His Twisted Mind

The Den.

Prologue

It hurt to force air into my lungs. The mask over my face continuously forced me to breathe in gas laced with harmful toxins found in wolf's blood. My wrists were bound in silver cuffs that singed my flesh. At one point I had a chair that I was allowed to use to help hold me up as I dangled from the ceiling, but I lost that privilege because I screamed when they pulled out my teeth in one of their cycles.

The room is always dark. At points when I was allowed to recover from the near death inflicting beatings, my eyesight would return as my blinded and carved out eyes healed themselves. It was at those times that I could see the room around me.

Sometimes I was tied down to a silver table, tools with dried blood laid out on one side of me, and a bucket on the other. Other times I woke to find only one of my feet bound to the cement wall, but I was drugged and too weak to even try and escape. Today, my eyesight returned to reveal the dark red, almost black, floor beneath me. I wanted to howl out in pain, shriek my despair, cry out at the horrors that filled my every waking moment and the nightmares that fueled my every sleeping second. But they were fast learners, when they couldn't beat me into silence they'd instead cut my vocals chords. If there was any luck to find in the situation it was that I had a very rapid healing ability. But even that worked against me. They always found ways to beat me within an inch of my life. Found new things to inject me with to draw out the beatings. I often found myself wishing they'd finish me off.

I knew my starved and skeletal body was riddled with scars. Even my healing couldn't replace the overly damaged cells. Sometimes I wished that I had an other half. That my wolf side and I were separate, so if one became to damaged the other could live on. But I was unique in a way that I was my wolf. I was myself, I had no other half, and if I broke there was no way back.

I refused to break.

Yet I didn't have a reason not to.

I had no one to live for- my family has long since been murdered. My friends were imaginary and soon turned on me inside my mind. I had no dreams. No hopes for the future. The only life I knew was the endless cycle of torture, rest, wish for death, repeat. At one point I feared that they could do something worse than give me pain, but psychological torture didn't work on me. I cared none for the lives of others, and I barely cared for my own life, but instincts drove me to live. Along with my almost immortal body.

I had no more tears. No desire to call for help. I was simply waiting. Waiting for the cycle to break. Waiting for Hell to collapse. Waiting for death.

Pain was no longer pain, it was nerve endings that I could turn off with the force of will. Torture was no longer torture, it was a regular occurrence, training for some odd future that I wasn't sure existed.

I took another breath, drawing the gas into my lungs. I paused as I heard the familiar sounds of slow drawn out stomps that rattled the ceiling above me. The usually measured and well executed thumps of feet above my head seemed different. They lacked force, and it was almost as if the steps faded away, before they were followed by... howls? My ears almost burst at the agonizing screams and shouts that filled the air- but I didn't flinch, in fact it almost seemed distant since I wasn't the one that produced it.

If I wasn't the one screaming, who was and why?

I mentally shook my head. It doesn't concern me, the lives of the beings that took turns dishing out irrational amounts of pain on a stranger for fun were nothing to me. Tired of staring at the floor- that I realized was actually a large puddle of my blood spanning my entire point of view when I looked directly down- I moved my head.

It was difficult to move my body on my own, and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to do so. But in the act of lifting my head, as my body ached anciently, I was filled with something I didn't recognize.

Like a thick goo, drowning me in it's slimy texture, an odd sensation loomed over my skin. Raising my hairs and making bubbles form. Wait... was this-

Crash!

I was so focused on the strange sensation filling my pores that I hadn't noticed the door being torn from it's hinges. It slammed against the ground splashing the liquids that lay waste to the floor.

"What the fuck?!" A cry rang throughout the room. I didn't move my raised head in the voices' direction, instead I moved my gaze to the farthest corner of the hollowed holes my eyeballs were situated in. My eyes locked on an unfamiliar gold gaze. A werewolf? There are others of my kind?

Of course I could've figured that out seeing as how my family were also werewolves, but it never clicked that there were more than just my family before. After I had been dragged out of my bed at night by the ghouls that called themselves "Night Drinkers" my world had been shut inside these nostalgic cement walls and blood painted floors.

The glowing gaze was no longer connected with my eyes as it took in the entire scene. I saw anger- an emotion I had seen on the faces of the ghouls before. This must be their new tactic; a break in the routine! Is this a dream? Are the ghouls messing with me by giving me a new hallucination of an emotional glowing-eyed boy? Or am I the one making this up?

As the figure walked over the door, tears flowing down it's cheeks, I was overcome by madness. What an amazing image, he seemed so real! The torture must be starting soon. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that the ghouls always loved to set a scene before they started to play out their elaborate gore fantasies- using my ever shrinking entrails to dance with. This must be no different. I watched the boy curiously, waiting for the first blow.

A silver knife? A shot of wolfsbane? Maybe he'd squeeze my ribs till the snapped into pieces? So many things could determine a beatings rise and conclusion. How much did I need to scream, sob, beg? Or maybe... this was different. I trained my ears back to focus, noticing the boy's conversation in his head displayed on his features. Confusion, shock, guilt, sorrow, fear, pain, and so much more.

I continued to stare blankly at him, taking in the shape of his tall frame. Taking myself and him by surprise I started to laugh. An empty sound that didn't return until my vocal chords started heal themselves accordingly. Then a maniacal sound filled the room.

"Hit me! Hit me! Hit me! Hit me! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Please, please, please, please! I want it! Hit me! Hit me! Hit m-" My cracked voice shrilled through the air to the boy. I threw my sore and raised head back against the arms twisted behind my skull. I heard a snap, but didn't recognize it as my elbow breaking until my weight stretched and broke the tendon.

"STOP IT! OH MY GOD, STOP! YOU'RE HURTING YOURSELF! I'LL HELP YOU DOWN! JUST HOLD ON!" The voice shouted violently, and I stilled. Something he said caught my attention.

I had heard the word before, but what did it mean?

"What is... h-help?" I croaked, throat dry from dehydrated healing. I heard more footsteps and I lifted my head once more and stared at the extra individuals filing in the room. As the beings approached me, I felt a prick in my side.

I expected overwhelming pain of wolfsbane or the slight depression that came from my healing being suppressed, but a welcoming black curtain consumed me instead.

A flash of bright colors wrapping me in a blanket of dreamless sleep, is this death?

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