You’ve now got Harry tied up. His gagged mouth prevents him from doing any more than mumbling threats that you can’t understand.

Your phone flops out of your hand and plastic and glass cracks echo through the mostly empty room. You look around for anything that could help you to get an answer to wear they are holding Mysticalis.

You start to panic as what you want is just beyond your grasp. The only way to get it is to inflict utter pain and torture on your captive.

You lean over Harry and grab him by the collar of his shirt. You lift him up, not even thinking as you start to launch into a series of probing, loud questions. The shirt actually rips from the forcefulness of your approach and Harry’s head smacks the ground as he slips from your grip. He shakes his head, refusing any sort of response.

You run to the kitchen, the nearest room that’s stocked with anything in this new house, filled with taped boxes.

You slide across the laminate floor of the kitchen and right into the cheap Formica counter. You ‘d normally not treat a kitchen like this, but right now, you don’t give a shit, as you start to violently pull and throw open every drawer and every cabinet.

You realize that you’ll have to get some control of yourself as a few of the cabinets shut closed again from the hinges reversing the big momentum you give the cabinets. You look down at your clothes, covered in mud, wet, and... is that blood? You grab a hold of the counter and the edge of the electric stove as you glance across all of the open drawers for anything that could help you.

“What am I doing?” You say to yourself as you take a couple of long, deep breaths.

Your eyes never linger on anything that isn’t a way to inflict pain. You reach in and grab a typical kitchen butcher knife.

**

Harry’s eyes grow wide as you approach him with the butcher knife clutched in your good hand. You flex your fingers around the handle and loosen them back in forth to the pattern of your rising heartbeat.

The carpet crunches over each heavy footstep you make toward Harry. Specks of dried mud crumple off of your shoes and onto the stock white, clean carpet.

“You’re going to tell me where Mysticalis is. If you don’t...” you hold the knife handle between just two fingers and it swivels naturally by gravity so the point aims down at Harry’s prone body. His overalls and flannel will not protect him from a sharp knife of this size.

You loosen the gag just enough that Harry can speak muffled words. You stand over him, dominating his vision with your desperate, angry form. “Where is he?” You grit your teeth, trying to remain calm. Harry still stares at you nervously, but he says nothing.

“I’be beem stabbed befoe.” Harry utters out as he tries to slide along the thick carpet and turn his head away.

You grab his face by the jaw and press into his cheeks. “One,” you say as you stab him in the gut with a quick, vicious thrust.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Uunnggh.” He waggles about in sudden pain. The smell of the house goes from fresh cleaner and Fabreeze to blood and bodily odor. You wait another moment to allow him to speak.

He does not. “Two,” you say as the butcher knife digs into his abdomen with a stomach curdling slopping sound.

“Wha... what ur you doon...” Harry continues his pained, muffled speech. You wait.

No words of assistance come out of Harry’s clenching mouth. “Three,” you slash across his waist with more pressure than you thought. You hear the sound of flesh parting like the waters might have parted for Moses. The gushing sounds could probably be comparable as Harry’s tube-like intestines leak out of the gap in his body.

You’ve lost it. You start to laugh maniacally as you pull the gag out of the way and start to shove his own intestines into his mouth. He is forced to bite down and swallow his own intestines or choke to death.

**

You shake your head and look past the butcher knife, you are so angry, you could just lose control. It would be best to stick with something a little more subtle.

That vision and the sensation of stabbing are so real, pulsing through your head, you worry that you’ve had the experience before; it just scares the shit out of you.

You grab the electric whisk off of the counter and give the plug a quick wrap around the device. You almost excitedly make your way back into the carpeted room, smell of cleaning product making you light headed. You slap the plug into the nearest outlet and pull the trigger experimentally. The whisks spring around with a good bit of force and even you wince at the whizzing sound of the electrical device.

You approach Harry as you continue to apply pressure to the trigger. As you stand above Harry, you sweat with nervousness. You need badly to get Mysticalis back. After all the help he has given you, you owe him at least one life.

You lean over and loosen the gag. Harry spits it out as far as it will separate from his mouth. “I’m not telling you a damn thing, and mixing me into a batter sure won’t do you much good.”

You puff your cheeks out as your mouth fills with air in rage. You reach down and hold his arms steady as you shove the whisks into place with his fingers in the middle. Just as Harry is about to clench his fist to protect his vulnerable fingers, you press down on the trigger.

The whirring sound is more of a resisted grinding of the engine until his fingers lose their grip and you hear several snaps and pops. The fingers on his hands break and twist out of the way of the high speed industrial whisker.

Harry starts to scream and hold up his arms as best as he can. He looks down to survey the damage. You react quickly to push the gag into his mouth more to stifle his agonizing utterances. He spits the gag back, “You got no power over me, some broken fingers ain’t...”

You interrupt his words with a desparate elbow to his throat and yank of the gag out. You shove the whisker down into his mouth. You press down into his maw with one hand on the back of the electric whisker while the other holds it steady. Harry tries to shake you off now, but starts to wiggle chaotically as you pull the trigger on the whisker.

Blood starts spraying out of his mouth and you hear him gurgling on it. These sounds are complimented by the tinking of the whisks hitting and chipping at his teeth.

Harry starts kicking the ground with his legs rapidly, trying to get your attention. You pull back off of the trigger and lean up, from your straddling position.

“Okay, okay!” He coughs out the words, just wishing to make it stop. “They took your pal to a spot in DC to take him apart piece by piece.”

**

Washington, DC

Now that Harry has spilled the beans, you move with all haste, almost tripping on your way out of the front door. You frantically work the handle of the car door before remembering to unlock it first. You jump in and open up the small duffle bag on the passenger seat floor.

You exhale heavily as you jostle the bag around and see the .45 caliber pistol come into view. You’ve never shot at something other than a target before, but you don’t have the rune sword of Mysticalis to protect or aid you now. You’ve got to rescue it. Thinking of Myst as an it bothers you even now. You wish you could say him or her; it would make your feelings less confused. All you know now, you must get Myst out of danger and convince it to keep its less bloody path.