This is all guro for guro's sake because I really, really wanted to tear the Scout to shreds. Not much else to say except that I hope it's enjoyed... But, being starved for critique of my writing, I am ready for anything. --- In the Badlands, there stood a number of abandoned buildings scattered across the lay of the land. Restaurants that had failed in the first year of business; dry gas stations with roach-infested, perpetually-locked bathrooms; and indeterminate facilities, sterile in aspect despite their gathering dust, that by some oversight had yet to have their electricity shut off. The Scout was being dragged by the collar down the hallway of one of these facilities. His best guess was a vet clinic, given the banal wallpaper with amorphous animals from Picasso's nightmares that coated the lobby. Or maybe a daycare, infinitely worse. Either way, now he missed the crappy wallpaper, because it had given way to an endless white maze under dimmed fluorescent lights that crackled and zapped. Given the circumstances, he could have likened the sounds to tiny demons whispering. He lifted his head to look at his captor again, tossing it as if it were just lolling from the motions. The man that carried him was larger than he was, but not by a great margin, and that was about all the Scout could say for sure. His clothes were dark and indistinct; under his hood, his face was obscured by a dark mask. To top it off, he was mute; unlike the Pyro, whom he greatly brought to the Scout's mind, he didn't so much as mumble, nor did the Scout hear him breathing. Almost like a shadow had come to life. Whoever this was clearly had a bone to pick with the Scout, and knew how to force him to sit still. Silent, he'd stalked the Scout easily in the night, only revealing himself by shooting the Scout in the hip: a mild wound compared to what he was used to, but the bullet lodged in him, scraped against newly-cracked bone, slowed him to a crawl. Then the man was on him, twisting his arm out of its socket. He'd kindly relocated that shoulder later - but not before snapping the Scout's forearm bone in two against a steel pipe, leaving the fragments to scrape painfully as his muscle jostled around them. The Scout had deeply considered the intricacies of this situation and came up with one certainty: he was going to die. At last they reached their destination: a room not much different from the twisting hallways, devoid of furniture and tiles not in a state of disrepair, with a scattered handful of still-working lights that sputtered to life when the man flicked the switch, one right after another as if synchronized. He stood on the threshold for a moment, and the Scout was able to have a good look at the room, eyes already used to the light. Then he realized that things he thought were shadows were actually splatters, dark brown with age, forming different patterns from all kinds of velocities of strikes and amounts of blood. A chill down each disc of his spine like fingers sweeping piano keys, flicking his muscles in involuntary spasms. Oh, he was going to die, there was no question - and the sooner he woke up in RED's respawn room, the better. After what felt like minutes liberally dipped in dawning horror, the man finally dragged him past the threshold. In the halls he had walked briskly, devoid of the emotion that would have made it jaunty, yet still clearly eager to reach his murder room. Now the Scout could feel the difference as his body slid haltingly across the upheaved tiles, in time with the man's solemn gait. "Reverent" was the word it called to the Scout's mind, actually... like he was the sacrifice to whatever thing this guy might call a god. Soon he was laid out in the middle of the room, looking up at a light so dim it didn't hurt to stare right at it. He stayed neutral, easily ignoring his complaining hip and forearm. Had to look like he wasn't intimidated, not one ounce. His captor made it difficult, though: now he was circling the Scout, leaning in at times, like a vulture surveying its dying lunch in the baking desert sun. He seemed to pay particular attention to three areas: the two most severe wounds he had caused, and the Scout's face. Observing, taking in whatever emotion his face may betray. Suddenly the Scout felt like- well, a few appropriate images sprung to mind. A butterfly pinned and mounted under the admiring eyes of its collector. A torn and stitched patient under the Medic's fascinated gaze. Each observer taking some perverse glee in the suffering of whatever luckless creature lay at their mercy. And the Scout knew he'd give anything to be a dead butterfly, or strapped to a gurney, or even on the business end of the Pyro's flamethrower. Those were all known terrors. Understood terrors. Sane terrors, with the good taste to stay within the boundaries of familiar and predictable venues of pain. Funny how