Shadow shouted. Hadn't Scourge done children? What was the word? Pedophile. He hung around outside schools and lured kids close with offers of candy and power. Yeah, and the papers had bitched about a whole load of eleven raped women and all those other murders like they thought somebody couldn't do that and they had to open their eyes and look at the real world... Children. Shadow had never bothered with children; they weren't... interesting. They were too easy. And they reminded him of the childhood he hadn't had and he couldn't take it away... There wasn't much innocence left in the world, and they possessed most of it, "STOP SINGING!" he nearly screamed.
"This is the song that never ends..." Scourge whispered in a melodious tune, though Shadow couldn't remember if he'd been on his back or his stomach when the disastrous song was poured into his ears. "Yes, it goes on and on... My hen..." But one specific moment crashed through him like thunder, the one where Scourge mounted him on all fours and forced the black hedgehog to crawl around like some kind of pony. And he laughed while he did it. And the song wouldn't end... Though the lyrics would change slightly to get more degrading.
Yes, this was the Real World. It wasn't out there. The Real World was in here, where the pain was. So why escape? Sonic was so deluded, thinking there was a world out there that would take him back. Shadow shuddered, feeling the weight on his back. The pain was here, and he'd found through life experience that it was better to be the right hand of the devil, than in his path. Better to bring pain, than risk others turning it on you. And the only way... was to be at the top of the pyramid. If you were at the top, it didn't matter how the other blocks were arranged as long as they were under you.
Scourge was insane. Worse than any of the sick bastards who'd abused Shadow before, when he was young, when he was naive, when he had hope for happiness with Maria... Scourge liked to cuddle, but he didn't do it like other people did. He pulled on fur and twisted the entire time. One specific moment where he pulled on Shadow's ears so hard, he could barely hear the song anymore, came to mind... By that point, they smelled exactly alike...
He'd look at Scourge, whether it was in his head or in the Hole, or maybe both, he wasn't always sure... And in the Hole, how easy it was to sink to his level... his slacks torn up and with him covered in blood and cum and the smell... it always brought him careening back into Hell. And the insanity, never-ending, "That is not me..." he hissed, looking at his slacks, torn up by Scourge's repeated attacks.
"Awww, how cute... My toy has... Imagination!" There were so many slaps to the head, punches to the back, scratches to his chest, Shadow almost swore the cuts and the bloody lumps were still there. It was as if he could feel them, even see them trailing across his body as Scourge played with him. And Scourge played rough...
A moment of peace - only granted to bring painful anticipation of the next coming terror. Shadow pressed his head against the wall, pressing one bloody hand to it, leaving a sticky print he could almost see. It wasn't like he'd ever stopped fighting. Yes, knowing he could still fight, even in his head... that was important. Yes... yes, he had the strength for the fight. If you could survive what Scourge could deal out, you could survive anything. Including all those tests Eggman did. He survived those, "I'm not you," he told Scourge, "I'll never be you..."
The cell he normally shared with Sonic was starting to feel just as cold, murky and damp as the Hole was. But sadly, not empty. Scourge had waited 'til it was the coldest it could get before violating his new playmate in more ways than one. And he sang the whole time... The memories were horrendous. Putrid and ugly. They were nightmares without sleep.
Scourge had an imagination. Compared to him, Shadow was nothing. People called Shadow crazy for the way he could always find a weapon... you needed a weapon to defend yourself... for the way he could keep fighting long after anybody else would give up... he had to fight as long as his opponent could, and that could be a very long time... for the way he was unafraid of anything... you couldn't let your fear take you over... for the way he defended his dignity... But they were all people who had never met Scourge. Now Scourge was crazy. Shadow just did what was sensible, "Stop touching me!" he demanded of Scourge, trying to turn his face away from the lunatic.
But it never stopped. Scourge never stopped either. Day after day would pass and the demon never stopped messing with his head. Even a single night spent with him was like wallowing in the seventh level of Hell. What was worse, the memory never stopped either... It had possessed him. Scourge may as well have been right beside him, brutalizing him all over again with that sinister laugh...
