Disclaimer: I don't own Saw or any of the music or movies I may reference.
You got me into this
Information overload, situation lost control
Send out an S.O.S.
And get some cash out
We're gonna tear up the town
Don't be a baby, remember what you told me
-Katy Perry
FLASHBACK
"Hey," said Adam. He had been in this bar for over an hour and had finally mustered up the nerve to go talk to a woman he'd had his eye on.
"Hey," said the woman. She was young and thin, rocking those obnoxious hipster nerd glasses and bright red hair. It was an obvious dye-job, but at the moment Adam was too buzzed to care.
"I'm Adam," he said, offering his hand.
"Lea," she answered, shaking it.
"Y'know, you're the first girl I've had the guts to talk to in over a year."
"That's one I haven't heard before," said the woman, thinking it was just a tired pick-up line.
"No, for real. It's hard to meet people, much less talk to them, when you're a Jigsaw survivor."
"No way," said Lea. She rolled her eyes, though she was intrigued.
"Yeah," said Adam. He rolled up his t-shirt sleeve to show off his scar. "A guy shot me, right after he sawed his own foot off."
"Bullshit," Lea said playfully.
"Hand to God," said Adam. He didn't really care if she believed him or not, and she didn't really care if he was lying. They were attracted to each other, and that was enough to keep the conversation going.
After exchanging numbers and meeting up a few times for casual dates, Adam was finally invited back to Lea's apartment for sex one night.
Her idea of foreplay was a little unorthodox in his opinion. She just wanted to run her tongue along his bullet wound scar and around his left ankle where he'd been cuffed.
She would only take off pieces of her own clothing, one at a time, once Adam shared with her another specific detail about the bathroom.
By the time they were fornicating, she was on top, panting and desperately begging Adam to be more and more elaborate in explaining his experience.
"Oh, my God!" she whined. "What did he do then? Did he cut off his foot?"
"He screamed at me to shut up," Adam grunted. He didn't find this kind of activity arousing, but he thought he may as well humor this woman. "But then he started cutting."
"How much blood was there? Did it get on you?"
"No. I was on the other side of the room."
"Shut up, just shut up! Tell me the blood splattered on your face! Tell me you felt it!" she demanded as she rode him.
"What?" Adam breathed, just trying to get there.
"When he shot you…did it go…all the way through your shoulder…and out the other side?" she uttered between gasps of pleasure.
"I don't fucking know!" Adam groaned. "Can you just—"
"Oh, fuck! How did he escape? How did YOU escape?"
"I don't know! Could you please just—"
"Shh shut up! Shut up!" Lea moaned, placing her hand over Adam's mouth as she lurched back and forth over him, lost in her bloody fantasy.
"Did you see Zep's brain when you killed him? Did you bash his skull open? When you killed him, did you like it? Did you get hard? OH, GOD!" she screamed.
Adam was thoroughly disgusted with the way this sex session had turned out, but he decided to just finish and then get the hell out of this sick lady's apartment.
"He dragged himself out of the room, blood pouring out of his leg, and I never saw him again," he moaned. They did both climax, but it wasn't very satisfying.
Not for him, anyway.
Lea screamed with morbid pleasure and Adam screamed something too, but he wasn't really aware of it.
Spent and sweaty, Lea climbed off of Adam and lay down beside him.
What the fuck was that all about? Adam thought as he came back down to earth. His mind, while it should have been clear post-orgasm, was instead still a muddled stew of horrific images, terrified screams and also, the memory of someone's gentle hand on his face. His only clear thought was that he hadn't enjoyed sex with this woman. She was definitely not the one for him.
"It's Lea, I thought you knew. Not Laura," she said, abruptly breaking the short moment of silence.
"Huh?"
"You screamed Laura. It's Lea."
"Did I? My bad," Adam said sarcastically. I think your pillow-talk is far more inappropriate.
"It's what it sounded like, anyway," said Lea. "Your ex's name?"
"No. I don't remember what I said," Adam sighed. "Whatever. Sorry."
"Fuck it," said Lea, turning away from Adam and falling asleep.
Adam did not want to fall asleep in this woman's bed. He was beyond disturbed. After he was sure she wouldn't wake up, he stealthily got out of bed, washed up, got dressed and slipped out of the apartment and into the unforgivingly cold night air, and made the long walk back to his shit-hole apartment.
