The Scarred Rat (A Dishonored Fanfiction)

Prologue | The Two Men

A crack of lightning once again lights up the scene, and again I see the faces of the two men standing over me. The shorter one has a lopsided grin on his face and is missing several teeth, and the taller one has a crooked nose and a scar starting at his left ear and trailing down to the corner of his lip. They both hold cleavers, and both cleavers are stained red with blood.

My blood.

I can't move an inch, both out of fear and out of pain. I am afraid that if I even attempt to move, they will do even more damage to me, and I do not know how much longer I can last. Lightning flashes and is quickly followed by roaring thunder, and the rain pours down onto me so that I do not know what is dripping down from my body: water or blood.

The pain is intense. With me cowering in this alleyway corner and trapped by these two men, I think we all know that I am done for. I have several cuts and slashes on my skin, but the one that hurts the absolute most is the one on my neck.

The taller one did it. He took his cleaver and cut through my skin as deep as it pleased him, though not deep enough to kill me. I wouldn't be surprised if he is allowing me to live this long just so the two can have even more fun and are perfectly fine with me slumped over against the wall to where I am right now.

I did nothing to them. Nothing. And I had no reason to do anything to them. I was only walking the streets alone, scavenging for food. After my mother became too crazed with the rat plague, which the illness had killed my younger brother, I decided to leave her. It was not that simple, but I knew that if my mother could have communicated clearly, even concisely, and could think like her normal self, she would have begged me to leave her.

And then they attacked me. They ambushed me from behind some stacked crates. I had managed to escape them and run through the streets, all deserted in the night and the storm, up until I made a stupid turn, which left me trapped in this very alleyway. The two men then preceded to beat me and cut me, where I could only throw a few feeble punches as my weapon and defense. I eventually had grown weak enough where I could not even stand, and the shorter one had kicked me, slamming me right into the corner. That was when the taller one slashed my neck.

I struggle to bring air into my lungs; it hurts every single time I do. My vision is also dimming, getting even darker in the storming night, and I feel very lightheaded. Why don't they just finish me now? I don't know how I'm not already dead from what they've already done to me. All I can do is stare up in terror at them, and all they do is look down at me with satisfaction.

Lightning flashes. Thunder booms. And then the shorter man falls to the ground as if he fainted and is now unconscious, his cleaver clattering on the stone floor. The other man looks down, alarmed, at his partner, but just as he turns around to see if there is anyone at the entrance of the alleyway, two arms snake around him. A strong arm presses against his throat, and a gloved hand covers his mouth. Within seconds, a second clattering is heard, and the taller man is on the ground beside his friend.

In the darkness of my vision, I see a figure of another man, the one who incapacitated the one who cut my neck. He slowly walks toward me, but I do not move. I can't move; the pain is so, so severe now, spreading across my body as if it were fire, burning my skin. As he bends down and reaches a gloved hand towards me, my vision goes black after one final crashing of thunder.

~

As I come into consciousness, I immediately feel pain all over my body. My head is pounding, my legs ache from all the running I had done, and everywhere I have a scratch is on fire. Again, out of everything, the thing that hurts the most is the slash on my neck.

I would rather be dead than be going through this hell.

Suddenly, the fire on my neck increases terribly and I let out a shriek of pain.