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The phone’s incessant ringing echoes through a small apartment. A groping hand is thrust out of a bundle of blankets and slammed on an alarm clock with the vengeful wrath of gods. A grunt is voiced in protest when the ringing isn’t quailed, and the pile of linen shifts to reveal a lethargic teen.

Sitting up, he rubs his brown eyes sleepily. He has relatively short, black hair. His hair has dark blue highlights, natural, that are so subtle as to be hard to see even in broad daylight. With it being the middle of the night, they are practically unnoticeable. He is also quite pale. Not a sickly color, but the kind of tone that suggests that he doesn’t get out much.

The boy yawns and climbs out of bed jerkily. In only his boxers, he pads across the room to a counter, on which the phone wails like no tomorrow. He pauses to tilt his head slightly—as if he has an itch that isn’t important enough to scratch—and smartly sidesteps as a chunk of ceiling falls, only to crumble where he had been standing mere seconds before.

Stepping over the small addition to the war zone of his apartment, he picks up the phone and answers in a husky, obviously groggy, tone. The man on the other end snaps impatiently, “Neth! Hey man, you need—“. Neth interrupts with a murmured, “Sec”. He lazily leans back as a nut off the faucet of the sink in the bathroom, connected to his bedroom, cracks and rickets over him, inches from his face.

He then straightens and, suppressing a yawn, raises the phone back to his ear, “Yeah Mike?” Mike on the other end sighs explosively and grounds out in an angry calm, “Just come down to the warehouse, would you Neth? There’s…someone asking for you.” The line goes dead and Neth slowly pulls it down to give it a puzzled stare.

He shrugs and scratches his head, another yawn forcing its way out of him as he walks toward his dresser. He stops in front of it to stretch and watches impassively as the handle of one of the drawers vibrates almost imperceptibly and falls to the floor.

He then cracks his back and proceeds to get dressed. Glancing back at his clock, he wonders aloud “who in the world…” He walks out the door which locks with a click behind him, leaving the numerals 2:00AM to glow in darkness of the room.

Neth approached the warehouse where he and Mike worked on wrecked cars together every now and then, avoiding the occasional malevolent twig and over enthusiastic rock on his journey, with caution.

Whatever the reason, getting a call in the wee morning hours on a Saturday means either bad or REALLY bad news. He pushed open the side door and his eyes narrowed when, instead of the familiar friendly door jam complete with rattle-y knob the door opened easily – silently.

He could hear the distant squeak and ting-tang-ti of a screw working its way out of something or other high above his head and falling to the cement floor somewhere to his right. Used to this sort of thing; he turns, steps to the left, and is promptly brained by a two by four.

‘Okay, really bad,’ he thinks with an effort. His head throbs, and his vision swims in front of his eyes. A bit nauseated, he hears distantly, “Sorry Neth, you know how it is.”

He realizes, belatedly that the speaker is Mike. The voice is detached and un-feeling, and Neth’s muddled thoughts mutter bitterly, ‘That son-of-a…’ The voice continues, only to be cut off, “They just—Holy!—” There’s a deafening noise, people are shouting, someone’s crying.

Neth struggles to stay conscious; worried about what’s going on and what they, whoever “they” are, will do with him once he passes out. Terror clutches at him, however, as the darkness clawing at the edges of his mind drag him under, and all goes black.





Neth awakes to the assumption that he has been run over by a semi. His head pounding relentlessly, he tries to swallow. His mouth is so dry, and there’s a stale and unpleasant flavor lingering in the back of his throat.

He opens his eyes to find… nothing. Heart racing, he fights down a wave of horror and quickly tries to lift his hands to his face. Only to find them securely fastened together, too low in front of him to comfortably pull up to head height.

Panic paralyzes him, and he is wracked with fearful tremors. Breath coming in short gasps, he attempts to think rationally. Blinking back tears—when had he begun to cry?—he notices that he can, just barely, make out shades and folds in the immediate space in front of him.

