(3008 Words)

It had been so long since he'd seen sunlight. It felt like weeks but it could've been days, he had no way of keeping track of time where he was. It was cold, dark, and horrifying. He'd had bugs crawl all over him for countless hours while he was paralyzed on the floor. He'd been stuck with what felt like a million needles over and over again, just to keep him stuck in one spot.

Raph knew what was going on and it was torture. This man came down every day to inject some sort of fluid into him that kept him from moving. Sometimes it'd make him fall asleep and sometimes it'd just immobilize him, leaving him broken on the floor, limbs useless until the drug had worn off. He was going to keep him here until he killed him. It was an odd thought, that he knew he was going to die...

Every once and a while Mr. X would come down the stairs, his heavy shoes hitting the creaking floor boards and striking the smallest bit of panic into the boy's chest. He'd turn the corner and stare at Raph, snarling and glaring at him with pure rage. He'd beat him relentlessly until he'd had enough fun and then go back upstairs, leaving him un-drugged but in massive amounts of pain. It'd only happened a couple times but the last time he could've sworn that if Mr. X had gone for half a second longer he would've broken something.

Now, once again, Mr. X stomped down the stairs, yelling and cursing at the boy. "You fucking bitch! You motherfucking bitch!" He stops in front of Raph, holding a swishing bottle of vodka with bloodshot eyes. "You ruined my life!" He'd said this countless times since he'd been there, that Raph had 'ruined his life'. "How- How's that?" Raph mumbles. He was afraid but that didn't change the fact that he didn't know when to shut up. "How's that you say?! HOW'S THAT?! YOU were the little fucking snitch who told the police all about how 'bad' I was."

He takes a threatening step forward and Raph instinctively flinches. "I was good to you! I gave you a roof to sleep under, I fed you, I made sure you didn't die! You were lucky to have me! Nobody else would ever want something as pathetic as you! I took you in and how did you repay me?! TEN YEARS IN PRISON, THAT'S HOW!" The man smashes the bottle on the pole above Raph, showering him in sticky alcohol and glass shards.

"I could've DIED there and now I'll give you the same treatment!" Mr. X says with wild eyes. "Ten years in a shit-hole where you- Will- Die." Raph shakes off some of the dripping liquid and glass, looking up at the man who held him captive. He knew he'd probably die here. There was no chance for escape or rescue. He knew he'd die here, but him saying it made it too much of a reality.

He throws the neck of the bottle he'd smashed into Raph's face, giving him a small cut on his left cheek. "Now fucking thanks to you I have to get a new bottle. Idiota jodido." He turns to walk away but stops for a moment, turning back and bending down in front of Raph, who at this point was trying his hardest not to panic with the man this close to him. "I couldn't do any real damage before chico but now I can do whatever I want. I could slit your throat right here, right now. Or I could rip you open from the bottom and leave you broken in this basement until you rot."

He stands up and steps on Raph's leg harder and harder. He could tell it hurt when Raph lets out a small gasp of pain. He lets up soon after, kicking him in the ribs and stomping back upstairs, leaving Raph with a few passing words. "I haven't decided what I'll do yet boy but when I do you'll wish for this to be all that happened." He stays there on the stairs, his presence intimidating for minutes on end.

As soon as he was gone Raph starts breathing heavily. He had been holding in his already frantic breathing which almost made it worse. "Oh gosh- Oh gosh I need to- I can't- I can't get out. There's no way to get out. I can't move I can't call for help, nobody knows I'm gone." Raph whispers to himself. Sure he wanted to die sometimes, but not at the hands of someone else. He hated the dripping of the vodka on his head. It dripped and dripped and dripped- He hated alcohol.

"I need to get out."

It had been at least a day. At least a day had passed since he decided he needed to escape. He didn't know how and he didn't know when, but he knew he needed to get out. It was so hard not being able to find a way out.

At the moment Raph was just too tired to move. He wasn't drugged or paralyzed, just exhausted. He was dehydrated and starving, he hadn't had food since he got there and he'd gotten just a little bit of liquids a while ago. The taste of burning liquor still lingered on his tong from licking the dripping drink from himself. He hated it but he needed something to drink. Mr. X hadn't been down for a lot longer than before. It worried him. What if he'd died? There would be nobody who knew he was down there. Raph cracked open his eyes, feeling something crawling on his leg.

