Twins

Shane returned to consciousness and the first thing he noticed was the smell. He had never felt something so foul, or strong, in his life. It was a mixture of blood, sweat and other involuntary bodily fluids.

He tried to open his eyes, one opened without a problem other than an initial resistance from an unknown substance that had crusted over it; his other eye, however, was swollen shut and could barely open into a painful squint. What he saw just made him groan and want to close his eyes again.

Blood covered him along with the semblance of what was once his clothes. He heard a steady drip of something falling from his chair onto the floor. He knew he didn’t have the strength to move his head or he would pass out. He did notice a small pool of a rank, yellow liquid in front of him. His body hurt in ways that he could not explain. His hands were unrecognizable and his very skin was covered in bruises of varying colours. His mother had had no mercy, just as he had expected none, at least, not truly.

An unrelenting pounding could be heard in the background yet he could not distinguish if it was an actual noise or if coincided with the agonizing beat of pain throughout his head. What caused him to start, sending another wave of torture throughout his body, was the sound of a door opening, then closing. He fought a growing wave of panic, screaming within him. He couldn’t go through that again, not now, not ever. The pain was unbearable, the result of something that should never have been introduced to man, torture.

As Shane struggled in his chair, despite the agony it brought, he saw that it wasn’t his mother returning for him, or any other person that he recognized. It was man, clothed in a dark leather jacket and biker pants, he could tell-even from his impaired vision-that the man had some serious muscle underneath his tight black shirt. He wasn’t sure to be scared or not, but the emotion didn’t find him, nothing could be as fear inspiring as the past few hours had been.

He tried to speak but instead a soft groan escaped his lips, his throat too parched and damaged to let anything else out. The man merely nodded and undid his bindings, letting the red encrusted rope fall to the floor.

“The names Colton,” he said as he lifted Shane up gingerly and placed him over his shoulder.

He didn’t care who or what the man was, but he was taking him from this room, a place that had been spawned from the depths of hell. That made Colton his savior and nothing he did to him could be nearly as bad as what he had already been through. He just closed his eyes, trusting, one less painful sense to take care of.

As they made their escape he heard a few noises in the background, angry shouts, screams? The slamming of doors, pounding of feet on pavement, still, he didn’t open his eyes, he couldn’t. His previous efforts had exhausted him, all he could do was hope Colton could get them out of this. He would worry about his motives later.

The next thing Shane felt was being placed on a leather seat, he assumed he was in a car, the fact confirmed by the sound of an engine starting and the constant whir of motion and the steady sound of rolling tires.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to hold onto either state for very long. He had no sense of time, or location, still unwilling to open his eyes in an attempt to look into the outer world. He dreamt but his dreams were strange, made up of a haze of colours, each attached with a specific emotion, red seemed to take conquer over all. Finally, when he was coherent enough to turn his attention slightly outwards he heard snippets of a conversation.

“Yes… Unconscious… Back seat… What did you expect…?” a long, indistinct pause, “No, not yet… Is he secure…? Too dangerous… Proceed… Alright… Sam?”

He could tell the voice was Colton’s but couldn’t stay alert enough to hear complete sentences. He could tell it was over the phone by the one sided conversation, no other noises than those of the cars design. He wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation, but he decided to file away the information for later use. If he remembered, he wasn’t sure how much of this was a dream. It was a horrible dream, gone drastically wrong.