Shadow faced the wall. Scourge had shown him that the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train. Sonic being optimistic about breaking out just reminded him of how happy Scourge was, locked up in his little Hole. Shadow thumped the wall with a fist, "Will you STOP LAUGHING?" he screamed at the voices in his head, "It's not funny! It's not!"
To make matters... belittlingly worse... Scourge never really responded to anything Shadow said. As if his words had no meaning; his threats no weight. His body no soul. He was a flesh Barbie Doll... By the end of it there was shit smeared in his fur.
Shadow screamed again as he was simultaneously pushed and dragged into Hole Number Three. He didn't want to go there again... he wasn't sure how much of his sanity was left from the last time he had been in there. And the looks from other inmates when he came out too... contempt, and worse, pity... But worse than that, was the way Scourge touched him... and the games he would play.
He could still feel the warm clumps of slime falling off the pungent hedgehog's mouth and onto his fur, cooling in the chamber's cold air. He could hear the wicked laugh, the putrid feeling of the tongue, covered in mucous, running over his face. Scourge wouldn't ever stop playing. Even when Shadow was knocked down to begging, he wouldn't stop...
"Shit!" Shadow turned to the Solitary cell's door. It slammed shut in his face as he heard Scourge approach from behind. Preferring to face the green demon, he turned quickly, his shoulders trying to dig their way into the stone, "Oh... not again..." he moaned, looking into those insane blue eyes.
Already Scourge was up way too close for the pleading hedgehog's comfort. "Oh YEAH, Baby! Again! Again!" he felt those crummy, dirty hands grabbing at his thighs. If at all possible, he could feel the germs infesting his body...
It took a second for Shadow's brain to click into gear, then he swung the hardest possible punch he could at Scourge, "KEEP AWAY FROM ME!" he screamed, sweating and trying to keep himself from panicking enough to fight off the green, filthy, stinking, perverted hedgehog.
It was the hardest, most desperate blow he could have mustered, but it had no effect. Scourge's blue eyes flared with psychotic excitement. He pinned Shadow against the stone wall, and forced him to watch, slowly, as he opened his mouth, breathed on him, and ran his tongue over his face. "Look, Gammy! A choo-choo train!" he yelled to the lonely cell.
Shadow turned his face away, trying to shove Scourge away from him as the other hedgehog pushed him around 'playfully', "Get off, dammit!" he snarled, "Just... stop!" He tried not to breathe through his nose. He knew lengthy time in Solitary didn't leave anybody smelling daisy-fresh, but even for that Scourge smelled terrible.
He moved like some kind of demon, or phantom, or ghost, never coming from a single direction that made any sense. Shadow could never seem to trace his movements until it was too late. "The choo-choo train runs along the tracks..." Scourge spoke out, tripping Shadow playfully to get him on all fours. "And goes chugga chugga chugga!" he continued with a gleeful smile.
In that dark, confined space, Shadow was tripped. He cursed, frantically trying to get to his feet - he'd stand and stay awake all day and night if it could keep Scourge from touching him. But it changed nothing. Scourge wasn't the kind of person you could reason with... That's right, because you are so reasonable. Shut the fuck up... Shadow thought. Every touch made him want to throw up in his mouth, "Shut up, just shut the fuck up!" he screamed at Scourge as he tried to get up in time.
Scourge didn't play nice. He played a whole lot, too much for Shadow to handle, but none of it was pleasant. "The choo-choo train runs along the tracks!" he repeated, mounting Shadow and forcing him to crawl forward. "Choooo chooooo!"
"Get... off... me!" Shadow tried to buck Scourge off, or roll onto his back, but Scourge just dug in his heels and started tugging at his prison slacks, "I hate you, God," he snarled after trying to fight it off, "You got that, you all-fucking-powerful sonuva bitch? I... HATE... you!" He dragged himself forward a little way, gritting his teeth in rage.
"WHEEEEEE!" Scourge's wail of victory echoed throughout the chamber, "Make it go faster, Gammy! Make it go faster!" Shadow felt him reach around, to grab at the crawling hedgehog's face and pull on his cheeks. And to top things off, he bounced up and down, pushing agonizing weight on Shadow's back.