With a relived sigh he concludes that his captors merely blindfolded him, for a minute there he really believed they had hit him hard enough to cause permanent damage. Uncurling from his fetal position, he slowly sits up; wary that they might have restricted him other than his hands.

Having no difficulty getting himself upright, he scoots forward a small amount. His movement is accompanied by the c***k-c***k of a chain, and Neth grimaces. Groping around himself with both hands, he found the chain coiled in a neat pile nearby and, giving it a gentle tug, found it connected with something around his neck. Sadistic bastards…

He pulled on it in the opposite direction to measure his movement limits so he wouldn’t choke himself if he tried to stand up or something equally retarded like that. ‘Well, at least it gives me a bit of leeway,’ he thought, desperate for anything remotely cheerful.

Getting restless, he makes the decision to explore his surroundings; all the while praying that his kidnappers had the hindsight not to leave any sharp, pointy, or at all possibly lethal, fatal, or mortally wounding objects lying around for him to stumble into.

Crawling around, he uses his cuffed appendages to feel his path cautiously. ‘I’m glad they tied my hands in front of me,’ he concedes grudgingly, gratefully. ‘Else, this would be much more awkward than it already is.’ He imagined himself inching around using his chin and legs as leverage, caterpillar-esque, and managed a breathy chuckle.

A few hours, bumps, and curses later; Neth had a minor revelation. Just within the reach of his leash resided a wall. Traveling in a circular motion around the fulcrum of his attachment, he found the same on all sides. ‘Are they so frightened of me that they’d not only restrain me, but confine me as well?’

A voice, coming from a static-crackly old loud-speaker somewhere on the ceiling to his right, startles him out of his perplexed musings. “Kneel, spread you legs, and put your hands on your head.”

Neth, obeying immediately, tries to appear as harmless as possible. That voice bespoke of merciless beatings if argued with. And what was worse, he reasoned pessimistically, they’d probably enjoy it.








A slam comes from behind him and echoes around the cell, almost deafening. A bit disoriented, Neth doesn’t notice that something was shoved across the room to him until it bumps into him from behind. Startled, Neth makes a small noise best described as "meep" and turns around quickly. Afraid of what exactly sat behind him.

The door slammed again, making Neth wince. He hoped whatever the item was, now in front of him somewhere, wasn’t threatening. Working up his courage, he reached forward hesitantly. When his groping hands met with no resistance, Neth cursed colorfully.

He really wished they didn’t have to go and blindfold him; he was unconscious when they brought him anyway, so what was the point? He ached to reach up and rip off the offending article; his palms itched with the desire.

Fuming silently, he groped around once more. ‘I bet there’s someone sitting behind an observation monitor somewhere really enjoying this,’ the thought angered him but he pushed it down to concentrate on finding the invisible object. Finally, his fingers brushed something.

Pulling his hand back quickly with a hiss, he wanted to put the singed digit in his mouth but was stuck with just squirming a little at the burn. ‘At least they thought to feed me,’ was his sarcastic thought, ‘how nice of them.’ He then mused on how to go about the process. He hefted his shackled wrists in exasperation, how was he supposed to eat like this? A frustrated growl escaped him as he struggled with his pride.

He told himself he’d rather starve than eat like an animal, but he knew he was just fooling himself. He hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, not having thought about picking up a muffin or something on his way to the warehouse earlier.

He waited a while, impatient. ‘How long does it take for gruel to cool down?’ he thought, wanting to tear at his hair in restlessness. He poked it lightly a few times before deciding enough was enough, and attempted to find a position to eat comfortably.

He found that the easiest way was to bend down and lap at the soup-like substance. Face burning with shame, he lowered his head and ate fast, wanting to get it over with. Once finished, he moved to another part of the room, shunning the spot where he belittled himself to fill an empty stomach.

The door slammed again, a distraction—he assumed, and there was a rustle of cloth and more scraping before another loud slam. He forced himself to relax, he had been growing tenser with each passing hour, and he settled back on his haunches and attempted to clear his thoughts.

