Author Intro: I'd been working on this story a while ago, and only just these past few days have I managed to sit down and finish it. I haven't had much time for writing, in all honesty. I've struggled to get into the creative mind-set and get words out. This will seem like it ends abruptly, I will warn you now. I honestly didn't know how to end it, and I didn't want to have the same ending as 'No Mans' Land', my previous Elliot/War centric one shot. I struggled for days to know how to end it, but eventually I thought that I should leave it. This is more of a flash fiction-y/snapshot piece that doesn't need much to it. This includes a certain character from a certain most recent HR film. This is also to mark Armistice Day; a bit early, but what the heck. I hope you enjoy. Feedback is welcome. :) - Laura

Strange Meeting

France, Battle of the Somme

November, 1916

Captain Elliot Spencer had fallen into depths of despair the longer the war had raged. The general belief in goodness which had kept him toward the light was completely forsaking him in these trying times. Since the campaign had begun, he had watched on helplessly as men, good men, too many baby-faced men, waded into battle only to perish most viciously and pointlessly.

It was a freezing cold day, one filled with such death and misery. Bullets had whizzed well over his head. He had heard shouts and cries in what he recognised to be German in the opposite direction of the pair of snipers. Gunfire was exchanged for longer than he cared to know. From somewhere behind the snipers, he'd noticed a grenade go flying. One explosion later, there was silence from the German side.

In the distance, to the side of him, he caught sight of the medics winging their way around the bodies that littered the ground. They would be administering a lot of morphine tonight, turning down the volume of agonised pleas for help, sometimes turning them off altogether.

Soon, it was time for rotation in the trenches. He and his troop were moving down to secondary from the front lines, a well-earned break from the barrage of constant combat.

The Captain trailed behind, passing by a multitude of injured and dying men being tended to by field medics. He squared his shoulders and swallowed the urge to sob. He had to keep his composure and keep moving; there was no time for foibles on this Hell on Earth.

Elliot continued for a few seconds more and then stopped next to a mortar crater.

That sound!

He turned to face the unusual noise that seemed to be coming from an abandoned and semi-dilapidated cottage to the right. At first, he thought that the unrelenting barrage of artillery fire had damaged his hearing and he shook his head violently in an attempt to shoo away the gentle tinkling of music that was lapping the cold night air.

He could still hear it.

As he concentrated on the startling melody, he was reminded of a child's music box, but he knew that was impossible. There had been intelligence that enemy snipers had been occasionally using the cottage as a vantage point, but what would a sniper be doing playing music, revealing their whereabouts?

Elliot strained to see into the interior of the building but could see nothing. A small voice deep in his head urged him to move, and quick. But he knew he couldn't. Elliot had to know if the enemy were housed in the battered structure. It was his duty, and besides he couldn't take the chance at leaving a potential enemy soldier concealed and giving them an opportunity to add more of Elliot's platoon to the roster of the dead.

Placing himself inside a mortar hole, Elliot kept vigil on the house. It took a second before a hideous scream - carried on the wind - reached his ears. Instinctively, Elliot reached at his hip and grabbed his pistol. During his time in the war, Captain Spencer had heard many screams; too many to count, and after a while it was possible to separate the dying cries of man from the wounded groans of others. Sometimes you could tell by the scream, the way in which they had been injured, but this sound was like no other that Elliot had encountered.

There was a prolonged agony in the voice, suggesting to Elliot that someone was being tortured in the cottage.

Spencer was certain that whoever had been caught in that cottage was suffering from God only knows what kind of torment. He struggled to keep his pistol steady as he ever slowly approached the place of horrors, and he took a gulp. When the volume of the screaming gradually dissipated, he turned his head to look for the medics, only to find them hunched over the wounded and doing their jobs, and unaware of what his own ears had picked up.

Elliot frowned. Surely they must have heard those awful sounds. Not one of the lads in the field had raised their heads in search for the spine-chilling shriek that had emanated from the cottage.

Snapping his head around, Captain Spencer stared wide-eyed at the entrance of the cottage. His pistol was aimed towards it, but he knew that any shot fired would be out of range. Besides, he could see nobody that warranted the aim, at least nobody that he could actually see. He could only hear the unbearable pained cries, groans of agony, and the entreating for mercy filtering through the dark air.

In another time, such desperate pleading would have spurred him into action. But there was something threatening about the situation, something...inhuman, more so than was usual in battle. The whole space around the cottage seemed darker; an unearthly void which would swallow anything...or anyone foolish enough to venture close to it. But Elliot's feet didn't falter, no matter how much his brain screamed at him to turn and run, and they took those tentative steps forward, towards the very forbidding entrance.

