Marv slowly turned around, speechless with pain. As he turned to face the door, trying to think of another way of getting inside this damn house, he accidentally tugged on the cord again. He didn't realise his mistake until he felt the pain in his groin.
Now, the pain in his groin made all the other times this kid had hurt him seem like nothing; even the Christmas ornaments, the paint cans, and the nail through his foot seemed like nothing in comparison. The only things that matched were the bricks to the head.
Marv yelled with agony, and he dropped to his knees until his face was level with the keyhole. But he tugged on the cord again, and the staple gun obliged. This time Marv saw something small, metallic shoot out of the keyhole. The pain in his groin had paralysed him with agony, so this felt like nothing.
-8-
It took Marv quite a while to recover from the agony in his groin, but as he recovered he began tugging on the thing on his nose which felt like a small metallic gripper was clutching it. Once he had tugged it off, Marv held it up and stared at it, growling with growing madness. A staple. He had to give the kid credit; most people thought a weapon was a knife or a gun, but this kid had the skill to turn anything into a weapon.
Growling, Marv lurched to his feet, and he pulled out the remaining two staples from his butt and his groin. Once they were out, he faced the house's front door, and he kicked it hard, utterly done with the kid's games.
As he stood in the doorway, looking around, Marv could see how derelict the place was, and he could smell the layers of dust in the air.
But he was inside now.
"Harry! I reached the top!" Marv yelled triumphantly, his voice echoing throughout the empty, long-abandoned Brownstone house. He didn't know if Harry was nearby, but he didn't care. He was in.
Marv took a step forward….and he promptly screamed in horror as he found himself falling down through a massive hole, straight into the basement. He slammed into the hard, cold concrete ground hard. For a long moment, he was still as the layers of dust, kicked up by his impact, powdered his wild curly hair, but he slowly lifted his head, groaning as he twisted his neck to re-twist the bones in his neck before he snapped his bones back in the right place.
Sighing with contentment, Marv passed out.
-8-
Megan frowned. "Did you hear something?"
Kevin frowned himself. "Yeah, sounds like Marv came in through the front door."
Megan shuddered as she remembered what the trap awaiting the burglar would be in the hall, but while she was starting to become okay with her little brothers' sadistic brand of justice, she thought that one was a bit too much.
-8-
Slowly Marv came too, wincing in pain as he experimentally moved his body, flinching in agony; he guessed correctly nearly every single bone in his body was broken. As he gently started snapping the bones back into place since he wasn't in a hospital, groaning each time, Marv finally stood up after an eternity of popping his bones back into place and testing everything else, bent at the waist before he gathered himself and prepared for the pain as he snapped his spine back into place.
But he caught sight of the enormous hole he had fallen through. Marv was impressed, and he had to give those kids credit for such a dangerous trap.
"Wow! What a hole!" Marv said out loud before he looked around, rubbing his eyes; he'd kicked up a lot of dust from the impact when he'd kissed the ground, and some of it was in his eyes and he had clearly inhaled a lot because he had the disgusting taste in his mouth. After spitting it out a bit, Marv looked around.
He was in the basement all right. On the wall opposite was a huge stack of shelves loaded down with paint cans and other containers full of chemicals and other building supplies. Well, he would steer clear of those, he decided, remembering the phantom pains from the paint cans shoved into his face last year, and the thick tar slathered over those basement steps before he'd stepped onto that nail.
He couldn't see much beyond; it was so dark, he could make out old and long disused pieces of electrical junk, some of it covered in dust sheets covered in years of dust. God alone knew how long they'd been down here, but he didn't care. But there had to be some way of getting out here. Marv knew the kid had likely gotten some of his dangerous goodies from the basement, which meant there had to be a stairway or a ladder for him to use, it was just finding it that was the trick.
Wait a second, was that a rope?
He could just make out the rope in the distance. Marv looked around and saw he was hemmed in by piles of junk. The only way to reach the rope would be to pass the shelves.
Marv took a few steps over. But he had made the same mistake as before. It was when he stepped onto the green bubble bath mixture he guessed he should have checked the floor.
When he started losing his balance and was desperately trying to correct himself, Marv looked around desperately as he tried to work out what was going on.
"Whoa, what?" Marv yelped, crying as he went sliding everywhere, kicking up globules of the bubble bath mixture everywhere, screaming as he tried to maintain some of his balance. He managed it, just, but then as he tried to desperately spin his arms in a badly thought out plan to get away from here, he slipped, and he slipped with such force he flipped right over back onto his back.
