Recar Dragonlance
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Prologue: Wolves
The last thing Shaun remembered before he woke up in the basement was patrolling the streets with his friends. That’s right: he and his gang, donned with hooded jumpers, were causing minor mischief around the market. They had time to kill. All five of them, their gazes wandering in different directions until they locked onto someone else’s, occasionally bumping shoulders then shouting obscenities at them. Half the fun lied in this game of intimidation.
Yet such pleasures lasted only as long as their dull attention spans held out. Eventually they found themselves scanning the crowd – though they of course had no idea, they were searching for innocence to crush. The buildings were small around here (only two storeys tall, mostly) yet they bore over the poor boy reading on the bench. The racket of the market, of all the people young and old with striped aprons shouting about their prided food, drowned out as he saw them coming.
See, they knew this boy, even if the boy didn’t know them. He was a normal boy really. Simple blue jeans, with a plain white top. The spring sun shone through the tree behind him, the green shields above casting the emerald shade upon his face. The others, though, were wolves. Loyal in their pack; savages to those who were not. Their identical grey tracksuit bottoms and their black hooded tops was their uniform, as they were soldiers of the street. Well, they believed it anyway.
Shaun stood at the back. He never lead – Tyler was the alpha male. The smallest of them all both in muscle and stature, yet the loudest in the mouth. Through school his sport teachers claimed he was a “character” whilst the others insisted on nightmare. The market began to clear as he approached the boy reading on the bench, oak hair a jumbled mess upon his head. Tyler knew him. Back at school, he used to be nothing. Then, he became ‘Gay Boy’.
“Oi, gay boy, where you been?” Tyler grabbed the book, pretended to scan the pages, the discarded it behind him. Unfortunately, the market was clearing as people went back to work. It was a weekday. “’Aven’t seen you since the summer.” He wrapped his arms around the boy’s shoulder.
The faceless wolves sniggered. Shaun moved from the back of their crowd, the glint of violence in his eyes. “Yeah, back in P.E. You were such a—“
The boy coughed, shock spreading through his face as soon as he’d done it. He just interrupted a wolf mid-bark. No, no. This would not do. Tyler’s grip tightened.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Tyler said, lifting the boy up. He was about three inches taller than Tyler (reaching about six foot), yet Tyler manoeuvred him with apparent ease.
The boy looked at each of the faceless, then Shaun. For a moment the two locked eyes. Not in the way they did to the people on the street. This was a deeper look: they connected, the gaze almost piercing through the mindless sea of red in Shaun’s eyes. The awkwardness that suspended this moment inevitably shattered it. Tyler lead him down an alley. There, the wolves struck.
During the beating, the boy cried out though any passerby’s ignored all instincts and carried on. Other than the general homophobic slurs, as well as orders not to disrespect them, the whole thing was highlighted by grunts of pain. When they’d finished they stole his phone, wallet, then left him alone. Shaun, always the most dramatic of his crew (he almost considered choosing GCSE Drama), gave a final glance at the body slumped on the floor. They fled. Once they got far enough away, Shaun saw a scarlet haired woman shouting at another girl. Nothing.
He was in the basement. A consistent drip, drip, drip; blank walls; a wooden crate; a single, dim bulb in the exact centre of the ceiling. And a black sack slumped next to it. Shaun thought it looked like a body draped in the sack, but he dismissed it. Imagination. It must have been the terror he should have been feeling but wasn't. Shaun stayed surprisingly calm – last time he was in a dangerous situation, he cried. The angered dealer was so disgusted he left the quivering boy alone. He was fifteen. In the basement, he was seventeen and not much braver. Surely he was drugged.
Footsteps echoed through the bare room. The door creaked open behind him, which laid at the end of a dark corridor. Light bled through the door, illuminating the cramped pathway to the barely lit room. In a moment it was extinguished and in another a man appeared. He wore a suit with a red tie. For some reason, Shaun thought of those programmes on the Television about the devil. To top it off, his black hair was completely slicked back, with eyebrows which were perfectly plucked.
The man’s leather shoes made a satisfying clunk as he glided forward – glided being the right word as his movements were smooth, as if he wasn’t touching the floor. He moved past Shaun and stood over the sack. He kicked the thing; it crumpled into another position. A grin absorbed his features: one so cunning it could be mistaken for a naughty school-child’s were it not for that coldness in his eyes. It reminded him of Tyler’s dark blue eyes, though somehow both deeper and shallower at the same time.
However, this was the moment Shaun’s heart began to truly beat. Inside the sack was a body. This cold man in a suit would kill him.
“Good evening Mr Cole,” He spoke with the same elegance of his stride. “My name is Mephistopheles, and inside that bag is your brother.” The grin again.
Shaun felt like his reality was falling away; suddenly, everything became surreal. Mephistopheles, where had he heard that name before? Didn’t matter, his brother? The very thought of anyone going near his brother propelled his heart into a fit, he clenched his fists, tensing all the gym-honed muscles in his body. He tried to jump up but he was trapped by hemp ropes coiled around him like a snake, ensnaring his entire body. Mephistopheles laughed. It cut through him, morphing all that savage anger into pure terror. Who was this man with pale skin? This man was evil.
“Now, I am going to remove that duck tape from your mouth. I do not want you to scream. Even if you do, you are miles away from anything that could hear you, and what can hear you, you will not want to hear,” he said before ripping the tape that trapped his mouth.
Pain hid some of the terror. Shaun couldn’t speak. His mouth gaped. “Who...”
“I’ve already answered that question. The answer to the others you cannot reach in your primitive mind are thus: you are in a basement, I am not lying, I will free you, you cannot escape, and lastly, but not least, your final question hidden in the depths of those terrible eyes of yours. Such actions you have committed in seventeen years! You will be fun... I digress, your final question in this terrible place. I am a Demon. You are in Hell.”
He burst into hysterical laughter. The sound rebounded off the walls, and everything felt like it was shaking. Such power... Was he a demon? Memories flashed in front of his eyes of terrible apparations, horrifying creatures. They were fleeting images and gone in a second. So fast were they that Shaun wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen them. Describing them was impossible.
“No, no I jest. You are not in Hell. Such an act is impossible – I would have to kill you. Trust me, you are much better alive then dead.” He paced up and down besides the body... his ‘brother’. “Though you will dispute that fact once I am done with you. I am proprietor of the establishment upstairs. You are my performing monkey and you will dance with my other monkeys.”
“Get lost,” Shaun screamed, spitting at him.
The spit hit Mephistopheles’ shoe. Holding up his hand, a glint shone in his eyes as if they were on fire. Pain racked up Shaun’s body. Pain is an understatement: it was the pain equivalent of terror. Raw, uncontrollable pain. Every bone cracked in his body until he was a sack of nothing but pain. Then in an instant it disappeared. Mephistopheles did not smirk.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I need you to control yourself. You are rather uncouth...” He grabbed the end of the bag and dragged it towards the corridor. “Your job is to fight. Fight all competitors for the amusement of my patrons. You fight until you have won all fights. Then you can rescue your brother from me.”
Shock, terror, anger and the memory of pain fought each other in the back of Shaun’s mind, so one thought was able to rise, “How do I know you ain’t lying?”
Mephistopheles smiled a toothy smile. “You do not. You must take a leap of faith to be your brother’s guardian angel.” Mephistopheles disappeared at the end of the corridor – a flash of blinding light, then gone.
Shaun’s ropes loosened.
< Message edited by Recar Dragonlance -- 3/26/2011 8:16:06 >
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