There now came a light, a subtle blue glow. Elliot, in all his thirty-five years, had seen nothing of its like before, and he remained pinned to the spot, unable to force his legs to move, nor unwilling to blink or take a deep breath.

The agonised screams and cries eventually became sobbing, and then all was quiet. Asides from the fractured melody tinkling from deep within the cottage...Für Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven, Elliot had observed.

Elliot lowered his pistol only to jerk it back up when he observed a figure emerging through the doorway. Elliot didn't dare to move an inch. He figured that it was a civilian as they wore no uniform that he could recognise, but for some reason that he couldn't place, they had a demonic presence about them. He felt it, he sensed it. This figure before him seemed far too comfortable amongst the scarred earth, and even appeared to be revelling in the atmosphere of death and destruction.

When the figure turned to face Captain Spencer, the partial moonlight lit up its features. Elliot's cry caught in his throat. He could feel his heartbeat pumping viciously, and every shred left of his own sanity yelled at him to flee from it. On seeing this...this...creature, the world suddenly seemed colossal, and more dangerous. The thing before him was no man, or at least...at one time it may have been, but no longer. Of that Elliot was positive.

The thing's hideous face assaulted the eyes of the Captain, an inhuman, almost alien façade. It was dressed in all black, a suit jacket and trousers, save for the once-white button-down shirt that was now stained and splattered with possibly a lifetime's worth of blood and grime. It wore leather gloves, its wrists wrapped in a collection of varied keys attached to a wire bracelet of some kind. But it was its face that had seared Elliot right through to the bone; a ghastly red row of haphazard scars mapped every inch and width of its face and skull, its clammy skin a ruddy pale beneath the unnatural glow that followed. A pair of dark, shaded glasses concealed the creature's eyes, for which Elliot was grateful about. Yet despite the lack of eyes, the Captain felt its steady gaze burn into him. Now, it spoke to him in a voice, a German lilt lacing its tones that made Elliot grip his pistol tighter; it sounded oddly soothing, yet still set him on edge with its words,

"Captain Elliot James William Spencer. We await you. The suffering has only just begun."

He felt bile rising in his throat, and for all the world he desperately wanted to tear his own eyes out of his sockets so he wouldn't see the monstrosity anymore. That thing, that heinous thing, was a punishment to behold, its features a mocking testament to the death-soaked fields that surrounded it.

Elliot could take no more, and he forced his eyes shut. In those few seconds of gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyelids together, the music had altogether ceased. When the Captain opened his eyes, the sickening apparition had vanished, taking with it the horrors from within the cottage, which was engulfed in silence and darkness once more, leaving behind only human-made atrocities - and a good man whose mind was teetering on the edge of madness- in its wake.

The End...

End Note - Ah yes, you were right if you believe the character who greeted Elliot at the dilapidated cottage was the Auditor from Judgement, the tenth (so-called) Hellraiser movie. Despite my disdain of Judgement, I actually don't mind the Auditor as a character. Of course, his role in the film itself...being that of a demonic St Peter who grills sinners before they're admitted to Hell...is incredibly contrived and feels terribly out of place in a Hellraiser movie. For one, it's established early on in the first HR film that the Cenobite realm is NOT a Christian/Satanic Hell. It's not Hell full stop. It's just a realm, an alternate dimension, in which certain people view it as such due to what the Cenobites practice. People who open the box do so due to desires, not sin. Cenobites don't give a crap about judging sinners. I'm sure bad people end up in the Labyrinth, but more or less anybody can go there. They don't go there to be judged and punished. Look at Elliot Spencer...he was a good man, a kind man who was devastated by the war he fought in, and sought the box a few years later because he was numb and wanted to feel again. He wasn't a bad person, though he did some particularly bad things post-war.

The later films in the HR franchise, including certain books and the comics, really messed up the mythology and turned what was a unique premise of creatures dedicated to exploring flesh and pushing it beyond our own limits and imagination into clichéd Hell demons bent on either world domination or punishing sinners. I continue on depicting Hellraiser as it was originally conceived and intended, and the Cenobites as explorers and theologians who only want to traverse pain and pleasure beyond the limits. I don't mind so much that there could be another Order as well as the Cenobites, and that's where the Auditor comes in. Seeing as I quite like the Auditor, but hate the film he starred in, and his motif...I have changed up his role drastically. He isn't an anti-St Peter, he's more along the lines of a Caretaker, someone who oversees who are worthy enough to become Cenobites and who isn't. He is Leviathan's confidant and advisor too. I do plan on using him for future stories of mine, and that's how I'll depict him. What transpired in Judgement never happened in my universe. And the Pinhead of that particular film is, in my eyes, NOT Elliot Spencer, and a new creature entirely. :) Anyway, hope you all enjoyed. Let me know what you think. :3