A squeak roused him from staring into space, and Neth tilted his head curiously at the sound. It was coming from above him, somewhere on the ceiling perhaps? The noise stopped as abruptly as it started, and Neth moved under where he thought it came from.

As he stepped under the spot, the squeaking began again immediately. Though he couldn’t see, he looked up out of habit at the source of the squeak. The sound grew higher pitched, almost desperate in its acceleration, until there was a pregnant pause…

Neth, in a slight daze, took a step back as the camera fell to the floor. ‘That’s got to be costly,’ he mused, a small smile adorning his lips. ‘You’ll regret keeping me around,’ he chuckled to himself. He wondered what else could go wrong in his isolation, but guessed only time would tell.

Neth moved to a wall and crept along it until he found a corner. Turning to face the room, his back to the crack of the joined walls, he crouched on the balls of his feet... and waited.








There was cursing from the hall outside; he only caught it because he was straining his hearing. Neth panicked for a second, what should he do when the other person came in? He dismissed several of the half brewed plans popping into his head, he didn’t want to do anything rash and end up in a worse situation.

‘Should I jump him? Their camera is out of commission, they can’t see me crouched here…’ he shook his head violently, ‘No, what if they’re armed? Argh! Think man think!’ he bit his lip and worried it as he heard his mouthing captor approach.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t try anything; I don’t want them to make this worse for me. And who knows, maybe they’ll get so sick of me they’ll kick me to the curb soon anyway,’ he nodded to himself. ‘Maybe I should move a bit, this position might look a bit suspicious…’

Decision made; Neth shifted from the balls of his feet, to his haunches, to a half seated, half reclining position against the wall. His legs protested the treatment and he almost slid down to a fully seated position, but he was as tense as a violin string. He knew he would find no comfort caught in a corner on his bum.

Neth didn’t notice the door opening; already he was used to a loud noise accompanying its movement, so he never knew what hit him. All he knew was a short, sharp pain in his arm, and the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.





Time passed, he knew not how much. Months? Possibly. A year? Maybe. With no way to tell, who was he to judge? There were a few more strange occurrences, though his captors were getting better at finding ways of limiting the accidents.

For instance, the camera fell a few more times, but they ended up putting it in a shatterproof box on the floor. This actually excited Neth because he now had something to sit on; he also got a good feeling from the fact that the people monitoring him had to stare at his butt for extended periods of time.

His chains also fell apart and disintegrated regularly until they had the things replaced with some really hi-tech chain that could be almost completely welded together, yet still be flexible. He was grateful they didn’t just attach him to a bar welded to the floor; that would not have been fun at all.

There were a few ceiling incidents, but they weren’t a big deal. Neth’s instincts didn’t fail him and he was able to keep out of the way of the falling, solid concrete blocks.

The door even fell in once, Neth made a point by turning his back on the thing and sitting quietly until the flustered workers had finished installing a new one.

He would have felt like a prisoner, with no knowledge of the days going by or the world outside, if not for a few… differences. As it was, he felt more like an experiment than anything.

Not only did he suspect that his keepers had laced his food and water with something, he knew. After a meal he would feel light headed, almost sick, and he would spend the next few hours sleeping feverishly.

What he didn’t know, was with what—some kind of drug most likely—and, here’s the biggie, why? Why did they feel the need to turn him into a babbling-drooling-drugged up-vegetable once every few days?

Sometimes he would wake, his entire body wracked in tremors, to find himself curled in a ball, crying and sobbing incoherently. Sometimes he’d wake lying on cold metal, with the smell of some cleaner or other almost painfully strong in the room, only to be shoved gently but forcefully back asleep by a p***k in his wrist.

He should have felt wary, even suspicious, whenever his food arrived. But what they say is true, it seems, Neth got so used to his new life that being chained up, blindfolded, and treated like a lab rat didn’t bother him at all.





‘Something’s different.’ Neth thought, surprised, as the guard brought him his meal and left quickly. A few of the guards and he now had a nice lackey-prisoner relationship going, they’d say at least a few words to him if not a full fledged conversation now a days. He was even used to the hesitant, too soft floggings of the new guy who had to ‘show his stuff’ during the hazing process to be ‘one of the guys’. A fearfully cold shoulder was a heads up if he ever saw one.