But this time there was no simple hard impact, it was worse than that. This time he went sliding forward at great speed, right towards the shelves. Marv screamed all the way, staring at the shelves, praying they were screwed to the walls but when he finally thudded at the wall, his feet hitting the wall under the shelves, they slowly turned and fell over him.
"Uh Oh!" Marv grunted in horror, already throwing his arms out and turning his head away as he saw the paint cans fall off, crashing down towards him…
-8-
Stars exploded in Harry's vision, followed by a blinding aching pain in his head from where the wrench had struck him, to say nothing of the lingering pain in his groin; he had thought the kid rigging that blowtorch to burn his head, setting up that neat trick with the iron which smashed into Marv's face when he thought he was pulling a light switch, and then throwing those paint cans were there worst thing the boy could do to their faces and heads, but now Harry knew the boy hadn't even started yet. And he did not doubt in his mind, now he was thinking it through properly, the little bitch was the one who'd kicked him in the balls.
Grumbling to himself, Harry lurched to his feet, but he staggered around, more stars exploding in his head as he held his head, groaning in pain.
He shouldn't have done that. He should have given himself time to recover slowly and get up slowly. As he staggered around, he almost fell down a hole, but caught himself just in time. Relieved he hadn't fallen into what he guessed was the basement, Harry looked around, patting himself down before he found a string by a light bulb.
Gently he tugged it, jumping back in reflex as it turned on.
Slowly, he began exploring the house…
-8-
Marv gargled desperately to get the taste of paint out of his mouth and he shifted to get some breathing space, desperately trying to wipe his eyes in the process so he wouldn't be suffocated from the fumes. After pushing the shelves upwards, Marv slowly clambered out, squinting through his paint-covered eyelids.
Finding some old paper towels, Marv gently wiped his face, focusing on his eyes and his mouth. The paint was still largely wet, but it was drying quickly. He needed something else to clean himself, but he doubted he would find a sink that worked down here. As he towelled his face to get as much of the paint off as he could, Marv looked around, and to his surprise, he saw a sink.
Throwing the paper towels away, Marv walked over to the sink, examining it with his eyes. It looked like it still worked, but there was still too much paint in his eyes for him to see it clearly, so he didn't see the sink was attached to something, just not the water pipes he had hoped would help him wash his eyes clean…
-8-
Unknown to Marv, he was not alone in the basement.
Huddled down beside a nearby set of drawers that had been abandoned here, Kevin was watching Marv closely. He and his sister had come down here to the basement after seeing Harry would be….lying down for a while now, and he wanted to see if Marv was near the sink yet, and if there was one thing he hated about his traps, it was when they weren't used when he had gone to so much trouble setting the scene up for them to be used.
Nearby, Megan was also watching the scene play out curiously with trepidation. She watched as Kevin leaned back, flicking a switch on the arc welder next to him…
-8-
Still half blinded by the paint and too desperate to wash himself clean as best as he could before he had a good look around to find a way out of this basement, Marv took the taps….and he began screaming loudly as they sparked as he was electrocuted. Desperately he tried to let go of the taps, but his hands were locked around the taps. He could not let go of them. His body started shaking as he screamed, his voice rising higher and higher in pitch as the electricity went through him.
Was that one of the kids? He thought to himself as he thought he saw something rush past in his peripheral vision, but the electricity kept him screaming.
-8-
"Kevin!" Megan hissed, wide-eyed as she knelt next to her brother. "Turn it off, you'll kill him!"
she wasn't exaggerating, and her eyes widened even more when she saw just how high her brother had cranked the electricity. But Kevin was not finished yet. His hand turned the dial up slowly…
-8-
Marv screamed higher and higher, sparks exploding from behind the sink, until his hair was standing ridiculously high on end before his voice reached even higher levels - chanteuse levels, almost reaching seven octaves.
-8-
"Get out of the way, Kevin," Megan snapped, already moving to shove him aside believing Marv had had more than enough for now, especially if he was going to pull on that rope, but this was going too far.
But Kevin had already turned off the arc welder.
-8-
Marv stopped screaming, as he stood shaking like a madman, mouth wide from the leftover agony he was in from being electrocuted. Smoke spiralled wildly from his body, and the stench of burning paint and hair and skin was in the air, but the shaken burglar was too out of it to think of it before he started to collapse. With a final, weak cry, he finally collapsed to the ground.
-8-
Megan hardly grabbed her brother and yanked him around. "What the fuck was that all about?" She demanded.
"What do you mean?" Kevin spoke back.
"You know damn well what I mean, Kevin," Megan snapped. "Why did you keep the arc welder on, you could have killed him?!"
"I just wanted to shock him," Kevin said, but his eyes lit up, and he opened his mouth.
