Trust Your Instincts

-27- Payment

 The daylight slowly faded into darkness. Jack and Mark had spent almost all day after the funeral in bed, getting up only to order pizza, and play a couple of levels of 'Bloody Trapland', somewhat regretting the decision, because although he enjoyed the game, it frustrated Jack and didn't make him any less upset.

 It was nearing 8pm, and Mark knew his dad would be beginning to worry about his whereabouts, so he hugged Jack one last time and bid him goodbye. He looked at Jack for a few seconds as he stood in the doorway, wondering if Jack felt what he felt, but Jack gave no indication of reciprocating his feelings, and so Mark left, a bittersweet sensation causing him to smile sadly at the events of the day. 

 For Jack, the day was not over, and he wasn't going to go back on the plans he'd spent the whole evening thinking up. He put his shoes on as soon as Mark closed the door, and, waiting long enough to ensure that Mark was gone, slipped out of his apartment, and pulled his customised beanie over his head.

---

 Will sat in isolation for the fourth day in a row, only getting to leave to wash or for food. He didn't know where Eli was, he hadn't heard from him since he saw him entering the police station in handcuffs. He didn't know where Blake was, or Pete, Slim Jim, or Mark. He wondered if they'd been arrested, if any of them had also confessed. 

 He hadn't been told much. He hadn't been told anything really. He spent the days staring at the cinder block walls, a putrid shade of green, chipped in some places, and stained with dried blood in others.

 The day had went by like the last three did. He was able to wash at 10am, and he was let out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The food was bland, tasteless sludge, and so Will didn't really consider any of it as real food, and hadn't eaten much as a result. The rest of the day he was left to wallow in his self pity. The bed felt like concrete, the pillow thin and papery. He spent most of his time leaning with his back against the bars of his cells, where he was sat now.

 The corridor was silent, nothing could be heard but his shallow breath and the soft repetitive beat of footsteps on the concrete floor. Will assumed they belonged to another guard conducting the final check before the blinding fluorescent lights went out for the night.

 That is, until the footsteps stopped abruptly as they reached his cell. Will still didn't look behind him, but this time his lack of observation was out of fear. Upon reflection, Will noticed that the footsteps hadn't echoed as much as usual. It was as if they weren't work shoes at all, but converse, or vans.

 Now he brought his eyes up to look behind him. Who he saw wasn't a police officer. Will didn't recognise this man. He was small, slender and dressed in all black. His face and hair was masked by an oversized beanie, two holes poked carelessly through it to provide makeshift eyeholes.

 Will wished he hadn't looked into the man's eyes, they were the scariest part of the person he stood in front of. They shone an unsettling shade of amber, his thick eyebrows were drawn downwards in anger, indicating that whoever Will stood opposite to was glaring at him. 

 Will tried to step back, but was stopped before he got anywhere by the man's arm, shooting swiftly through the cell bars, and clutching forcefully to Will, his nails digging painfully into his forearm, causing Will to scream out in a mixture of fear and agony. 

 He couldn't see the man's face, but from his eyes, Will could tell that he was smiling menacingly, and so Will started doing the only thing he felt he could. He screamed. 

 His shrieks didn't last long however, as the man pulled him into the bars with incredible force, causing him to cry out in pain once more, and then turned him over, so that Will had his back to the bars, and to the masked man. Will's arm was twisted painfully behind his back by one of the man's hands, the other was clamped over Will's mouth, disabling him from shouting any more. The smell of the worn leather of the man's fingerless gloves entered Will's nostrils as he began to inhale rapidly.