In hard deep breaths, he asked, “What—did you—give me?”
He could sense the man smiling behind the mask. “Don’t worry about it.”
He brushed his gloved hand over Varian’s eyes, urging them to close. Varian couldn’t drift off like this. He just couldn’t. But the drugs had something different in mind. They tugged and scratched at him, almost begging him to come to the land they had created just for him. They were giddy, happy to be around him.
This wasn’t the real world. The real world didn’t spin out of control when he held his head still. It also didn’t feel this good.
Emotions were foreign to him for a long time. With the drug in his system, he was more open to them. He almost didn’t recognize the fluttering feeling that was joy.
He thought about fighting it, but he soon gave up. There was no way he could do anything about something that had already taken over him.
He thought about his family. His friends. He pictured their faces, imagined them talking and joking with one another.
The happy memories drifted in and out. Like a television with a bad signal.
Through these static visions, he felt arms lift him off the ground and carry him away.
***
Varian could hear heavy breathing. It wasn’t his own. He turned over onto his side and hissed as extreme pain rocketed up his back. He didn’t understand at first why he felt like utter shit.
And then it came back to him.
Blood, his own vomit, and the needle being jammed into the side of his neck were only the highlights.
The faded memories hit him hard enough to give him whip blast, but even that didn’t help him open up his eyes. He clenched his fists so hard his fingernails broke the skin of his palm. He could endure that pain so much better than he could open his eyes.
The last thing scorched into his mind was being picked up after he’d been broken into a million pieces. Like a doll, the man had cared for him, guiding him to do the most awful thing he could have done.
He clenched his fists harder. Bile rose once again to the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down without any problem.
That was the easy part about forgetting it. Seeing it and smelling it were entirely different senses to the sense of touch and taste.
He slowly opened his eyes. Among the first things he saw were white walls and ceiling. The bed he was lying in was pushed into the far corner. Thin white sheets were thrown over him, soft, but they didn’t help keep him warm. At the end of the bed was a comforter, wadded up like he’d kicked it off while he’d been sleeping. It was also a bleach white. It made him uneasy though they were just sheets.
Sitting up, he pushed the sheets down so the were with the comforter. He noticed then that he was wearing a shirt that wasn’t his. He was also wearing white pajama shorts that weren’t his either. They matched the bedding and the room perfectly.
Again, it was unnerving.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.
He looked down again. Nothing had changed. It was the same as before. He was still in this room—kidnapped and being held against his will—and now he was being dressed up like some freak doll.
He shouldn’t be surprised at this point. He was though. Someone unstable, someone who had no human feelings was torturing him. Turning him inside out. This man was unpredictable and disgusting.
Much calmer than he was before—but certainly far from palm—he looked around the room. He was fighting back the fear inside of him, but at least he could control it and not let it show on the outside. At the moment, that was what mattered. The man had made it very clear that he wanted a reaction, not a victim that let him do whatever he wanted. He wanted a specimen that could give him results. If that made any sense. If he let his emotions through, it might spur the man to kick him around even more.
This room was new. The walls were freshly painted and the flooring was a very well kept linoleum. There was a dresser pushed against the far wall, opposite to the bed, and, of course, it was painted white. The only thing in the room that wasn’t white was a mirror that hung above the dresser. The frame was gold, but flakes of the coating had chipped away, exposing the true color that was beneath—silver.
The imperfection didn’t take away from the evident beauty. The frame was made up of swirls, advanced and elaborate. They went in different directions—each swirl unique in its own right.
It must have taken hours to make. It looked hand made.
He stood from the bed. He took small and hesitant steps. He thought briefly that his weight might trigger a trap that was embedded into the floor. He really wouldn’t put it past the man behind the mask to pull something like that off. He was a mastermind in a way. It seemed most people that weren’t sane always were.
He tip toed slowly forward. After a few steps and when nothing had happened, he became more comfortable. He relaxed his shoulders and stopped worrying that he was going to get himself killed. He never had to think like that before. He was always thinking of how he was going to mess up something—that he would become the stupid joke that he felt like he was.
He never had to worry that he was actually going to die.
It was new.
It was better than thinking that he wished he had the guts to kill himself.
He looked around once more. He didn’t trust anything in the room and he sure as heck didn’t trust the man. Now that he’d calmed down, he was more focused devising a plan when the man showed up.