But Megan held up a hand, glaring down at him. "Don't even think about it, Kevin. I'm not in the mood for a stupid pun. D'you know what could happen if you murder these guys? Yeah, they're disgusting and cruel, and I know why you're doing this," she pointed out, "I saw that kid, too. I wanna punish them as well for their threats, to me, to you, and what they nearly did last year, and what they're doing now. But Kevin, I'm scared. I don't like what I'm seeing; what are you turning into?"
Kevin stepped back, shaken.
Megan looked down at him sadly, and she wrapped her arms around him. "I love you, little bro. I don't want you to become a psycho. I know our family's done a number on you, and I've not helped," she added guiltily. "But I do love you, and I am not going to let you take a step too far now. Some of the traps border that line, but what you just did nearly saw you cross it."
"What do you mean?" Kevin asked scared.
Megan took a deep breath. "I'm scared you could become a killer. I'm not saying you are, Kev, but don't cross the line. Don't make the same mistakes vigilantes make."
As Kevin and Megan left the basement, Kevin didn't say a word as they went up; he suddenly had a lot to think about.
-8-
Meanwhile, Harry was still exploring the ground floor. He was moving slowly, keeping his eyes open for any traps, but the problem was this house wasn't the immaculate Toy Chest or the even more immaculate homes he and Marv had broken into before they were caught and sent to prison; the building work, whatever it was done for, had been so extensive there weren't any signs of furniture or any of the photos and knick-knacks that made a home a home.
The place was a building site that had long since been abandoned. Anything left behind could have turned into a nasty trap, and after the head bashing he'd just received, that was the last thing he wanted.
The house had been stripped almost completely, there were only a few patches of carpet and wallpaper left. As he walked through the house, Harry wondered where Marv was.
Earlier he had thought he had heard Marv, but he wasn't sure if he'd been hallucinating or if he'd actually hard him; he knew he had been popping in and out of consciousness. He saw the front doors were closed, but he couldn't hear Marv moving around. Where the hell was the idiot?
As he walked through the bathroom, he pulled the light, completely missing the blowtorch fixed to the wall above the door.
He did not miss the smell of burning, and when he looked in the mirror, he screamed in horror when he saw that his hat was on fire. Again.
He desperately tried the sink, hoping to put it out, but the water was turned off.
Turning desperately around, Harry saw the toilet. He could see the pan was full. He didn't hesitate; Harry had never been particularly gymnastic, but it seemed when you needed to, you could do anything; he did a perfect handstand and lowered his head into the pan…
-8-
From the outside the windows on the lower ground floor exploded with light.
-8-
The bathroom was half incinerated, and Harry was not much better; his clothes were singed, and slowly his body collapsed down, his knees and legs hitting the floor with a thump. He lifted his head, his hat burnt completely leaving nasty burns, and his face was blackened with soot. Harry was beyond furious now; he was going to make those kids pay for pouring kerosene or gas, or whatever it was down the lavatory pan and setting up a trap to burn his head, but to rig up that kind of bomb was too much!
-8-
Down in the basement, Marv was shaking and whimpering as he crawled on all fours, hoping to put as much distance between himself and the electrified sink as he could. His nerves were still too fried, but if they weren't then he would have been shaking with rage instead of recovering from being electrocuted.
Electrocuted!
He could say one thing about the kid this time around, he'd upped the ante; bricks to the face, a staple gun strapped to the door, floorboards pulled back to reveal a massive hole, and now an electrified sink!
But Marv was too tired and shaking too much from the sink to really care right now. All he wanted was to get out of here.
Marv, becoming really tired of crawling, stopped and slowly rose to his feet; standing there, he shook for a moment, gasping before he took a few shaky steps forwards before he came to the rope.
"Harry," he called up, his voice shaky and croaky from being electrocuted.
He didn't like this. He might've been happy to clamber up the rope when he first fell down here and got up, he discovered he was just too tired to make the climb now, and he was too tired of the traps. But as he looked around, seeing the mountains of junk, Marv sagged when he realised it could take too much time to find a better way out.
After tugging on the rope a few times to see if it was attached to something, and gradually becoming more confident he could make it out safely, Marv yelled up, his voice mercifully clear again, "I'm coming up!" He jumped on the rope, and it suddenly became slack in his hand. When he raised his eyes after staring stupidly at the rope, he barely had enough time to say, "Uh-oh," before the bag of plaster smashed into his face, followed by a bottle of expired vinegar.
From the basement, everyone in the house could hear Marv's hoarse voice, "I'M GONNA MURDER THOSE KIDS!"
It was a vow Harry not only heard but agreed with wholeheartedly.