Ethan tried to get a good night’s rest; he had been playing the game for just over three hours. Something had been nagging at him for some time. He took deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling deeply, and tried to close his eyes again. Eventually, he fell asleep, but his mind entered a dark place. He willed himself not to go there, desperately commanded his mind to leave the past behind, but his mind slipped into the dark, disturbing dream as though it occurred yesterday.

He was just seven years old. Trapped in the dungeon that his mother crafted for him, his feet were shackled together by way of very sturdy chains. Another chain was coiled around his neck, which was in turn, jutting out from the ceiling. Thus, Ethan Patterson, neglected and forgotten Ethan Patterson, was dangling fifteen feet from the ground. Any attempt to turn his neck resulted in choking pressure, and he did only that when the precariousness of his situation forced him to.

She had cameras throughout the room, no doubt to show that she was the supreme commander here. She was in charge of what she called her useless slave of a boy, and she decides how he will learn. The basement door just opened then, forcing the aroma of the real dinner she was cooking down. Ethan’s stomach rumbled with a vengeance, and he swore that once he got out of this situation, and he would, he would confront his older brother, demanding he fight for him. At only age fifteen, his brother was very intimidated by their mother. After all, she killed their father by castrating him, sliced his head off, and then serrated his damned body as if it were a piece of meat so that she could easily discard it in the garbage disposal. She was pure Hell Spawn itself.

Ethan heard her before he saw her. Sherry descended the basement stairs like a sly cat; she descended quickly, as if she enjoyed this horrible torture.

Suddenly, Ethan’s neck was bent at an odd angle downwards as Sherri adjusted the chains to force Ethan to look down at her. How on earth she was controlling the chains, Ethan didn’t know nor could he look to investigate. He needed to be ready to fight. Making the chain choke him would be playing right into her sick, twisted little hands. That was good for nobody, especially his fifteen-year old brother.

“Feeling good up there, insignificant worm?” “I brought you some food! How does that sound?”

That sounded not very exciting. Usually, the food she brought was dry, and contained very little substance. She was being very generous today, as there were two pieces of food in her hands today instead of one very small piece. She would make him eat it anyway, despite what he thought. He did his best to nod slowly and open his mouth as best as he could.

“Do you really think I’m going to just feed it to you?” She reached up and slapped him in the face hard enough for the neck chain to snap upward, causing his neck to turn up, which sent the back of his neck into excruciating pain, bending his neck further than it will allow.

Giving him no time to recover, Sherri yanked the chain back down, causing yet more pain. This was all parts of the process; Sherri would probably get off to this tonight. How Ethan looked, his face turning all different shades of color, him trying to hide the tiers, all parts of her masochism.

“Oh, all right, all right.” “Shh,” she soothed, attempting to play the role of the mother that she was to his brother. “Open up your hole and I’ll throw.” “Hah aha!”

His hole was obviously his mouth. She had never done this before, and this was a new technique to obviously humiliate and get under Ethan’s skin. “C’mon, the hole needs to be a bit bigger than that; doesn’t leave me any opening at all!”

Disgusted, Ethan tried to make the opening bigger, tried to please his bitch of a mother just for the God damn food. Had he not been starving, he told himself he would never allow this mistreatment. But then would come the tightening of the chain around his neck until he surrendered. She had never strangled him enough to kill him, but he has passed out before.

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His jaw threatened to kill him as it was all pain, but that was how she wanted it. The more pain he was in even while eating, the more she enjoyed it.

She threw, and Ethan caught the small piece of bread on the edge of his teeth. He bit down on whatever was there, and used his lips, as painful as it was, to pull it in the rest of the way. The bread was just that, a piece of bread. A dry, plain piece of bread. Ethan will take anything, especially after being cooped up like this for weeks on end.

“Good!” “Ready for your next prize?” Sherri asked, gloating in her power over her son she never wanted. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “You must be enjoying this if you won’t even fight against it now. Very well...”

The next piece of bread almost made Ethan vomit right on top of the bitch’s head. Fitting that would be. Whatever was on this piece was almost surely going to make Ethan sick later. Ethan thought it smelled like Bleach.

“Good, good,” Sherri soothed again, and Ethan nearly had enough of this test in act. “Why, mommy?”

“Why what, worm? Don’t you love me? Don’t you enjoy this?”

“No!” “I want out of this! Why don’t you have Ryan down here so you can play with the both of us! I’m sure you can train him to be your little toy and have fun with I’m! Would you, Mommy? He would be helpless too, just how you like me!”

“Aww, Ryan doesn’t deserve it like you.” “Unlike you, he will put up a fight. A fight that I cannot afford to lose. No, he is living the good, hard life while you serve me as my plaything.” “It took some time, but you are proving useful, training you are better than a night of television.”

Silence.

“Hey, I was once like you,” Sheri announced in a somber tone. “My mother made me fight for what I earned. I’m just making it a lot harder for you because I can, and you are completely powerless to stop it. Oh, I simply love it!”

“Our time tonight has come to a close,” Sherri announced.

Being none too careful, she adjusted the chain so that he was lowered to her eye level. She gave him a kiss on the lips, not because she loved him; Ethan was not stupid enough to fall for that. No, she wanted him to know that there was better food in the house. Food that he will not be eating as long as he’s down in this damned dungeon of a basement.

Without so much as a goodbye, Sherri pulled a lever that forced the chains back to their default positions, sending jolts of pain throughout Ethan’s body. He hung there, suspended, alone again.

Ethan, now back in the present, woke with a start. That dream hadn’t come up in a long while. Thankfully Sherri is now six feet underground, thanks in no part to Ryan, his older brother by eight years. He had, eventually, fought the good fight to give his brother a fighting chance. Once he had been of age, Ryan moved out and was living on his own when he brought it to the attention of the police. Ryan had no intension of telling his mother where he moved to, so the police came when Sherri was out, searched the home and saw Ethan tied against his will in the basement ... That was all they needed to launch an official investigation. The rest is history. Ethan simply moved in with Ryan until he could move out on his own, and then relocated to New York City where he took and promptly lost an IT Specialist job at a local Life Insurance firm. The ensuing years of Ethan’s childhood were full of counseling and therapy for mental stability.

That leads Ethan to his next major decision. He thought long and hard to become one of Galbadia Prime On line’s finest, by becoming a Perma player. He had no idea what that means, but he had a vague idea that that’s what he saw on launch day when that poor, unlucky player was killed by his own rig. Ethan lay back on his pillow, content not to get up and play just yet. He was going to sleep on this Perma Player decision for a while. Fortunately for him, his body relaxed, before easing into a deep sleep. He slept that way for eight hours.