Sorry this took so long. I was on a trip and my computer was broken when I came home and yada yada yada. I got a couple nice reviews while I was gone, so I feel bad about updating so late. I had hoped to finish this story before school started up again, and now I'm not sure I'll get it done.

I'm chewing gum while I type this. I hate gum. My dog it attacking me and computers are currently taking up half my living room. I'm on a laptop and I hate laptop keyboards. I'm supposed to be getting ready to paint my room and I have done nothing all day. This laptop may crash any second. It's muggy, smells bad outside and from my spot on my back porch, looks like rain. It feels like a good time for writing fan fiction. I like it.

I still own nothing, though.

Fer hurt.

The pain he felt when he went a few minutes longer without his pak than he should have was nothing like this. It had been over an hour since the first spasm, and it was just getting worse by the second. Shocks of pain sliced through his body, jerking and flailing out of his control, and Fer screamed. He screamed as loud as he could. He screamed until his throat was dry. He screamed in agony until he couldn't even force a single sound from his throat.

It wasn't going away. He wasn't dying. Before, Fer had been indifferent about death. But now it was all he wanted. Anything to free him from this all-consuming pain.

Yet even when he prayed for it, even when all thought vanished because he was drowning in pain, he didn't die. A night passed, filled only with his screams. As did another identical day and night. And another. And another.

A week went by before Fer could even think again. He had been falling in and out of a sham of sleep for days, but it was the first time Fer woke up and felt like he was waking. The pain was still there, eating at him, but it was no longer getting worse.

Fer looked at himself. There was a new discomfort, though. One in his chest that was becoming evermore bothersome the more Fer became aware of it. Fer looked around, an unfamiliar feeling of panic in him.

Fer's eyes caught the snack machine, and all of a sudden it made sense, and he all but lunged for it, weakly throwing his fist at any button he might chance to hit. A couple soda cans and baggies fell from the chute. Fer shredded the food baggies, shoving the snacks into his mouth, barely pausing to chew before shoving more fistfuls in. He fumbled with a soda can for a moment before the top popped and he chugged it. He chugged the second soda, too. And the third. But the discomfort didn't go away. It growled for more.

It seemed like hours passed where Fer could do nothing but eat and then eat more. He began getting drowsy, and finally, still trying to shove a handful of orange Crusty-O's into his mouth, he passed out.

After a few hours of dreamless sleep, Fer awoke again on the floor to something jabbing his face. He was too tired to open his eyes, and merely moaned in complaint. There was a sudden jolt.

"Ow!" Fer cried, opening his eyes and rolling over so he could massage his face. The guard stood over him. "Sorry, didn't mean to kick you that hard. Just checking to see if you were alive. You had stopped screaming, I thought you finally kicked the bucket." Fer sat up, staring at him, confused. The guard had an airhead-like demeanor that threw Fer off guard. "What're you doing on the floor?"

Fer looked down at himself, and took a moment to get a good look at the room. In his frenzy of pain, Fer had torn the place to shreds. The walls had scratch marks and the sheets were all in pieces. Things Fer had no memory of doing. Fer's clothes were also stained beyond recognition, in blood, fluids and orange smears.

Fer looked back up at the guard and smiled, giving him two thumbs up. "The life of a martyr is hard, but only I can live with it!"

Surprisingly, the guard laughed. "You're strange." He left Fer alone in his mess.

He painfully climbed on his bed, curling up and shuddering. He felt sore and beaten. He felt like he wanted to end it all. He felt miserably alone. He felt dirty and crazy. He felt unusually cold and hot at the same time all over his body. He felt like he wanted to sleep but wanted to do something more.

'But it doesn't matter what I'm feeling,' he thought, the mere act of thinking making him tired once more, 'because I have still managed to live.'

Yeah, I told you the chapters would be short. Deal with it. I'm close to the end and will be stuffing more things into the next chapter. There will be three or four really short bloops after that.