April 2, 2019 – 02:45
Cha-Cha smacks Klaus up on the side of the head in frustration and turns her back to pace the room.
"Why do you need to make this harder? What do you do again?" She drags Vanya's autobiography off the tabletop and starts to shuffle through the pages. "Right. Ghosts. Well?" Cha-Cha snaps her fingers in front of his face. "I don't see any ghosts here right now?"
The object of her ire keeps his glance down. His body is covered in cuts and bruises. He has been sporting a split lip for a few hours now and looks to have a cracked rib or two.
"Answer me!"
"Well. Uhh. I mean, yeah..."
That earned him another slap.
"If you don't cooperate, I'm just going to kill you and try one of your siblings instead. Same end result, but with a lot more pain. So, what's it going to be?"
Klaus stays silent.
"I can't deal with this. We will continue this later."
Cha-Cha grabs onto the back of the chair, spinning Klaus around and dragging the chair across the room on two of the chair legs. Ben stands in front of Klaus, looking over him to see Cha-Cha. Ben has a worried look on his face before schooling his expression into something resembling calmness. Klaus moves his head slightly, enough to see where he is heading and promptly starts to struggle. The chair tips to the side, turning onto one leg until Cha-Cha releases her grip and the chair snaps back down onto four legs. Klaus continues to struggle as Cha-Cha moves around to the front of his chair, picking up a roll of duct tape and peeling up the edge before sticking it to the back of the chair and moving around the chair a few times to further restrain Klaus. As she goes to repeat the process on his legs, Klaus kicks out and makes contact with Cha-Cha's shoulder. Cha-Cha shoves back in annoyance and the chair tips back and catches the edge of the mattress, turning the chair and Klaus on its side, right into Cha-Cha's treasure trove of weapons and torment.
Klaus lands on the pile and lets out a blood-curdling scream. He starts to thrash about, knocking a baseball bat a few inches, but freezes his movements as he starts bleeding more rapidly with each movement. He continues screaming however as Cha-Cha takes a step forward.
"Serves you right," Cha-Cha grumbles as she rights the chair and slaps tape over his mouth to muffle the screams of pain.
Klaus had landed on a bayonet that Cha-Cha had tossed aside when searching through her box of all things pain and torture. Cha-Cha rips it out and tosses the blade back into the pile. She finishes taping his legs and drags the chair the rest of the way into the closet and shuts the door. A moment later, the motel door slams.
.·.0.·.
Ben is overcome with a sense of déjà vu. Here they are again, the two of them. Stuck in the dark. Stuck in a closet. Ben is going to have a talk one day with Five about his coworkers and choice of employment. And yes, they will have that discussion because Klaus is getting out of here. But the lecture prepared for Five can be put aside for the moment because Ben has higher priorities, namely that Klaus is having both a panic attack and bleeding out and while Ben cannot do much, he would be kidding himself if he didn't do all that is physically possible, body or not.
Ben manipulates himself to be in front of Klaus in the cramped quarters, half phased through the wall. The slants in the doorway provide slits of light across Klaus's face. Klaus is taking hard, shuddering breaths, eyes glazed over in panic and pain. His left side is coated in blood that drips down onto his pants and blends in with the dark coloring. Despite the bayonet cutting through the tape on its way into Klaus's ribs moments ago, he is still so heavily restrained that he cannot do more than breathe, and even that is questionable. Ben needs to keep Klaus calm until someone arrives. It is the only thing he can do.
"Hey, you with me?"
No answer.
"Kklaussss."
Still nothing.
Ben tilts his head back and if he still had a body, he would have gotten a thump out of the action.
"Remember when you thought it would be a good idea to steal all those chips from the convenience store? The shelf right by the register, no less. I told you that you would be caught and then the police would come and then you would have to visit the station and maybe, MAYBE, Diego would bail you out. But maybe not. Either way, you would be stuck in their holding cell for awhile. But despite all odds, you did it anyway. What was your reasoning again?"
Ben waits for a minute, hoping Klaus would respond, defend his honor, and focus on the story instead of... everything else. No such luck.
"Well, you said that Five owns you money. Money that would go towards a meal. And that you are just cashing in on that. I think you would have done it anyway even if you had the money and by some miracle hadn't spent it on drugs. And I really don't think the cashier would buy the 'Five is across the street in a van and will pay for it' story. I don't believe that one and I know that Five is a person, not a numeral, and that he was conducting a stakeout in a nearby van!"
Klaus's breathing slows down a bit.
"Muh ehkuse wuhs purfuht. Uoo disfracted mue." Klaus gets out through the duct tape.
Ben just gives him a look.
"Uh huh."
He rolls his eyes and when he looks back at Klaus again, he is unconscious.