PRESENT DAY
Adam slowly opened his eyes. He could already tell something wasn't right—it usually wasn't when you could feel cold, hard concrete underneath your cheek. He was lying on his side, aching all over, like he had been beaten up or hit by a car.
"Nnnnghhh…" he groaned as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He looked around him. It was almost completely dark, and he could hear the faint clanking of pipes above his head and the trickling of crumbling plaster behind him.
"Are you there?" came a tired-sounding voice.
"Who said that?" Adam asked in a panic. He waved his hands around, trying to find purchase on something, anything that could give him a hint of where he was.
"Adam?" came the voice again, this time recognizable as Lawrence.
"Lawrence? Where are you?" Adam asked into the darkness.
"I'm right here," said Lawrence.
"Where IS 'here'? Where—where are y—where am I? What happened?" Adam stuttered.
"Just a second," Lawrence muttered. His grumbling seemed to get farther and farther away the longer Adam listened.
"Don't go!" he cried suddenly.
"Hang on, I'm just trying to find the wall," said Lawrence. Adam was busy feeling around his body for signs of restraints. He really hoped he wasn't chained to another pipe. Fortunately, he found his limbs free of any shackles.
Suddenly, the lights came on.
Adam slowly stood up and looked around. The environment around the two of them appeared to be a concrete foundation with cracks in the floor and walls and moisture seeping through. There were windows up above towards the ceiling, but they had been boarded up from the inside with plywood, and the lack of any graffiti on the slabs of wood indicated that this board-up job had been done pretty recently.
"Oh, my God," Adam whimpered under his breath. He turned and saw Lawrence standing by the wall next to a light switch. He also looked disheveled, like he had been dragged away, manhandled and unceremoniously tossed into whatever this place was. His clothes were rumpled and filthy, his hair was a mess, and he had some dirt on his face. Clearly, he had also woken up on the floor.
"It's happening again, isn't it?" Lawrence asked, giving Adam a suspicious look.
"W-why are you asking me?" Adam asked nervously.
"I don't happen to remember how we got here, but I do remember going to a diner that you suggested," Lawrence uttered ominously. Adam suddenly felt the need to back away.
"What are you saying?"
"What's going on?" Lawrence demanded, taking a shaky but determined step towards Adam.
"I have no idea!" Adam claimed. "I don't know what's going on!"
"Oh really? We go to a diner at your behest and suddenly we wake up God-knows-where with…" Lawrence trailed off as he noticed something strange. He brought his left hand up to his neck and felt some sort of collar around it. He looked over at Adam and found he had one as well. "I assume these are shock collars?"
"What?" Adam squeaked, feeling around his own neck and finding an identical device.
Both men frantically rotated the plastic collars around their necks until they each found a padlock, preventing the bands' removal.
"Oh, fuck," Adam groaned tearfully. He fumbled with it nervously, just trying to figure a way out of it purely out of survival instinct, until Lawrence told him to stop.
"Look, we're obviously not going to be able to get them off without the keys. Just leave it alone! If you mess with it, it could detonate, for all we know!"
Adam glared, not appreciating being told what to do, but conceded to Lawrence's suggestion, and let his arms drop at his sides.
"So, you feel like telling me what your plan was?" Lawrence sneered.
"I didn't plan this! What the hell?! How can you even accuse me of that?" Adam argued.
"Oh, right. We went to the diner that YOU suggested, and then we just HAPPENED to black out and wake up in a basement with collars locked around our necks? That's just how our night turned out?" Lawrence's sarcasm stung like a wasp.
"Why would I plan this?!" Adam screamed.
"You planned something," Lawrence insisted.
"No! I didn't, I—"
"You sought me out. You invited me to that diner. You ordered us those beers. YOU put us here!"
"Why would I get us both drugged and kidnapped?! What possible reason could I have for wanting this to happen?!" Adam demanded.
"Knowing you, you probably did it for a quick wad of cash."
"Get bent," Adam spat and turned away. He didn't want Lawrence to see he was close to crying, but with no one else talking over him, and the empty basement's natural acoustics, Lawrence could hear the younger man's sniffling.
The doctor sighed.
"Alright, I'm sorry," he admitted. "Let's just take a breath and figure this out."
At that, Adam wiped his eyes and turned around.
"We've been through this before, right? Let's check all our pockets," said Lawrence.
Adam nodded and both men began to pat themselves down, feeling for anything abnormal in their clothes.
"Phone's gone. Duh," Adam said quietly.
"Yeah," Lawrence confirmed. "Wallet, too."