A small cockroach sat on his calf, staring at him for a moment before crawling towards his shoe and down to the floor. If he could he would've thrown up. He needed to keep any food he had left in his stomach in because he had no idea how long it'd be before he could get any real food. He may have been scared of bugs before, but now he would've had a full blown panic attack if he wasn't half out of it. Finally he heard those terrifying footsteps coming down those stairs. They sounded different. They sounded slow, uneven, heavier even.

Mr. X stomps into the basement, a beer can crushed in his hand. He tries to throw it at Raph but misses by at least three feet. "Maldita perra, ¿crees que eres demasiado bueno para mí? FOLLARTE." Raph only had an inkling of what he was saying. It was slurred and angry but he'd learned some of the language from living with this man for far too long. " Voy a llevarte a un descanso, pero eso es jodido." Raph didn't understand a word of that sentence but when Mr. X bends down and un-cuffs Raph from the pole he knew this was his chance.

The second his hands were free, he weakly kicks the man back and in Mr. X's drunken state falls back, sitting on the floor for just a moment. Raph scrambles up and wobbly runs up the stairs. He hadn't used his legs in days, it felt like years. "¡REGRESA AQUÍ!" His captor screams from the basement below.

Raph was breathing hard, his eyes watering with panic and fear. His usual exit of the side door right at the top of the stairs was locked and bolted shut with planks of wood hammered across. Of course it couldn't be that easy. He freezes for a second, scanning the house he hadn't seen since he was so young, contemplating where he'd go. He sprints through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room to the front door. His hands shook badly as he tried to unlock the door. There were at least five different kind of locks on this door, thankfully none were code or key based.

He could hear thundering footsteps behind him as he undoes the last lock and flings open the door to the moon-lit patio. Mr. X was right behind him as he sprints out the doorway and trips on the stairs. He falls hard, barely able to duck and roll to save himself from a little bit of the pain and ends up scraping his chin on the cement. At the bottom he tries to get up but is tackled back down. "¡Te salvé! ¡Te salvé! ¡Te mantuve bajo mi techo y te salvé! ¡Me encarcelas y NO voy a dejar que te salgas con la tuya! ¡NO TE ESTÁS ALEJANDO!"

Raph screams, his unused voice cracking and raspy. He thrusts his foot up and into the man's chest, pushing him off enough to get back up and run. He doesn't look back but he knew that Mr. X was taking his time standing up. They were on a dead end street, there was only one way out to run. He runs in the middle of the street past three, four, five houses until a house with it's lights on catches his attention.

He hated strangers but he hated being kidnapped even more. Raph thunders up the stairs of the porch and bangs on the door desperately. After a couple seconds the door swings open and an old couple stand in front of him. "Oh, hello there, is something the matter dear?" The woman says. Raph's eyes widen as he hears someone else walking up the wooden steps. He ducks under the man's arm which was propped up on the door way and falls to the floor behind them, his legs finally giving out.

"Oh dear!" The woman exclaims, looking behind herself. "What are you-" She's cut off when a deep, accent tinted voice speaks up from in front of them. "I'm- I'm so sorry. That's my- My foster son, he's ch-challenged. Mentally." Mr. X says smoothly. Well. As smoothly as a drunken man could. "No-N-No! He's lying! He's lying, Please help me!" Raph says from the floor, nearly screaming his words out. The old man looks down at Raph, who looked just as bad as he felt, and then back out at Mr. X.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" He asks, his kind voice being tinted with anger. "I'm- I'm Xever Alejandro." Mr. X, Xever, puffs out his chest slightly at his fake last name. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave my property." The old man says, stepping in front of his wife. "But that's my foster son, I need to take him home." Xever says, taking a step towards the door. "Stop right there. Leave now, or I'm calling the police." The man says, taking a step back, ready to slam the door shut. Xever narrows his eyes "But that's-"

"Leave. Now." The older man commands. He closes the door and locks it, turning around to see his wife and the young intruder on the floor, the woman looking him over while he sits stunned and still panicked in the entry-way. "I'm going to call the police. Janet, you and him move away from the door and then stay put." The man leaves to the right of a dividing wall and disappears into the kitchen at the far end.