"No... NO!" Shadow slumped forward in flat refusal, lying face down, "I will not just take this shit from a crazy bastard like you, Scourge! I'm not your goddamn toy!" The worst part of it was that being the one inmate most frequently pushed in with Scourge, the psychopath probably did consider him his toy. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to shut it all out.
Shadow knew it was a big mistake to fight back against Scourge. It always, ALWAYS, made things worse. And when Scourge punched him in the back of the head and spun him around by the quills, pulling some out before flinging him into the bars, he knew things were about to get agonizing. "GAMMY! This train is BROKEN!" he yelled out like a whining child, throwing angry fists in a flurry of a tantrum.
It happened too fast for Shadow to put up a proper fight. Scourge was as fast as Sonic in such things. He could only try to block and shout without words in his anger and fear, before finding his voice, "I'm not broken, I'm not fucking broken!" God, now he was talking back to the babbling lunatic. Talking with Scourge in an attempt to divert his attention was part of why people thought he was so freaked out now. Even though Scourge made a horrible amount of sense, if you looked at things from the right direction...
It was the most belittling, humiliating and violating thing Shadow had ever gone through. But beyond all the flurried fighting, whining and childish outcries, Scourge was going to rape him. Shadow didn't know when exactly, but it would happen. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.
It was days like these, bad days, really bad days, when Shadow wondered if maybe he deserved this for fucking and killing those women. That, or he wished he'd fucked more of them before being caught. He managed to struggle away from Scourge, by jamming an elbow into his jaw, but of course there was nowhere to run to. Instead he pushed himself into a corner as far as he could, wishing he had a square back to go in deeper, and trying to suppress the rising fear.
Scourge had a maniacal way to interpret his numerous violent acts of dominance as parts of his 'playtime'. When Shadow had fallen on his side, he was 'off-track'. When he was struggling to get back up, he was 'having engine troubles'. And when he was frantically trying to get away as the green hedgehog got in position, he was 'pumping the brakes'. Scourge also liked to 'shine' him up, by rubbing his saliva on him. In one particular case, he needed 'bumper ointment'. That was when he was pissed on. The memory of 'waxing' was on its way, but Shadow blocked the recollection away. He didn't cum on me... He didn't cum on me!
Shadow stood up as fast as he could – lying still was an invitation for pain. He grabbed hold of his own quills and pulled on them furiously. He'd backed himself into a corner and he was livid. How easy it must be, he thought, to be a little bitch like Prower and just lie down and take it... of course Prower didn't exactly lie down and take it, and he'd never be put in with Scourge because he was a good little bitch... God but it would be so easy to snap and not fight back against anything ever again.
Scourge was everywhere. There wasn't a spot in the whole prison, where Shadow didn't feel him staring, laughing at, or touching him. He was so bad that the ebony hedgehog heard him in his head; he'd become a voice among all the others; one that drowned out all except Maria. Dominating, terrifying, relentless. The rape was unnecessary, but he did it anyway. And the humiliation never ceased. If Shadow could vomit out his own heart he would have.
Anybody would be a better cellie than Scourge. Knuckles. Sonic. Mephiles. Shadow pulled on his quills again, "Please just leave me alone..." he begged Scourge. Then, realizing that once again the green psychopath had him sinking to begging for mercy, he literally threw up on the cell floor. On average, it probably made the confined, dirty space cleaner.
It certainly didn't make Shadow cleaner, though. Scourge's sick games were no-holds-barred, even resorting to rubbing his playmate's face in a pool of his own vomit. And he found it hilarious. Hell, he topped it off by holding Shadow's arms behind him, forcing his head, chest and stomach into the vile substance while he fucked him. "WOO-WOOOO! All aboard the chugga-train, BABY!"
Shadow started to scream. Any other person would be begging and crying now, but as Scourge yanked his pants down and his grasping hands tore open the black and red hedgehog's jacket at the front, baring his chest, Shadow just screamed, at Scourge, at Mephiles, at God and at the world which he hated and which hated back at him in turn. Sometimes he'd black out, not just from pain but from the hate and rage that overflowed in him. He twisted and tried to punch Scourge again.