"Same," said Adam, fishing around in the deep pockets of his jeans. "Anything?"
"No," Lawrence answered, checking in his shirt's breast pocket.
"Great. What do we do?" Adam sighed.
"Well, what did we do last time?" asked Lawrence.
Adam shrugged.
"Uh, find the tape recorder?"
Lawrence chuckled. "Or something."
Both men looked at their surroundings. At one end of the basement was a staircase leading up to a door. It was pretty obvious that they had been brought to this facility through it, then probably rolled down the staircase, which would explain all their aches and pains.
The door was barred, so they knew they wouldn't be able to just go back out through it. But there was something attached to the horizontal bar across the door.
"What's that?" said Adam, pointing towards the object. He immediately decided to climb the staircase himself, as it would be easier for him, and plucked what turned out to be an envelope off of the door. He opened it, and pulled out two small pieces of paper, stuck together back-to-back. On one side, the word 'WORK' was written. On the other side, the other piece of paper said the same thing.
"What's that mean?" Lawrence asked.
"'Work-work?'" Adam iterated. "Work…back…mirror image? Work…and another work...?"
"'Work together!'" Lawrence suddenly translated.
"Huh?"
"It's WORK, and WORK, and they're TOGETHER," the doctor explained.
"Ohhhhh," said Adam. "Fuck that."
"Excuse me?"
"You think I brought you here? You can get out of here on your own, dipshit," Adam said angrily, crumpling up the pieces of paper and throwing them over Lawrence's shoulder into the corner. Lawrence turned his head to follow the ball of paper and turned back with a very disturbed look on his face.
"No thanks," he said. "Been there, done that, and spoiler alert—it ends with me sawing off my own foot!"
"I wish it had been your head!" Adam yelled back over his shoulder as he turned.
"How the hell would I saw off my own head?!" Lawrence yelled back. Adam was now a few more feet away from him.
"SPECIAL EFFECTS!" Adam shouted, increasing the distance between them.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Lawrence screamed. "GET BACK HERE!"
"I'M WALKING AWAY FROM YOU, LAWRENCE!" Adam called back, this time without turning his head, instead shouting in the direction of a door at the other end of the room.
Suddenly, both men felt an excruciating electric shock from their collars and collapsed to the floor with screams of pain.
"YEAAAAGGGHHH!" cried Adam.
"GAAAAAHHHHHH!" yelled Lawrence.
It took about half a minute for either man to register what had happened. Adam sat up, clutching his throat.
"Oh, my God," he croaked out weakly.
"That was not fun," Lawrence declared.
Both men resigned to sit quietly and catch their breath before either of them attempted to speak again.
"Are you OK?" asked Lawrence.
"Yeah," Adam cringed and swallowed. "Yeah, I'm alright. You?"
"Yeah," said Lawrence, gripping his cane and standing back up.
"Guess the collars are wired to shock us if we get too far apart, eh?" Adam suggested. Like this hasn't been done a million times before in comic books and shit.
"Maybe," said Lawrence, limping over to Adam and offering him his hand. "More likely, we're being watched, and whoever's behind this is remotely controlling the collars."
Adam raised an eyebrow as he took Lawrence's hand and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.
"Why is that more likely?" he asked.
"Because that's what happened to us last time. Remember?"
Adam thought back to that night, how he had only discovered the camera by accident. He remembered being electrocuted from the cuff around his ankle, though those devices weren't being controlled from the person watching them—their commands had come from the seemingly dead man in the room with them.
"Have you read any of the books about Jigsaw?" Lawrence asked.
"No. And isn't he dead now?"
"Yes, but he has…followers," Lawrence added softly.
Adam gave Lawrence a quizzical look. While Adam hadn't read any of the books about Jigsaw, he knew what they were about; the man's plight and philosophy, his work as a civil engineer and his wife and the clinic she ran.
It seemed like Lawrence knew something more.
"You know what? I think we need to…clear the air," said Adam.
"I was thinking the same thing," said Lawrence.
"No secrets. Let's get this out of the way NOW, not later," said Adam.
"Agreed," said Lawrence.
"I mean, that was our problem the last time—we weren't honest with each other right away. We could have saved ourselves a lot of time and trouble if we had both just come clean from the beginning, right?"
"Right," said Lawrence.
"OK. Um," Adam took a deep breath. "I wasn't just 'scared' to contact you. I've known you were alive this whole time. I stayed away on purpose."
END OF CHAPTER 11
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