'Scritch, scritch . . . .'
Vincent opened his eyes, though it didn't do much good, waking up from his light sleep. It was almost pitch dark. He let out a quiet groan and turned over onto his back. Too early to get up . . . . He'd already forgotten why he woke up. He drifted back on the edge of sleep.
The "scritching" noise came back but louder this time and Vincent shot up and looked around. His head swam and he gritted his teeth gently. He raised a hand and rubbed the heel of it against his eyes in turn, using his other hand to lean against. The sound had stopped. He paused and held his breath to listen. Had he imagined it? Possibly. He strained his ears, trying to hear anything besides the faint chirping of crickets. Eventually, there came the sound of very, very soft . . . footsteps. They sounded like they were coming from near the door, but they weren't quite there yet.
Vincent slowly got up and balanced on the balls of his feet. The quiet shuffling stopped. Every time he moved, it didn't, and vice versa. From his experience, he was certain that corpses were not intelligent enough to think of something like that, so it hopefully was a living person.
A shame that he didn't have his flashlight anymore. But now his eyes had adjusted, he could see the outline of the door and next to it, a person. With this discovery, Vincent was now at a loss of what exactly to do. It turned out he didn't have to do anything, though. The person shifted their weight and whispered through the darkness.
"Who are you?" they asked, caution but curiosity evident in their tone.
"Who are YOU?" Vincent shot back testily. Trust with him had never been easily earned, and with his recent run in with another person, it would be even harder to get. The person's silhouette stood up and held their hands in front of them, the way one would approach a feral animal. The only problem with this approach was that Vincent couldn't see if they were holding anything. He shrank back from the person, but there wasn't much room to move around in anyway.
"It's okay," he heard the mystery person murmur, almost speaking as if to themselves. Vincent's brow creased but he stood his ground this time as the person began to lower themselves to his level. Their arm jerked and before Vincent had time to question it, something hard and cold hit him in the side of the face with a loud 'wang'. He fell back onto the ground from the impact and groaned before his consciousness gave way.
". . . . and six cans." There was the sound of a pen on paper. "Found on the body: two magazines for .44 Magnum and a six ounce container of hand sanitizer." The pen moved furiously and quickly. The voice sounded neither male nor female.
The first thing Vincent realized in consciousness, besides the talking, was the giant headache he had and on top of that how much his whole body ached. He held back a moan of pain and discomfort in fear that if they found him awake, whoever they were, they would attack him again. He was having some real shitty luck with people lately . . . .
There was some murmuring, too quiet for him to make out, and then one of his eyelids was pulled up by something stiff and rubber and a blinding light was shined right into his eye. Immediately, he blinked furiously and raised his arms defensively against the rude intrusion on his reverie. The African-American woman jumped back from him.
With alarm, he looked around at the people in the plain brick-wall, cement-floored room. He sat rigidly with his arms behind him, gripping the sheet of the rolling cot that he sat atop. Everyone returned the look he gave them, all standing stiffly and hardly moving. His gaze darted to African-American again as she was the first one to move, coming closer to him. "Shhh," she crooned at him softly which only made his eyes narrow and his brow furrow. He never relaxed and his jaw tightened.
