Summary: A deadly and sadistic killer is on the loose and he's collecting Doctors. He has his deadly sights set on House, Wilson, Cameron, Foreman and Chase; he wants to add them all to his collection. Please read and review!
Authors note: Sorry I'm taking so long to update this. I've been a bit busy lately, but I hope you will all bear with me and keep reading. I appreciate all the reads and reviews so much, it makes it all worthwhile.
Rating for chapter is M for swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: I don't own House or any of its characters (wishes she owned Dr House)
He's done it. He's finally got him. He has at last completed his collection. He stares at Dr House tied to a chair which is facing the four hospital beds that his friends are bound to. He wants Dr House to have a front row seat when he takes the souvenirs from each of his fellow doctors. He wants Dr House to hear them scream and witness the fear in his eyes when he realises that he will have the same done to him soon enough. He suspects that watching each of his friends get tortured and then ultimately murdered in turn will probably drive Dr House to insanity, but that will be the ultimate test, and if he can withstand that, then his soul will be stronger than ever.
He studies Dr House. His hands are tied behind his back to the heavy metal chair that he now sits unconscious in. He smiled when he was tying Dr House's hands to the chair earlier and saw the wound he had inflicted on his hand when he paid him a little visit a couple of days ago. He thinks back to that moment when he drove the screwdriver into the doctor's hand. It was so beautiful to hear him try to suppress scream, so beautiful to see his face full of pain. Dr House's head is slumped forward and his breath is coming out slow and even.
He wonders what is going on in that slumbering mind, that brilliant, brilliant mind. He knows Dr House is already a troubled soul. He knows about the diagnostician's past and his inability to get close to very few people and how he guards that inability with sarcasm and deflective humour. He knows about his leg and the misery it causes him. He knows about everything and intends to strengthen his faltering soul by doing what needs to be done. Dr House should be thanking him at the end of all this, he's actually helping him in a way. He will die with a soul stronger than anybody and for that he should be thankful.
He wonders what it will take to make Dr House scream with pain. He knows that the doctor is good with handling pain, but the good doctor doesn't have his vicodin now does he? He feels a rush of excitement when he thinks about how much pain the doctor will already be in with his leg and how satisfying it will be to add to that pain.
He also thinks about what souvenir he should take from Dr House. Should he take his damaged leg? His brilliant mind? He snaps out of these thoughts when Dr House starts to wake up from his deep slumber. He coughs and splutters a few times and then lifts his head up, his eyes scan the room and then come to rest on the man standing before him. As soon as Dr House looks at him he knows what he must take. His eyes. Those piercing blue, mesmerising, beautiful eyes...
House awoke coughing and spluttering and trying to catch his breath. His head was pounding and he felt awfully groggy. At first he didn't know where he was but after his head had somewhat cleared and his breathing had returned to normal, the chapel, the Collector and the needle all came rushing back to him.
House felt strong, thick rope binding his hands behind him to the chair and his whole body was aching due to the awkward position he was restrained in. The heavy metal chair he was tied to didn't make the experience a whole lot more comfortable either. His injured hand and his leg were throbbing, his leg causing him the most pain of all. He knew that he wouldn't be getting any vicodin any time soon, the bastard would've seen to that he was sure.
House snapped his head up when he felt the presence of someone else in the room and when he heard muffled moans and the occasional sob. He looked around the room and felt genuine terror and revulsion when he saw Chase, Foreman, Cameron and Wilson strapped down in hospital beds opposite him, all with tape over their mouths.
House saw that Chase was unconscious and had a nasty deep gash across his forehead and numerous other wounds on his face. He suspected that Chase would have a scar on his forehead for probably the rest of his life, if he did in fact live through this, and House hoped with everything that he had that he would. That they all would.
House turned his attention to Foreman next and cringed when he saw his left ear, or what was left of it. His earlobe had been hacked off and dark red blood, which was almost black, had run down his neck and pooled over his collarbone and shoulder. House then looked at Foreman's legs and noticed that they looked bent out of shape through his trousers and painfully distorted. House knew that one or both of them had to be broken. He looked at Foreman's face and saw that he was slipping in and out of consciousness. He swallowed the lump that was forming at the back of his throat. He tried not to think too much. Don't let this bastard see the pain that this is causing you.
He then looked at Cameron and felt anger flare up inside him. She had blood running down the side of her face from a nasty wound on the side of her head. She also had a bloody nose and mouth and a swollen purple bruise under her right eye. It looked like the sadistic bastard had given her a beating. Cameron was awake and her face was soaked with tears. She looked at House pleadingly, begging him to help them but also so glad to see him.
