AUTHOR'S NOTE: In this chapter, I let my truly sadistic side write, so there is excessive abuse. As in enough to kill a person abuse. Don't read if you have a weak stomach, I nearly threw up while writing this (and my stomach isn't weak). Yes, I know I am horrible for doing it to Karkat, but I have the rest of the story planned out from here. It needs it for the plot to work out the way it will. Enjoy, and don't forget to rate!
Karkat stumbled along behind the man that called himself his dad. He kept up a punishing pace at the best of times, and Karkat had just woken up from sedation. Also, his dad still had a fistful of his hair gripped right at the roots. His dad was half dragging him by the hair, and Karkat would sometimes let out a little whimper of pain.
"Shut your worthless mouth!" Karkat's dad growled. It had lost its bestial undertone, but Karkat knew that his dad had never been this angry before. They approached the hospital lobby, but there was nobody in sight. In fact, during their flight through the halls they had encountered not a single person. They left the building, its façade towering over them. Karkat was unable to take in the imposing nature of the building, as his head was twisted at a rather unpleasant angle. Accompanied by his broken skull, the hair-pulling was nearly enough to make him scream.
He saw the edge of his dad's car a second too late. Stars erupted in front of his eyes as his dad slammed his head into the door. Dazed, he sat while his dad moved to the back and apparently opened the trunk. Then he came back and grabbed a double fistful of Karkat's hair, lifted him off of his feet and threw him bodily into the cramped trunk. He felt his dad try to slam the trunk a few times but failed, primarily because his now swollen arm was in the way. Cursing at Karkat, his dad kicked the hand a few times before throwing it in the trunk with him.
Karkat's vision dimmed, but he refused to go back to sleep after his sedative-induced sleep. This is, after all, your own fucking fault dumbass. You know that you deserve this, why try to fight it? The car's engine rumbled and he felt the vehicle jerk into motion. The sudden acceleration caused him to roll over his newly injured arm and fetch up on the closed hatch. The shock of pain nerly caused him to cry out, but he held back. Dad can hear almost anything, even with the engine and road noise. He knew from experience, as the trunk had always been his seat in the car. Because of this paired with his habit of walking while looking at the ground, he had almost no knowledge of what the city actually looked like.
Kanaya will probably wonder where I am. If she finds out that I'm gone and tries to find me, I don't know what dad might do to her. Unbidden, images of her being beaten and sliced came to mind, nearly making him vomit. I definitely deserve this, but she… she's nice. I think if he did that to her, I might have to... His thoughts trailed off as he realized where that train of thought was going. No Karkat, you're not a hero, nor do you have the right to oppose him. He was generous enough to house you, clothe you, and feed you and you repay him like this? You disgust me.
The drive was a long one, and in the non air-conditioned trunk, it was miserable. The roads were full of potholes, and his dad seemed to be taking pleasure in swerving. Only fifteen minutes into the ride, he was already slick with sweat, which took advantage of his missing skin and stung badly. It was almost comforting, in a way, because he must have had some morpheme left in his system from the hospital, so his major wounds were dulled. The stinging from the sweat was so much less intense from the mind-splitting headache and broken rib, he felt giddy.
Having no way of keeping time, Karkat could only guess how long the drive actually took. He felt the vehicle stop, and the parking brake engage. The engine turned off and the car rocked with the slamming of a car door. He braced himself for the opening of the trunk, but it never came. The storage space was pitch black and sweltering in the late summer sun.
He lost track of all time confined in that dark space. His thin hospital gown was soaked with sweat, as well as a large are around him. Eventually, the sweat stopped coming. He peeled of the gown and wrung it out over his mouth, willing to drink his own sweat to stay alive. This went on for so long that he began to hallucinate. He saw Kanaya open the trunk and pull him out, her touch restoring his body, her words soothing and comforting his mind.
He blinked, and the vision vanished, leaving him in a stifling, humid car trunk being dehydrated to death. His stomach had been growling for a long time, but he had no way of appeasing his appetite. His immediate concern was getting water. His trick with his sweat appeared to be working, but he knew it couldn't last forever. He decided to try to get someone's attention outside the car, but he was so weak that he could barely move.