so little had actually happened so far, and yet he instinctively knew it was going to get far worse than he could imagine. Even when the man leaned over him, the Scout kept his poker face stiff - until a thumb hooked in the wound on his hip, jostling the bullet and making every nerve there burst with pain. He finally gave the man the moan he was seeking, cries amplified in the bare room, up until a few moments after nothing filled the flesh-lined hole but the air and the bullet. The Scout clutched his composure, knowing he still had one tool at his disposal - something that could hasten his inevitable death and spare him most of this lunatic's intentions. He'd honed the skill since his youth, and it rarely failed to increase the intensity of whatever beating he was receiving at the time. "So, what?" he asked, cocky as normal. Like this was just some schoolyard game that didn't amount to a drop in the ocean. The man made no sudden moves, but stood, not too quickly and not too slowly. Once more the creepy feeling of being observed scuttled over the Scout's skin. He fought to keep the waver out of his voice, to not stammer the way he did when truly shaken up. "You think alla this is gonna make me cry and scream 'Unc-' Ahhhh!" Sudden pressure on his knee cut him off, jamming his kneecap upward with a rip that made no sound but resonated through his body, joining with the pain in his hip that flared from the limb's reflexive stiffening. The weight on the shoe planted on his leg slowly, slowly, slowly pushed his kneecap up into his thigh, tearing and snapping the ligaments that would have held it in place one by one. "Nngh, nnnngh..." His clamped teeth had partially skinned his tongue, filling his mouth with salty blood. The Scout swallowed most of it, not daring to spit it out; acid licked at the bottom of his throat, threatening to come up. His pearly whites kept grinding, further torture for his trapped tongue. His leg bent backward, slightly, painfully. The spiky treads on the psycho's shoe made it a simple thing for him to grind what was left of the Scout's knee - twist-twist, twist-twist, twist - into a tattered track of skin. He stopped before the now-useless lower leg completely detached, only because it seemed to amuse him. No. Worse than amuse. The Scout knew amused, could handle amused. He took in the way the man was looking down at the mess he'd caused, and there was no humor, smug or otherwise. Nice and easy breathing, what looked like a minute shudder. He tried to say something else and failed, bleeding tongue flopping in his mouth like a fish out of water, pitiful, halting sounds emerging from his dry throat. Felt the man's gaze begin to trace his amputated leg, up and up until he was looking right at the Scout's eyes. Then even syllables failed him, leaving only trickles of blood to run from the corner of his mouth, swerving down his chin, running all the way down to the collar of his shirt. That had been his brilliant and only strategy: get the man angry enough to kill him. Now, however, he wasn't so sure anything he could say would incite this guy to do it in any way but a drawn-out one. He took the Scout's smart mouth as calmly, coldly, distantly as ever, indeed like a shadow. A shadow that could hurt people. Gaze still pointed at his face - possibly at the glistening blood, to be exact - the man lowered onto him, knees bending until one pinned the Scout to the ground (as if he was going anywhere) and the other rested at his side. Then his gloved hands circled the Scout's neck as he leaned further forward, soon shaded as he blotted out the direct light. Nothing to see about his attacker anyway, although that was exactly what made the Scout's skin crawl: he could still feel that the man was studying him, fascinated by his agony. Inside he was sick with himself for being so damn jumpy, but he knew there was a reason his bravado was so flaky here, darting away at the slightest provocation. Guys like this never failed to give him the willies. It was one thing to fight some mook who was obvious about his hobby of turning guys into tomato soup, but the ones who liked the journey, not the destination... there was no telling what games they might play, how long they would draw the trip out. Torture was a whole different animal from beatings. Similar enough that some failed to see the difference. Didn't get the subtle distinction between "I want to make you pay for existing" and "I want to watch you suffer". Those fingers then sunk like a vice into his skin, but it happened so gently, so slowly, pressure building until he was sure his eyes would leak blood at any second. He tried to keep his body's instinctive struggles in check, knew that if this was all the psycho wanted, he'd be out of this hellhole soon. But his good arm clawed at the leather-clad fingers anyway, sliding off them uselessly. And