But Scourge seemed just fine. As Shadow's memory had recalled earlier, nothing was 'nice' about the way this green psychotic menace played. He wasn't just rough, he was the shredding type. And there would be a lot of pain, bleeding, tearing and agony before he finally came. Which just made things all the worse for Shadow...
"Quit with the games!" he screamed at Scourge, desperate for validation of his own existence as he was shoved up against a wall on his knees. Scourge hardly ever said anything to him; it was all wild babbling to himself. Of course, Shadow knew what that was like. He'd had plenty of engaging conversations with voices in his head that... were definitely there... not seeing them didn't mean they weren't there... He started to claw at the stone wall, his fingernails starting to bleed.
As if things weren't horrendous enough, Scourge wasn't satisfied with raping him once... Oh no, he'd do it, then start the game all over from the very beginning, sometimes switching themes. At best, Shadow could be a 'handsome hooker'. At worst, he could be a 'puppy'. It didn't matter, though, because the end was the same. And the green hedgehog would have the last laugh every time. He'd get the only laughs... Shadow certainly never giggled.
With his shirt hanging open and his pants around his knees, as well as the pain from Scourge, the cloying dankness of Solitary was closing in on him. He hated cramped space, and despite Scourge pawing roughly at him, he felt cold. Even when cold, he was sweating, "Stop... stop..." he begged the psychotic hedgehog; the only person in the world Shadow really feared.
The broken, stained striped hedgehog had no idea how he did it, but Scourge never seemed to sleep. Worse than that, he never let Shadow sleep either. He wouldn't stop playing... The game never ended! Whether he was mounted on Shadow's back, beating him senseless, raping him or just ruffling his fur, the menace never ceased. Exhaustion was part of the recipe for torture.
Shadow wondered if maybe Scourge had just gotten into the habit of staying awake for about a week, and then crashing for a whole day. Or if he only did it when he had a visitor. When he was in with Scourge, he felt like he didn't exist. Like he had lost control. Like he was helpless. He hated feeling that way. His entire body wanted him to just give in and let Scourge get on with it. He gritted his teeth, trying to stay conscious and maintain his sanity at the same time. It wasn't easy while he was feeling this dirty.
"DEAD! You are fucking DEAD, Scourge!" Shadow screamed at him, "You are DEAD, got that? Dead right now! Inside! You miserable fuck!" Scourge was finishing round one and moving on to whatever he had in mind for Shadow's next torture. Shadow tried to look at him, but shoved up against the wall as he was, he couldn't turn properly, "DEAD!" he screamed again, shuddering with every touch.
A very solid threat that would have any other inmate cowering. But Scourge was different. He was... Oblivious, immune, unspoken. He seemed to take Shadow's words as a laughing stock, a joke from a worthless jester. And then he raped him some more. Shadow could still remember the rashes he got; small cuts inflicted by his tormentor's unkempt nails which were then infected by his filth. He was itchy, and burning all over.
Shadow groaned, curling up on the floor, his eyes tightly shut as Scourge fucked him, pushed him around, and made bad jokes, "Bastard..." he hissed, shaking...
Anybody in the wing would have been shaken by Shadow, screaming at nothing. Those few who glanced into his cell saw the black and red hedgehog lying grazed, bruised and shouting and yelling nonsense on the floor, his jacket hanging open, a puddle of vomit on one bunk, and his body shaking like a crack addict going cold turkey. Nobody went in to check on him though, or even to try to take advantage. Mostly because the last person who had come within ten feet of Shadow when he'd been hallucinating like this had their skull smeared all over the wall...
Even when his mind wasn't in the same place as his body, Shadow was a long way from harmless. None of it was real. But it felt, looked, sounded, smelled real, to him.
"I sure do love my toys…" Scourge's words haunted him everywhere he went...
Harley: If you think some of the rape wasn't as graphic as some other chapters, there's a reason for that. It's called repression, because obviously Shadow doesn't really want to remember being raped, eh, SonicFrank?
SonicFrank: Scourge at his worst! Which, in this fic, is his best.
Harley: How was it? Review!