‘Maybe they’ve put me on some new meds,’ he half-heartedly joked, he knew this was probably the case. ‘The stuff’s probably known for violent side affects or something.’ He reasoned, ‘hey, the worse it can be is it’ll make me vomit uncontrollably. The guy is most likely changing shifts so he doesn’t have to clean up.’ Neth snickered at the thought of the guard hightailing it off the premises.

He ate his dinner and sat back to wait it out, he was slightly hopeful he’d stay conscious through this one; you never know. There was nothing for awhile, Neth was almost disappointed, and then it hit him like a punch in the gut. Almost immediately after the first shock there was a gnawing pain, clawing its way through his system relentlessly.

Neth doubled over and moaned helplessly, he started sweating profusely and fell over to lie on his side curled in a fetal position, cradling his midsection stiffly. All of a sudden the pain disappeared, it happened so fast that the absence of it was almost a pain in of itself.

He sat up, panting softly, and scooted into his favorite spot, his corner. He leaned against the walls and tried to catch his breath in vain, his unaccustomed reaction to, to…whatever they put in his food, had jump started his adrenaline reflex and now his head was throbbing. His head was—his head…

Neth felt like someone had taken an axe, and was methodically separating one half of his head from the other, right down the center. He pulled himself into a half standing, slouched position using the wall for support. Clutching at his head he tried to stumble to where he knew the door was, a howl of anguish caught in his throat. He made it almost halfway across the room before he tripped, falling…





The pain was clouding his thoughts, and he figured he must have missed the ground. Though this was against the laws of physics, not for a second did he reconsider a different explanation. It was lessening now, the terrible pain; still, he did not wonder at the fact that he still fell.





He opened his eyes lazily, forgetting the biting, ripping pain that had troubled him mere moments before. What met him was a strange inky blackness, not at all like the fuzzy darkness behind his blindfold. No, this darkness had an oily feel. Different shades of black shifted and swirled all around him, and a slightly burnt smell clung to the edges of… wherever this was. He wasn’t worried about his continued fall, he had yet to run into anything and that was that.





Turning a bit, he spied a figure in the distance. Neth blinked, a little confused, and the figure was right in front of him. Not quite close enough to reach out and touch, but close enough to notice that the figure was… him? Upright, his mirror image seemed like he was standing. ‘That’s not right,’ Neth thought, his reaction time slowed so that his thoughts moved like think molasses, ‘he should be…’





Neth had the sensation of falling, standing, and lying down at the same time. Everything slowed and, during this moment of being split and whole, sped up; several things happened in quick succession.

‘Who are you?’ Neth thought at the being. The creature who wore his skin grinned mischievously, his teeth a little too sharp, and pointed at Neth in a mocking motion. Neth noticed his image’s nails were also a bit sharp, claw-like.

‘Okay,’ he would have sighed if they weren’t caught in a timeless moment, ‘What’s your name?’ The creature’s lips quirked playfully, and he opened his mouth. Instead of words, even something foreign, an animalistic language issued forth from his image. The uttering of which twisted the beings face grotesquely for a moment.

Something like a snarl was the first syllable, followed by a click in the back of the throat, a deep growl from the chest, and a rumble that shook his entire frame.

‘Enkirum then,’ Neth thought in a daze. Enkirum grinned and blinked slowly. When he opened his eyes they were completely black and glowing with a dark aura. Time was returning to normal, the feeling of being in several places at once was about to fade. But Enkirum’s eyes seemed to be drawing him in; he felt himself switching from falling aimlessly, to falling into those dark holes of eternity. Neth opened his mouth to scream and...

He sat up quickly, yelling his head off. Eyes glazed, Neth stared at the horrors within and screamed himself hoarse as rubble fell around him. Surrounded by a building engulfed by flames and with the distant sound of sirens approaching, Neth screamed.