then, thinking that maybe struggling would make him clench harder, but by then he was too weak. His head began to float, but it was making it worse. It was taking too long. As if he'd stay suspended and aware in this moment, heart slamming against its bony cage, body running over with useless adrenaline, instinctively fighting a battle it should have thrown. A reprieve, grip loosening, and the Scout gasped for much-needed air despite himself. The man let him, and yet, after the first few reinvigorating breaths, he found it increasingly harder to breathe. Soon he realized that with every exhale, the man put more and more of his weight on the Scout's chest, like a python constricting a helpless mouse. Even though he'd made it unnecessary, the man soon tightened his hands again, cutting off the Scout's meager air supply. For once in his life, all of the fight left the Scout; he was hardly even aware of what was happening now, the steady lights casting an ethereal glow around all this madness. It seemed to grow brighter until all he could see was white. "Am I at the pearly gates?" came the weak words from his throat, surprising him. His body (fuck this traitor, fuck-it-to-hell) resumed breathing, slowly restoring him to his dim hell. There was a nice, clean blade above him now, dull in the shadows, lowering to his neck once the psycho saw his toy was aware again. The Scout heard ripping and his body jerked involuntarily, forcing the serrated knife that hovered above him into his skin. It stopped at his neckbone, but the nerves screamed at the incision, bringing him further back into the room. The man continued cutting his shirt open, now deliberately touching the tip against his skin, tracing a bloody line down his stomach. With his empty hand, the man brushed the Scout's shirt out of the way, exposing his smooth chest and the fresh shallow wound to the dry air. Then, with no warning, he plunged the knife into the Scout's midsection just below his ribcage, puncturing his peritoneum. The knife sawed down his quivering flesh, cutting it like a side of beef on a still-living bull, deliberately enough to make a nearly-neat cut despite the Scout's helpless, reflexive squirming. Even though the pain was all numbing into one big ache lapping at his body, the Scout still yelped at the awful jolt when the blade cut through his navel, a burst as if he'd been punched in the gut. Then the blade slid out. Now the Scout hardly felt it when it reentered him at the side and cut another line, his mind once more floating at the edge of unconsciousness without the mercy of passing through. He lifted his head and, half-curious, watched the man reach into the plus sign made by the finished cut, rustling around as if searching for lost keys - no, fondling his innards, gently petting them like a beloved cat. Soon the hand lifted a pink clump of intestine to the surface, the shadow above them drifting out of the way. The woozy Scout stared at his own guts glistening in the light as if this was the first time he'd seen them. Like that, his head lolled and he was staring at nicotine-stained, cracked ceiling tiles between the lights. A heavy pressure on his leg told him that the man was nowhere done with him, but he was so close to blacking out. Eyes finally shut, like closing the blinds in a unlit room and flooding it with heavy, restful black. It actually felt good. A thousand miles away, his intestines were being broken out of their clump. Then they wound around a pole, sliding across it, back and forth. Intestines had nerves? He hadn't noticed before. A noise, squelching, so similar to someone walking through a puddle. The motion rocked his body like the ocean rocking a boat. And just one little neuron shifting gears was all that stood between him and escape... but, as if to spite him, it sped up, shaking him back into consciousness. A sudden sound like a grunt made him snap to and see, in full clarity, exactly what his grogginess had been sparing him. "Aaahhh! You sick fuck!" A completely-warranted reaction for anyone who looked up to see someone humping away at a body cavity that wasn't meant for it, but the man was still offended. Or maybe he had planned on jabbing his thumb into the Scout's eye anyway. Either way, the digit punctured his cornea, bursting his eye like a grape. The man cupped the side of his head, holding it steady as he immediately went to work grinding what was left of the organ into nothing against the bone around it. And oh, the Scout was awake. As the man fucked his eye socket with his thumb, he also held the Scout's head up, forcing him to watch that giant dick fuck his entrails, tract squirming like a writhing worm with each thrust. He could swear he felt the tip of this big long thing jabbing his liver, gradually pushing it up - and up - yes, definitely jabbing, because now his liver was under his lungs, making it