Young Writers Society

A long hall descends into darkness, the echoing sound of footsteps reverbrating through the silence. A bright light flickers eerily in the corridor to illuminate the row of solid metal doors, each with a small, barred window and a hatch to pass food through. Tile floors match pale, white walls, and it's as barren as any place could be, an oppressive miasma seeming to emanate from every shadowed cell.

There are four cells, and within each lies a figure, the fight taken out of most of them. Solitary captivity only allows them to remain rational for so long and by now they're hardly clinging on to whatever bit of sanity they have left. They weren't told why they were brought here. All they know is they were arrested for something, something severe, and probably well-deserved, and then, without explanation, they were transferred to this place and hadn't seen another human face or heard a voice for days on end.

Then the door is opened and a guard stands there, ready to escort them. They aren't told anything and soon find themselves being brought to an open cell with those who had been housed next to them, once through thick walls and now separated by only bars.

Welcome to Hell.

Player 1: @FalconerGal9086
Player 2: @soundofmind
Player 3: @saen
Player 4: @birukun

The scarred man sat in the corner, tugging at a loose string in his ugly gray jumpsuit, trying to keep his mind focused on something - anything - to keep himself from going utterly mad. He was on day nine of solitary confinement since he'd interacted with another human being. He heard footsteps outside, sometimes, but it wasn't the same. Not really.

It was also unfortunately blindingly bright in his cell, probably because they knew what he was. It made everything more difficult, and without feeding...he wasn't sure how long he could last. More than one kind of hunger gnawed at him and even he had his limits of how long he could go alone. Sleep hadn't come in days, either, despite the boredom, mostly due to the white LED lights that shone off the pale walls with almost blinding brightness.

He clenched his fists and put his head in his hands, biting down on his lip with his unnaturally sharp canines. It hurt, but pain brought clarity, and presence of thought, if only for a moment. The salty, metallic taste of his own blood dripped across his tongue in a tantalizing way - he needed to feed.

Carter closed his eyes as he laid on the floor, hands folded across his chest and legs straight as if he were in a coffin. Ironically, the pose wasn't an intentional homage or metaphor to death, but it was his natural sleeping position.

His parents used to always mock him for it when he was a child, but at the very least, he hoped that anyone watching - whomever would be monitoring him - would be at least a little disturbed by it. Though he wholly doubted that sleeping as if dead was likely the least disturbing thing they'd seen done in the cells.

Because unlike whomever else was being locked up in the prison, he knew he was sane. And it was going to stay that way.

He opened his eyes briefly, looking up into the bright lights and letting stars dance across his vision before he closed his eyes again. The stars were still there, underneath his eyelids, but they floated across his darkened vision in different colors. In a way, it was like his own, organic, kaleidoscope.

Kratzer stood and paced the walls like a wild animal, glancing towards the accusing eye of the camera in the corner. He could feel the mix of emotions toiling within him - fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, only amplified by the feral instinct that screamed at him to feed. His fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists and he forced himself to sit back down, this time on his bed, and try to still himself.

Images flashed through the back of his mind - the clack of the hammer of the gun being cocked, the realization dawning upon him, the deafening bangs as bullet after bullet pierced his chest. The hardened look in the young man's eye as he held the pistol and the smile of Kratzer's green-eyed adversary standing behind him.

His fist hit the wall with superhuman force and the cell shook, though the rocks didn't budge. Pain jolted through his arm and he growled with frustration and fury as he withdrew his fingers, the smell of blood reaching his nostrils. No doubt the guards would be there soon to see what was going on.

Raymond wraps his hands around his legs, pulling them in. He couldn’t think. His mind was as blank as the day he arrived here. He tried to wonder how his family was. He has two little twin girls, and today was the day they turned 6. He tried to think about them, but it hurt to. His mind would go to how he let them down, and how they won’t grow up with a father. He would see his wife, staring down at the corpse in the front yard. It simply hurt to think about that, so he chooses not to think at all.

He touches his arm. He had scars all over his arm. Most were from cutting himself. He doesn’t talk about it, nor does he talk at all. He doesn’t speak because it hurts to speak. It’s always questions like you got somebody at home? or how was your life before here?His life was full of grief now. It hurt to speak, so he chooses not to speak.

He remembered the one day he got a letter from his kids. It had a drawing of both of them, his wife, and him, all holding hands. Across the top it said “We miss you, daddy!”. It was one of the only times he felt emotion in here. He can’t feel emotions, because it hurts. He looks up at the picture hung up on the wall before looking down again.

He sat in his cell and stared at the wall.

He had been doing that a lot these days. There wasn't much else for him to do, not when they took away everything that could be possibly used in an escape attempt. Part of him wondered if he would even be able to muster the determination to do something like that. Solitary confinement was especially brutal; he couldn't even chat with the guards that he had might have had elsewhere. Though he doubted that would result in a successful escape, there was just something satisfying about taunting and insulting them.

