“…Your victim has died… This is some new form of torture… It'll be your own torture. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness…”
~A Clockwork Orange

“You and I can never imagine all the depths of hell. Shut out from us by a black veil of darkness, we cannot tell the horrors of that dismal dungeon of lost souls.”
~Unknown

*

The walls were dank and dripping, cold stone that couldn’t comfort me in all my loneliness. I breathed in the stale air and gave another yank at my chains. I had been here not long, but for as long as I had been, it seemed an eternity, as every inch of me ached with pain and I felt the damp thickness of blood in more than one place. My head, I knew for sure; the red gore was running into my eyes from a large gash in my forehead, my hair matted with what streamed back when I tilted my head up in hopes of dulling the sting. My wrists were bleeding, I could see; where the chains had clamped my skin between them.

“I am in a cell,” said I. “I am underground, there are rats, there is leaking. It is so cold down here, and I am losing blood, God, too much blood… I am going to die…”

I didn’t know how I had come to be here. I only knew it hurt too badly to think properly. I didn’t have any enemies that I knew of, nobody who would have done this to me save for a demented, cold-blooded psychotic.

Please don’t let it be a psychotic, and if it is, don’t let him come…

I waited, wondering why this had happened to me. I was good, I had been happy. I always paid my taxes on time, I never messed with the wrong people, I lived on meager wage, I didn’t gamble, I never dealt drugs, or anything of the sort. I was a respectable but not envy-evoking man. There was nothing I could think of that would cause anybody to hurt me, to put me in such a position.

Too much blood, it was all over…

“Welcome, welcome friend.”

I shot my head up from my downcast wallowing to see the owner of the voice, the scratching unfamiliar voice that sent chills up my spine. I knew it was my captor. I had no doubt that it was the fiend and not somebody who had come to rescue me. I knew it with my soul, which shouted to me in warning; get away, get away!

“I would if I could,” I muttered as my captor ignored my manic ramblings and approached me.

I saw his face so close and froze as if this man was the gut of my nightmares, the source of all suffering, the terrible definition of evil and I was never uncertain for a moment that this was what he was.

“Oh, you are psychotic,” I gasped, struggling fiercely as the creature hobbled right into my face, rancid breath escaping his chapped, white lips, ancient face tired except for his crazy and wild eyes. Merely staring into those eyes of his made me stop in mid-struggle, rigid with terror, knowing that even though this thing was old, it could kill me in the worst of ways. How did I know this, why did I feel such horror, such despair? A memory… I’m forgetting something…

“Yes, it’s better, it’s better if you don’t fight it,” the old one croaked, retrieving a dagger from within the folds of his coat. “Just a slice, just a sliver, we need to see, to see what it does, eh?”

“What are you talking about?” I whispered. “Don’t touch me with that, don’t hurt me, let me go.”

The dagger was ferociously thrust into my shoulder with more strength than such a brittle old man should possess, and I screamed like a banshee. The old man ground the knife into me until it scraped the stone wall. He wriggled and whipped the rusting knife about, pulled it jaggedly from my body and watched as I bled freshly and could do nothing but scream until my lungs were sore. My voice echoed all around me, terrifying me even more with the immediate reminders, mocking me that I was losing control with every passing second. It hurt too much, I hurt too much; he was playing with my head.

“It does a good thing, a good thing, it does,” said the old man.

“What do you want with me, I’ll pay anything, what did I do, tell me!” I cried, tears streaming down my face, petrified with fear, voice shaking. I could hardly see through my faint and wistful eyes. My mind was numb, something was wrong with me, everything was wrong with me, why couldn’t I remember anything, why did my captor frighten me, what did he want from me?

“You are, you are my prisoner, hm? It’s a fine goal, fine goal, now I watch you, what you do, do you scream; do you faint?” the old man grumbled under his breath. “Do you, do you die?”

“Let me go, I’ve done nothing to you,” I pleaded, pain throbbing through my shoulder and blood gushing down my arm and still into my eyes, blinding me. Was the room spinning?

“What you did, what you did is nothing. You did it to yourself,” said the thing, shuffling about, looking for more weapons, certainly.

“I didn’t do anything!” I shrieked in panic as the thing came again with a red-hot branding rod. “I didn’t do anything!” Did I?

“Do you, do you not remember,” it replied, calmly pushing the brand into my chest. Flame, it was a flame, it bore into me, it was terrible, I was going to die! Remember what! This man was accusing me, killing me, but I didn’t do anything! Not a thing to harm him!

“No!” I sobbed. “No, what is it; please tell me, I’m sorry!”

“You are only sorry, sorry for yourself.”

“No, no, no, stop it, no, whatever I did, I will never do it again!”

“That is true, that is, but it is too late, too late.”

“Why?” I asked weakly, groaning, whimpering.

“You are insane, insane,” the old man rasped.

“Help me, help me, somebody help me,” I moaned. I was in the presence of a madman, and here he was, calling me insane! I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do, nobody who could hear me, nobody who could find me. How many miles was I below ground, how far away from civilization? How many torture devices did this creature own!

“Insane, insane, and I warned you,” the man said.

“Pity, mercy, show some, please,” I begged.

“You didn’t, didn’t.”

“What did I ever do to you; what?” I inquired, desperately. The old man looked wildly into my face, eyes depicting a scene; one of a man - me - and a gun. I watched, unable to tear my gaze away, as the old man innocently left his house, watched as I drunkenly laughed from my speeding car, pulled the trigger, pulled the trigger, pulled it, pulled it, pulled it!

“No!” I shrieked suddenly, struggling frantically again. “Don’t tell me, shut up, don’t answer me, don’t!” That was it, what was prying at my brain all along, and suddenly it all came flooding back into my mind through the channel the man created with his eyes connected to mine, staring into those deep orbs which told all, and nothing but the truth.

The man replied: “You only, only killed me. Killed me, killed me. Now you pay.”

And then I knew no more.