Voice of Rage and Ruin
I could taste blood. It wasn’t mine. At least, not all of it. I could smell blood too. Old, dead, decaying blood that clung in putrid reminder of death and then slowly my eyes opened to blackness. A shiver ran down my spine at the reminder of the cold that had woken me before the taste and smell of blood. I rubbed my eyes and allowed them to adjust to the darkness.
I was in a dank room, a cell, of some sort. I t stank of death. On one wall was a window, on the wall opposite a heavy metal door with a slight opening. In front of the opening was a plastic tray of spoiled food, bits of bread and mold covered gruel and it had all been picked at by what I could only assume were rats. Something told me the food hadn’t been left for me but I couldn’t see anyone else in the darkness.
A slow, whispering laugh seemed to echo from the walls. “Heh-heh-heh. The sleeping dog wakes…” the words trailing off into the distance of the cold stone walls. I looked around the cell but saw no mouth for the voice. I ran to the window, my knees almost collapsing beneath me in a resounding ache that pulsed deeply from my bones out but, at the window, I could see only star shrouding fog.
“Now, now, there’s no need to hurt yourself” his soft whispering laughter again echoing off and through the walls. “The professor will see to that shortly…” the whispering laughter again trailing off into the shadows.
I looked around the room helplessly, as I shivered again from the damp, dank, dark cold of the dungeon. I looked down to see myself naked, covered in mud and blood. I reached instinctively to my neck, but it was bare. A barbaric howl of anguish and frustration escaped from the bowels of my chest and no sooner had it torn out my lips to echo off the walls and halls of the stone prison I found myself in, than my body collapsed, sinking prostrate upon the floor.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the whispering voice reproached me from the silence, You shouldn’t have done that.” I could almost feel the breath of the voice on the back of my neck, trailing away to silence as the breath felt nearer, “You woke them up.”
And down the hall my howl still echoed, but mangled and corrupted, the anger and violence twisted to cries for release and tortured tones, barely alive only to plea for death. I made my way to the door crawling along the dirty stone floor to the food slot. Through the slot I could make out a hallway with other similar doors. The anguished echoes of my howl were louder now and I shuddered to think what monstrosities made them and tried not to think of what sinister mind gathered them for such a choir of the damned. I slumped, shivering against the door, against the cold and against the creatures I’d prefer not to imagine.
I heard a door opening, the metal clang of the bold reverberating down the empty hall. Several of the voices grew suddenly softer, some stopped all together. I could hear a show, uneven step echoing down the hallway. Somewhere down the hallway whose end I could not see a door opened and the mournful moaning was replaced by a sudden shrill cry. And then there was silence from the other cells. Only the cold metal of the door being locked and the slow uneven step continued, growing louder down the hall.
The whispering laugh playfully floated and bounced across the room before settling in on the back of my neck again “No, no, no. You shouldn’t have done that…” There was a loud bang against one of the doors as the uneven footsteps paused and a whimpering cry was heard and then lost in shadowy silence. The whispering voice continued. “You’ve made him angry…”
The uneven footsteps grew louder and louder and at the last minute I set my mind and crouched against the wall ready to spring forth on whatever opened the door. I heard the metal groan and give in rust to the key and the door began to open. I jumped at the light and in midair was struck and shot to the ground, leaving my body twitching, helpless on the ground.
Above me, in a butcher’s smock, stood a tall man, with pasty white, no, grey, skin, cut and scarred and stitched, his colorless lips drawn back to a sneer. I saw the cattle prod in one gloved hand and an antique pistol in the other. He was nearly bald, with whisps of black hair inconsiderately hanging from his pasty skin.
“Damn!- You are one ugly son of a-” and again my body twitched and flailed upon the floor to the electric rhythm of the cattle prod. I could smell the burnt, smoking flesh as my body came back to me. I pushed myself away from the cruel creature whose smirk had grown, upon the cracked lips, finally pushing against the wall so I could sit, exhausted from the effort.
Holstering the gun he pulled from his belt chains and cuffs rusted with time and with blood and tossed them on the ground before me, motioning wordlessly for me to put them on. There was more blood in my mouth now so that I had to spit it out upon the floor to keep from choking on the coppery phlegm. With great effort I cleared my throat, “Thanks, but, rust isn’t really my color.” He smiled, or at least as close to a smile as he could. The right side of his face not moving correctly, as if the muscles weren’t quite right. But I didn’t have long to observe. The flashing pain of electric epilepsy seized my sense and my muscles.
I could smell the flesh on my side smoking and burning in revolt and just before my mind slipped away to the darkness the invisible voice from the silence of the shadows whispered its laughter, “Heheh… the Professor is going to enjoy meeting you…” And then-
Darkness.