After staring at the wall for a good period of time, he got to his feet and began to pace around the room. It was a way to keep from growing too bored, and a way to keep his senses sharp when they threatened to dull. He would be able to escape from here soon.

And then it was only a matter of time until he found them.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor and there was a clack as a key was slipped into the lock. "You know the drill," a guard's voice said on the other side of the thick metal.

The German's jaw tightened as he pushed down his initial instinct to fight and to feed. He stood and put his hands on the back of his head, turning to face the back wall. This wouldn't be forever. He'd find a way to get out. He'd worked miracles before - he was der Silberfuchs, the greatest assassin of the war and the right-hand man of Boomslang herself. He wouldn't stay in this cage forever.

The guards entered and seized his arm, twisting it to push him down to his knees before cuffing him. Kratzer knew better than to resist.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked, his voice hoarse from weeks of silence. His accent was particularly strong, too, reverting to his more natural manner of speaking in the stress and struggle.

"Shut up, you f****** German," the man spat as he finished shackling him and hauled him roughly to his feet.

"That's a bit racist, d-" he started, interrupted by the guard's baton slamming into his gut.

"I said, shut up," the guard snapped and pushed him into the hall. He stumbled but caught himself before he fell and silenced himself.

The door to his cell opened.

Turning at the noise, he found himself being knocked to the ground by an overeager guard. They knew they could get rough with him, even rougher than they might have with someone else. This guard definitely broke something this time around - he could hear the unpleasant crack, followed by a sharp pain in his wrist.

"Now that's rude," he said, looking over his shoulder and giving the guard a smirk. He would have thrown in the finger for good measure, but his hand wasn't exactly being the most cooperative right now.

The guard, in turn, slammed his head down into the concrete floor.

That one really hurt.

She took the opportunity and slipped a pair of cuffs onto him, hoisting his body off of the floor and turning him to face the door. He could feel the droplets rolling down his face as he looked back at her. The smirk stubbornly remaining on his face, he licked the blood with his tongue. The guard was noticeably disturbed by it, which was exactly what he had hoped for. There was nothing quite like seeing someone injured act so nonchalant about the whole thing.

She brought him out into the hallway, giving his arm a sharp tug that left it sore afterwards. She was a strong one, that was for sure.

The guard shoved him through a small series of corridors before shoving him into a cell. It wasn't solid like the one he'd been in before - the bars were open on the front and on the sides, almost like a holding cell instead of a permanent one. He was thrown roughly inside and unshackled through the bars before being left there without explanation.

He spent the duration of the walk to wherever the guard was taking him making jabs at her. It earned him a few more injuries, but the look on her face when he acted as if he had never been struck made it worth it. They eventually came to a stop before a set of cells unlike the one he had been previously in.

What was most interesting of all was the man sitting in the cell next to the one the guard shoved him into. He was sure he must have been quite the sight for his apparent cellmate: black hair even more messy and disheveled than usual, bright green eyes peering out from behind a thick torrent of blood going down his face, and his lean frame littered with bloodstains and injuries.

There was also the fact that he was only a teenager, but that was a minor detail.

"Hey," he said, giving a nod in the man's direction and waving his broken hand. The wounds were already beginning to heal, but they were still painful as all hell.

He stood as the guard and the teenager entered, blue eyes calculating and wary. The kid was young - young as he'd been when he started this game - and definitely had fire, judging by the nonchalance and his numerous injuries. The German simply nodded by way of greeting with a short "hallo."

The guard quickly exited the area, leaving just the man and him.

He gave the man his signature smirk - best to make a good first impression - and promptly plopped himself down on the ground. "So what's your name? They call me Skull, probably because they've seen it so many times." He tapped his head for emphasis. "It's been so long that I've forgotten what my name actually is."

It was clearly a lie, as no one would ever forget something as important as that. But he wanted to make it known that he was only Skull now. The boy he had been long ago had been forgotten in those dark and cold streets.

"Skull, huh? Quite the name." His accent is very thick, so much so it makes his English a bit difficult to understand, but he at least speaks relatively slowly. "I am Kratzer."

The scent of the human's blood awoke the already-starving instinct in him, lurking at the back of his mind with fierce determination.

"Haven't heard a name like that before," he commented. He leaned up against the bars separating their cells and studied the nonexistent dirt underneath his fingernails. "So, been here long? They brought me in about a week ago. Still not sure who 'they' is exactly, but that's what I get for coming to Earth again."

He's silent for a few moments, gazing at the boy's neck that's so tantalizingly close through the bars before replying and looking him in the eye. "Neun days here. Stopped counting weeks in the last...cage." It wasn't quite the right word, but it'd been months since he'd last held a full conversation, much less used English.