House reluctantly tore his eyes away from Cameron's and his heart almost broke when his eyes came to rest on his best friend. Wilson was awake and breathing heavily through his nose, clearly in a lot of pain. He had cuts and bruises on his face, some weeping with blood. But what really made tears sting House's eyes and almost push him over the edge was the fact that the sick son of a bitch had nailed two ten inch iron nails through each palm of Wilson's hands. It must have only been recently too because they were still bleeding fresh blood and Wilson was clearly in a lot of pain. House balled his injured hand up into a fist and remembered how painful it was when the Collector had hammered the screwdriver through his hand. It made House sick to think that the same had been done to Wilson twice over. House couldn't stand it. He wanted to reach out to Wilson, tell him he was so sorry, tell him that it shouldn't have happened to him, but more than anything he wanted to kill the bastard who had done it to him. Who had hurt them all.
House at last turned his attention to the Collector with nothing but pure hatred burning in his eyes. He saw that he was wearing a white shirt and white pants with black boots, black gloves and a black apron. He looked like a butcher from hell itself. The Collector stared right back at House, studying him intensely. The air hung silent and thick between them, neither sure which man was going to speak first. It was the Collector who broke the silence.
"So now you know Dr House. Did you get what you were expecting?"
"You know what I got?" exclaimed House keeping his voice as even as possible. It took all the strength he had not to pull at his restraints and shout and scream at the bastard. "I got a sad, sick, lonely freak, whose only amusement in life is to torture and kill people. But ever since this whole thing began, I knew that's what you were, so yeah, I got what I was expecting."
The Collector let out a low chuckle. "Oh Dr House, it's going to be so much fun testing you. I think you're probably going to be my most memorable victim yet. But you can't judge what I do until you know why I do it."
"Enlighten me then," said House in a flat tone, trying to buy some time.
Now he had seen the extent of what the Collector was capable of, he was sure that the end game was going to be death for them all. He had to try and find a way out of this. Seeing the condition that everybody was in had caused him greater pain than anything in his life. But the fact that they were alive had given him new hope and he wasn't going to give up now, he couldn't. He had let them all down the first time when they were taken by this bastard and he wasn't going to let them down a second time.
"Believe it or not, there is a purpose to me, as you call it "torturing" your friends. I'm testing their souls. By me testing them, it only makes them stronger. It makes their souls stronger for when I kill them and ultimately gaining a part of them."
"You're deluded and you know it. Look, you haven't killed anybody yet. You can just let us all go and run. The cops will never find you if you've been as careful as you have previously. I'm guessing you've been doing this for a while and if you haven't been caught now then you won't this time either. You know all this soul stuff is crap; you don't need to kill us."
The Collector smiled and made his way over to House's chair. He leant forward and put his face close to House's, so close that House could feel his breath on his skin. House tried to move his head as far back as possible but the headrest on the chair made it hard for him to move anywhere. He wasn't sure how long it was before the Collector spoke, he had lost all sense of time since being here. The Collector spoke in a tone barely above a whisper.
"... Such beautiful eyes."
This made House squirm. It was bad enough with the bastard being this close to him but for him to be saying bizarre things like that made the whole experience a lot more uncomfortable.
"They will be my most prized possession when I take them from you."
House felt a stab of fear in his stomach. Take his eyes? House didn't know how to interpret that. The sick bastard could mean it literally or metaphorically, it was hard to tell what was going on in that sick mind.
"But first I'm going to have a little bit of fun with your friends. Let the game begin eh?"
House went pale. He couldn't let the Collector hurt the others again, he just couldn't. House was seized by panic and desperation.
"No! You can't hurt them again you bastard! Haven't they been through enough?"
"But Dr House, I must have my trophies. Now which shall I take first?" He pointed at Chase, "His hair?" At Foreman, "His hands?" At Cameron, "Her toes?" And finally at Wilson, "Or his teeth?"
House's breathing started to get heavier. He couldn't let panic take over him but he was finding it hard to get his fear under control. He needed to think of a way out of this but the pain in his leg which was now excruciating made it hard to think. His head wasn't clear enough for this!
The Collector began to walk over to a tray on wheels in the corner of the room. House's heart began thudding at an intense speed when he saw the instruments of torture on top and beneath it.
"Of course I'm going to leave your eyes until last Dr House. I don't want you to miss a second."
He stopped in front of House along with the tray. "So have you made a decision? Which one of your friends is going to get it first?"
House didn't respond. He was running out of time and fast. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
"Oh, you don't want to choose? Okay, I'll choose for you then."
House watched in horror as the Collector began to use a fucking counting rhyme to decide who to torture first. He was treating all of this as a damn game! House could do nothing but watch in despair, cursing himself for not being able to do a fucking thing. The Collector began his rhyme.
"Eeny, meeny, miney, moe
Catch a Doctor by the toe
If he screams let him go
Eeny, meeny, miney moe."