"Come along dear." Janet says, helping Raph up to move not too far into the open living room to the left of the wall. She sits him down on the old yellow couch. "What's your name darling." The woman asks, holding Raph's shaking hands in her own. At first he doesn't answer, not wanting to say anything to anyone. "Raphael." He answers quietly. He knew they'd need his name. "That wasn't my foster dad." Raph says shakily.

"Who is your father?" Janet asks kindly. Raph stares down at his hands and the woman closes hers around them. "Yoshi Hamato." He says. He knew in their house they say their last name first, but anywhere else it'd be weird. Janet nods and smiles at him. "It's going to be okay, alright honey?" Raph nods. He'd never had any grandparents before but he'd imagine this would be what it was like. "Do you need something to drink? Something to eat?"

Raph nods. "Can I just have some water?" Janet nods and gets up, walking swiftly to the kitchen. The boy sat on the couch, listening intently to everything that happened in the room cross the hall. He could hear a cup being filled with water and a lot of talking. The man was talking on the phone but he could hear the woman who he'd been sitting with talking as well, probably feeding her husband the information she'd gotten from Raph.

"Alright, sorry that took so long honey." Janet says as she comes back, handing a glass cup of water to Raph. He takes the glass and immediately feels it slip, almost dropping it and spilling all of the water. "Oh- Careful there." The woman says. Raph feels a small amount of guilt over almost spilling water all over a stranger's couch. "Sorry." He says quietly.

"It's okay." Janet says, pulling a blanket from off the back of the couch and wrapping it around his shoulders, not caring that he'd just get it gross and dirty. He was so tired, but sleeping was the last thing he wanted to do. If he slept he might just wake up back in that basement, all of this just having been a dream. If this was a dream, he didn't want to wake up.

He knew he had to stay awake for other reasons. He'd have to talk to the police soon as they'd be on there way in no time. He was pulled out of his thoughts as the man walks back into the room. "The police will be on their way." He says calmly. "Are you okay there buddy?" Raph nods in response and the man smiles. "I'm Harold, but you can call me Harry." Again, Raph nods. He didn't feel like doing much else let alone have the energy to do much else.

"They said they'd bring professionals to help with those cuts, but I'm sure we can do a little something here, don't 'cha think?" Harry smiles, his face wrinkling in distinct smile lines. He steps out for a moment and comes back with a wet cloth, a box of band-aids, and a small bottle of disinfectant. Harry sits down next to Raph on the same side as his wife as to not close him in. Raph sets the glass he'd been holding close to his chest on the coffee table in front of him.

Harry takes the wet cloth and starts gently cleaning around any obvious wounds. "So, Raphael- Janet here told me- How old are you?" Raph watches the cloth very carefully, nervous about any sudden movements he made. "Fifteen." He mumbles. Harry nods. "Do you have any siblings?" He was obviously trying to keep the topic light and distracting. "Three brothers." Raph says, remembering the three other boys. He knew they'd miss him in some capacity, but he didn't realize how much he missed them until just then.

It was late, too late at night for any sane person to be awake. But when your son is missing, you're not going to be sane. Yoshi paces the kitchen, watching the land line phone every time he turned in his loop. Every night for a week he'd done this, waiting for a call, the call, that would tell him the authorities had found his missing son. His other three sons had camped out in the living-room every night after searching around town, asking business owners and strangers on the street if they'd seen the boy on the printed missing posters they'd made.

Yoshi stops his pacing and looks over to his sons. They looked as they did when they were little, all huddled together and sleeping soundly. They all had worried for much too long. The calm moment is broken when the phone rings loudly, making Yoshi jump and his sons jolt out of their impossibly light sleep, all their eyes trained on their father and the ringing phone. Yoshi picks up the phone before it could even ring again, answering frantically quick. "Hai-"

" Dear Agony
Just let go of me
Suffer slowly
Is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear Agony "

"Dear Agony"

Breaking Benjamin

Oooooo... I hope you enjoyed that chapter~ I couldn't have too many chapters with Raph away seeing as it was pretty much the same thing every day there but I hope this was good! I really suggest you listen to at least this song that this chapter was named after, if not all of the songs for this story. The feel of them all fit the chapter as I've written it and eventually this'll be one big playlist I'll give out to you all but that'll be when this story completely ends. My playlist has over a hundred songs in it so obviously you won't know all the songs in the playlist by the time this thing is done.

Anyways, I've talked too much, I can't wait to hear feedback and I'll write you in the next chapter!