Richard felt cold, and gritty, and hurt. The cold came from him having been stripped of most of his clothes. The gritty came from unknown clumps and particles gracing what felt like a dirt-floored cave. The hurt came from the deep, red welts left on his skin after being ambushed by something unthinkably heavy. And sharp. He'd been mugged, he thought, and was lying in a forsaken alley in the corner of nowhere. Nearby, he though he heard the rats waiting for him to expire. Moisture slid over his side, where the brunt of his pain originated, leaving a sticky, wet puddle for him to lie in.
Richard opened his eyes, and shut them immediately, blinded by a burst of darkness and pain. Unmoving, he tried to recount his steps that evening, wondered at what point he'd wandered into the shady side of New York, and left himself open to such a predicable attack, and was surprised to find that he couldn't explain it. It puzzled him that his mugger bothered to take his jacket and shirt, because although his jacket was a rather expensive leather coat, a garment much admired by his mates at the department, the shirt was an comfortably ugly piece of flannel that looked better suited for a lost lumberjack.
His temples throbbed; whoever had jumped him had done quite a number on his head. Timidly, moving his body as little as he could, Richard opened his eyes. He blinked, slowly, letting himself become accustomed to his surroundings. He was not in an alley, as he had previously suspected, and found himself surrounded with four mildew-encrusted walls. His fingers jerked, scraping against a dirt covered stone floor.
On the far wall, a window-a barred window- cast long shadows in the moonlight across Richard's face. Opposite the window, a heavy door, most likely crafted from oak, provided the only barrier between himself and the outside. Later, when the light was better, Richard would see the deep marks marring the heavy wood.
Richard had been inside jail cells before; he was a member of the NYPD after all, and he'd seen his fair share of the consequences of felony. Those blocks had always seemed sterile, in a grungy sort of way. Not pristine sparkling white, but not so dirty that you really had to worry about the bed bugs. This unit had a stack of beds, three mattresses high, shoved against a mud stained wall, crusted over with urine and excrement. The mattresses themselves appeared yellowed with age and bodily fluids; when a small animal ran across one, it released a stale cloud of dust, crackling with disuse. The cells Richard remembered had a commode, grimy though it may have been (whether it worked or not hardly seemed relevant). Here, the lavatory was represented with a hole in the floor that teemed with parasitic life even from Richard's ground level perspective.
Rolling his head to one side, and feeling a rip of searing pain race down his side as he did, Richard contemplated his current situation. Though he dearly didn't want to be the next name on a long list of people abducted and slaughtered by tortured madmen, the facts leaned heavily in this direction. A shock flash of Warren's face leapt to the forefront of his mind, grinning that damning grin of his, and for a brief moment Richard wondered if the man had gone so far as to try to kill him in an attempt to get closer to Virginia. But he wouldn't dare…
A shadow flickered in the foreground, and Richard knew he wasn't alone.
"Do you know where you are?" a familiar voice rumbled in the darkness. Richard cursed inwardly, then, when he tried to sit and face the man, outwardly as the now familiar shot of pain ripped at his midsection. He fell back to the floor, gasping in horrified surprise, fighting not to cry out as bits of dust clung to exposed wounds across his back, grinding their way into his flesh.
"You bastard," he bit, grinding his teeth together. The scrape of rubber against stone echoed against the damps walls of his prison, and Richard felt a weight of air settle a few feet from his head. A callused hand pressed gently upon his forehead; a smell of pepper and raw meat assaulted his nose.
"Do. You." the voice repeated, softly and heavily, hot breath dripping into his ear, "know where you are?" Richard's eyes darted from shadow to shadow, cursing the fact that he couldn't see behind his head, as he felt certain he would see Warren's smirking face hanging there if he could. Feeling his neck spasm, Richard tried tilting his chin upwards, but the hand pushed his head firmly, well-manicured nails pressing ever so slightly into dirty skin.
"No," he conceded, snorting as he attempted to arch his back, trying to lift the wound, to keep it from rubbing against the abrasive floor. Whips of oily hair swept across his face, and the scent of red pork grew thicker as the presence knelt closer to Richard's face. He felt a course cheek grace his own, and the callused hands slipped from his forehead until they rested on his naked shoulders.
"You are in the Snow White Memorial Prison," intoned the voice, "in the same cell that I spent five years of my own life trapped within." So Warren was a felon; despite his unsavory predicament, Richard felt the need to claim this small victory. Though he would wonder, in retrospect, if Virginia knew this when she married the man, and how much of her ex-husband's past she knew that she never chose to divulge to her current beau.
A doubt itched in the nether regions of Richard's mind. Snow White Memorial Prison? Richard had seen his fair share of oddly named internment facilities , but none had ever gone so far as to sully their reputations by naming themselves after a fairy tale heroine. Yet his surroundings seemed far too inhumane to be anything other than the worst of human incarceration centers.
"Any advantage you held in the Tenth Kingdom is forfeit," the voice continued. "This is my 'home court,' if you will. My game. I win." The hands clenched tighter around Richard's shoulders before jerking his body mercilessly, flipping him until he lay face down on the cell floor. Richard gasped at the sudden movement, then choked at the sudden influx of stale straw and dirt. The shadow shifted, stood, and two abused shoed stepped into his eye-line.
Hacking coarsely, Richard addressed his captor. "What do you want from me, Warren?" The shoes rocked, kicking just enough dust into Richard's eyes to cause discomfort.
"I don't want anything from you, Richard," answered the voice, the shoes turning away towards the oak door. "Just to cause you pain."
"You'll need more than dirt to cause me pain," answered the wounded man. The shoes paused in front of the door. They turned, just slightly, and Richard could imagine the feral eyes of the man before him glaring at him with unbridled fury. The heavy sound of wood against metal scraped against Richard's ear, and the door eased open with a wincing screech. The shoes stepped behind the aging wood, and over the sound of the hinges moaning shut, Richard heard these words:
"There are many, many ways to make a man scream."
A/N: I'm leaving the country for three weeks as of June 23rd. The good news is, I'll have lots of air and bus time to write the next few chapters. The bad news is that I won't ever be near a computer to type up and post said chapters. In the meantime, help yourself to some other great works of fanfiction, even if they aren't by me.