harder to breathe. Reaching out with both arms, one useless stump rising into his vision, freshly clean-cut meat hanging off splintered bone, wrist and hand dangling. No time to wonder when exactly that happened. Had to try to stop it, make him decide to do something else, oh God with a capital G not this. The psycho ignored it, ignored the Scout's fingernails scratching at the glove holding his head, ignored his good leg flapping helplessly and doing nothing to dislodge his assaulter. Can't stop the shadow drifing over you. Shadow doesn't even know you're striking out. He was trying not to scream, since all his whimpers and pained sobs were just making the guy thrust harder. But the fingernail scraping his optical nerve made it impossible. Flecks of amorphous darkness danced around the left side of his vision, not obscuring nearly enough. God, he'd figured he was going to get fucked, but never like this. The pinnacle of humiliation, the worst one's life could ever be. On cue, a glob of saliva made its way into his hyperventilating lungs, and his violent coughing rendered all the guy's thrusting and poking redundant. The end of the fit burst the dam, and the ensuing flood of vomit launched into the air. Of course, none of it seemed to land on his assaulter; almost all of it landed right on the open cavity. Most stayed on the surface, but the thinner fluid quickly seeped through and under his guts, pooling around his spine. Apparently this was just the push the guy needed; a few more thrusts and spunk began to seep through the folds of intestine, running down to join the acid. The wild thrusting finally slowed to a stop, and the Scout's head hit the floor. This time the man stood up, but at this point, the used Scout could not feel grateful it was over. He moaned and rolled onto the side with the unbroken arm, guts spilling out onto the floor and letting his blood and puke spread out under him. Curling up, hugging his intestines against and back into his gaping torso like a gooey security blanket. And knew he was crying like a little kid, knew he didn't care, because the pain and degradation had no end. It was one thing for some guy to pull out your guts, and one thing for some guy force his dick into you - but it was something some fifty nebulas away for some guy to pull out your guts so he could force his dick into them. For the sake of anything in the world that was still good and- and wholesome: Why - couldn't - he - just - die? His body jerked at the feeling of his guts being picked up. "No. No more of that. Please," he begged. Naturally, the man ignored him and further unwound his intestine into a long, wrinkled rope. Fingers hooked into the back of the Scout's collar and yanked him into a kneeling position. He fell forward, face planting firmly on the ground. The man just lifted him again, and this time his intestine, thrown forward, caught him by the neck. A shoe pressed into his back forced the fleshy rope to tighten around his throat. One half-hearted claw at his neck. Then his body finally stopped fighting it, even though his lungs screamed and screamed for air that wouldn't come. The lights were dimming to nothing and that yearned-for oblivion was finally on its way - now, now that this psychopath had chosen to allow it on his own terms. ----- "And that would be why I didn't pick up the milk." Dead silence consumed the room after the last steady word from the Scout's mouth. Surprisingly, it hadn't hurt to recount it, even with painstaking detail; he was beyond numb, past any feeling. Wanted to just sleep. Impossible to sleep. He cast his gaze around the room, taking in the reactions. Fallen from a slack mouth, the Spy's cigarette was burning a hole in the leg of his pinstripe suit. The Demoman had begun to chug his Scrumpy soon after the Scout had asked about the pearly gates, and never once lowered the bottle even though it was long empty. All eyes wide, even those concealed by goggles or sunglasses or helmets. Good, he thought, intellectually satisfied yet still hollow inside. Not out of malice, he was sure, because there was no feeling at all; he just figured spreading the burden, not being the only one to hold all that weight, made it that much easier to take. Wait, there was some feeling. He was glad, now, for their reactions. That the horror, far and away beyond what they all cheerily engaged in daily, was not lost on them either. After the initial shock in the room faded, the Solder stood, slowly, solemnly. He raised his head to the Scout, ironically the picture of composure. Even with the helmet in the way, the Scout knew the Soldier was looking him in the eyes. Moment of introspection: That was how he could tell when and where hidden eyes were looking, wasn't it? He was used to it from his team. The Soldier then spoke, ever-brash voice blowing the silence to smithereens. "That is no excuse!"