House's heart almost stopped when the Collectors finger landed to rest on Wilson. Wilson squeezed his eyes shut tight, trying to block out the horror of it all. House frantically looked to the Collector and then back at Wilson. This can't be happening! But House's heart began thudding again when the Collector carried on with his rhyme.
"Out goes one."
Cameron.
"Out goes two."
Wilson.
"Out goes another one.
Foreman.
"So I pick you!"
Shit. It's Chase. Chase had regained consciousness by now and started to pull violently at his restraints when he realised the Collectors intention. He was pulling so hard that House could see the veins in his neck. The Collector made his way over to Chase's bedside with his torture tools in tow. Chase was visibly trembling and when he saw the tool that the Collector produced form the tray, his trembling became violent.
House recognized the tool as one you would use for gripping and extracting small objects such as staples, pins and broken screws. They kind of looked like pliers but had long, serrated jaws that closed tight at the tips. The grip you could get with those was unbreakable and that made House's blood run cold.
The Collector ripped the tape off Chase's mouth and began to tighten the tool tips around a lock of Chase's hair.
"Please don't do this!" begged Chase. His voice was raspy and weak but full of fear.
But Chase's pleas fell on deaf ears and the Collector began to pull. Hard. Chase let out an anguished scream. This only seemed to excite the bastard further and he continued to pull.
House felt sick. He felt angry, disgusted, pained. He felt helpless!
"Stop!" House screamed. "You're going to rip his fucking skin off! STOP!" House pulled at his restraints wildly sending an intense bolt of pain through his leg. But he didn't care about the pain. He only cared about Chase.
Chase's screaming became more intense as his hair was being ripped from its roots, taking a layer of skin along with it. The Collector was smiling intensely, marvelling at Chase's pain. At last the hair came free and blood was seeping from the wound. Chase passed out from the pain and exhaustion. Wilson and Cameron had been watching the whole thing also, terrified that either one of them could be next. Foreman was now fully unconscious which, at the moment, was probably the best thing for him.
"There. Now that wasn't so hard was it?" said the Collector who was now breathless and gleeful. He placed the lock of hair into a small transparent bag, smiling as he did so.
"Look, no more okay? You still have a chance here. You can still run and nobody will ever find you. Just stop this, please."
It disgusted House to beg this freak but there was nothing else he could do.
"Now where is the fun in that Dr House?" the Collector said with a smile.
House's heart dropped when he began his sick counting game again.
"Out goes one."
Chase.
"Out goes two."
Foreman.
"Out goes another one."
Cameron.
"So I pick you!"
Wilson. House's blood ran cold and he let out a choked cry. No! Wilson was already in enough pain. Wilson scrunched his eyes up tight, awaiting the inevitable. The Collector made his way over to Wilson's bed with his torture tray by his side.
"Just fucking stop!" cried House in desperation. "Take my teeth, take whatever you want! Just leave him alone, leave them all alone you fucking bastard!" House was desperate now and panicked. He couldn't bear to watch Wilson get his teeth pulled out, he just couldn't.
The Collector only gave House an affectionate smile and ripped the tape off Wilson's mouth. He reached for the pliers on his tray.
"House, don't watch this! Close your eyes, look away!" demanded Wilson.
But House couldn't look away. He couldn't tear his eyes away from his friend's eyes.
"Look at my eyes Wilson! Look at me and nothing else, I'm here!"shouted House, his voice so full of pain and his eyes misty with tears.
He watched, horrified, as the Collector opened Wilson's mouth and clamped the pliers around his canine tooth. Wilson kept his eyes on House and House didn't dare look away. This was the only way House could be there for him. It wasn't going to make it any easier but it was the only thing he could do. Wilson's eyes were full of terror and determination not to scream. He was bracing himself for the pain but also to rob the bastard of his satisfaction of hearing his pain.
The Collector pulled in one hard and violent motion and the tooth was ripped out in one excruciating pull. Wilson squeezed his eyes shut tight, the pain evident in his face. He closed his mouth as soon as the tooth was out and through gritted teeth he let out an agonized suppressed scream. He was breathing heavily and opened his mouth letting a pool of blood spill out. He let out groans of pain but didn't scream.
House's breath was caught in his throat and he had broken out in a cold sweat. If they lived through this he honestly didn't think he or any of them would ever have a sleep without nightmares again.
"Oh, we've got a strong one here haven't we? He didn't scream. Looks like I'm going to have to remove another one. I think I'll go and get the drill."
Wilson closed his eyes and House fought down the urge to vomit. The Collector began making his way up a set of stairs that led to a door at the top. House watched him go as the Collector said, "I'll be back in a minute. Don't you go anywhere now."
The Collector closed the door behind him leaving the five doctors alone. The only sound that could be heard was their heavy breathing and the drip, drip, drip of their blood on the white washed floor.