He stilled at the thought.
There was the small chance the man never did come back. It was possible. If that was the case, the man could keep him alive in this room of a box, only feeding him and giving him the things he needed to survive. This could go on for years. Him being at the hands of a madman, forced to play whatever sick games he wanted to play.
At that moment, the door opened.
He tensed.
The nerves in his shoulders made it hard to breath as they wound up tightly. He held his breath and waited—letting the drawn out moment pass. He was afraid to turn. His heartbeat was in his throat once again. It seemed like that was all it was doing now.
There were many thoughts running through his head. One thought among them was if he could possible take the man in a fight. He thought better of it. It was a dumb idea when the man knew the layout of the house better than he could ever and he was armed better than Varian could become in the short amount of time. He was, after all, just in a shirt and pajama shorts.
He also didn’t know the first thing about fighting.
In the time that he was thinking over the choice, he also wondered what the man was hiding under the mask. If he was worried about his identity, Varian didn’t see the point if the man was planning on killing him in the first place.
Maybe there was a chance of him surviving this.
As the door opened further, Varian forced himself to release the held breath. It was shaky. The fluttering in his chest was just nervousness. He knew what was waiting for him, but there was still the anticipation that made his stomach uneasy.
What if it was someone he knew? TV shows and statistics always said kidnappings were usually made by someone the victim knew. But could that be the case now? He couldn’t fathom that one of his relatives would do something like this. No one he could think of came even close to being creepy.
He couldn’t have been someone he’d met.
How could he be sure?
He had to see the man’s face. That was the only way to know.
When the door opened fully and the man stepped through, Varian was prepared. He looked directly in his eyes and…
His heart sunk when he was met with the familiar white mask. He felt his whole body sag and he backed up until his legs hit the edge of the bed. All the talk about being calm and collected flew out the window. He tripped and before he could catch himself, he fell back. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the man was already walking toward him. He let out a squeak of distress.
“Stay away from me!” He yelled, throwing the pillow, not thinking at all how that would do any good.
“I-I said stay away!” His voice cracked. The man laughed, his hand covering the speaker on reflex. He took larger strides around the bed, following Varian to the far corner.
At foot away, he stopped. He stood there, gazing down at Varian.
He couldn’t see the man’s eyes. Yet, the man was able to convey a sense of worry through the mask. It was a haunting image.
The man reached out for him.
“Fuck off!” Varian knocked the outstretched arm away. It didn’t faze the man. He just tried again.
Varian looked down at the hand, only noticing then that the man had changed his black gloves for white ones.
He curled his lip in disgust.
This man was really insane. He really thought all this was a joke. A big game that was all about him having a good laugh.
“Don’t run away,” the man said, a stark contrast to what he’d been spilling the night before. Or had it only been a few hours?
The man’s voice was still disguised. There went Varian last hope of identification. Though there was no telling if he would have been able to recognize the voice in the first place. There was still a chance that Varian didn’t know the man.
He spat at the man’s feet. “Like I’ll listen to you.”
He kicked the man’s knee cap, knocking him down to one knee. He took the chance to flip over the bed and make a run for the door which had been left open.
He was about to pass through when two arms wrapped around his waist and lifted him off the ground. He was thrown onto the bed and his arms were twisted around behind his back.
“Get your fucking hands off of me!”
He’d been so fucking close. He’d been able to taste the freedom on his tongue. And it had been snatched away again.
The man pushed his head firmly down into the mattress, making it hard for him to say anything else. He gasped. The air came rushing into his lungs hot and not at all nice. He panted as he tried to breath with the man pushing his face harder into the bed.
He was hindered, but it didn’t stop him from yelling.
“You suck fucker! A fucking coward is what you are!” He might have been digging his grave but it felt so much better than just taking it.
He was on the verge of attacking with another slur of cuss-words when a hand touched his forehead. The sudden touch made him jolt. He looked out the corner of his eyes as much as he could with his face smothered.
His eyes met the man’s.
Blue eyes.
The mask had to be different. The eyes were exposed.
The man stood up, leaving Varian face down on the bed with his arms behind his back.
He only managed to gather his thoughts when the man had left the room and locked the door.
Lying there, he stared at his hands.
He was haunted by blue.
And into his nightmares, he knew the blue would follow him.
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