He stretched out as much as he could, attempting to be as comfortable as possible as he died. He was certain of his impending doom, as the only way out of the trunk was if it were to be opened from the outside. Karkat felt his mind fading off, and he let sleep take him for what he was certain was the very last time. His last thought was of Kanaya, about how he should have just told her. A single tear fell from his eye as he thought about what might have been. She truly did care about you. She did her best to help you, and you repaid her by dying in a trunk. Pathetic, that's what you are.
He was almost asleep when the trunk opened! The wind that rushed in shocked him back to lucidity. Hearing a noise of disgust at his nudity, he felt a rough cloth be thrown over him and secured around him. His dad lifted him by his hair again, bringing him out into the night. He did not even notice the pain as his overheated body was washed over with cool air, though stifled by the towels. He remembered nothing of being dragged up three flights of stairs, or entering his apartment.
"You smell like shit. Go take a shower." The man carrying Karkat threw him bodily into the bathroom and shut the door. Somehow, Karkat managed to drag himself to the shower unit and turn on the water. It came out cold, but he was all the happier for it. As the water washed away the sweat on fear of his nightmare, he drank from the flow of water coming from the shower head. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet as the water he drank then.
He spent a long time in there, slowly gaining enough strength to stand. When he had spent as long of a time as he could, he regretfully turned off the water. With its absence, all the pain and fear sunk in again. He cracked open the door, glancing around for any sign of his dad. When he did not see one, he darted across the hall to his room, and quickly tried to get dressed. He managed to get a pair of pants on when he heard his dad walking toward his room. He was going to jump out of the window again, but it was padlocked shut, and his door lock had been removed.
The door slammed open and his dad walked in, carrying not just one knife this time, no, he carried a whole arsenal of knives. He did not speak at all as Karkat tried to duck around him; he only elbowed him across the nose, breaking it. Karkat fell to the floor screaming and clutching his face. The permanently shadowed figure set his collection of knives on Karkat's mattress and began his work.
First, a kick to the chest caused Karkat to stop screaming. Instead, he gasped desperately for air. In the meantime, his dad took four long, thin knives out of the pile. Grinning maliciously, he pried one of Karkat's arms out of his protective ball and secured it to the floor by stabbing two of the knives through his forearm, slipping the blades between the bones. Karkat's eyes went wide and the pupils dilated until they were tiny points. The monster then gave his other arm the same treatment, leaving Karkat spread-eagled on his carpet, half crucified on the floor.
His breathing returned, although ragged and halting. He made piteous noises, trying not to scream and shriek and writhe. That would only make it worse. Instead, his whole body shook with the effort of not obeying its most natural instinct. Blood sprayed from the wounds in his arms, splattering the wall and low ceiling. He watched in terror as his least favorite knife approached his already scarred chest. The pain as it started carving his flesh caused tears to flow out of his eyes, but he still uttered no sounds.
He lapsed in and out of reality after that. The knife continued to carve and carve; blood made a puddle around him. When it had finally finished it bloody work, Karkat saw that the worst was yet to come. The man that called itself Karkat's father took out a lighter from the pile. He lit it and held it up to the bottom of a metal disc the size of his palm. When the flame had heated it sufficiently, he laughed like a maniac and pressed it into Karkat's chest, right over the first bit he had carved.
"Heh heh heh. Barbecue anyone?" His dad's manic laugh continued as the shriek that had threatened the whole time burst forth. "SHUT UP! YOU DESERVE THIS PAIN! YOU TRIED TO RUN AWAY FROM ME!" The process continued, every few minutes Karkat's dad cauterized another section of his flesh.
Eventually, all of the knife marks had been burned shut, and a truly horrendous smell lingered in the room: burnt blood. Lastly, his dad pulled the knives out one by one, heated them up, put them back in to cauterize the whole wound, and then removed them again. Karkat had long since gone unconscious, so his dad left him there, lying in a puddle of blood with his chest carved up with knife writing and burn scars.