Animosity

1. Boredom and an Attempted Escape

There are exactly exactly 240 minutes in 4 hours, and exactly 14400 seconds in 240 minutes.

He would know; he'd been counting each one while trapped in the room in an attempt to keep sane.

This was an ironic action considering the reason he was trapped in the room. The too-bright, sterile-white room that was barely larger than a washroom in which there was even more nothing to do.

He wished he could paint the walls; splash them with a rich royal blue deep enough to drown himself in, or throw bright red at them and watch it drip down like liquid fire or blood.

He wouldn't even mind using blood really; it would have been acceptable at that point.

Preferably the blood of the people who strapped him to the table and knocked him out before locking him in there, but even using his own would be better than this.

Anything
to stop the walls from blinding him.

Unfortunately, they made sure he would be completely defenceless and unable to harm himself in any way that wasn't gruesome and incredibly painful.

But would it honestly have killed them to give him a fucking chair? He wasn't even sure if he could get up, being frozen to the floor and all.

He was just happy the shadows had stopped bothering him. He had tried to kill his own many times, and no matter how bored he was, he had made himself vow to never speak to it again.

He could however feel the vow crumbling, like a vampire in the sunlight, each time he thought of it; like ash in the wind it was soon blown away as he asked it if it knew how to escape.

It was almost exactly 5 hours, 300 minutes, 18000 seconds before it replied, but it hardly mattered.

The thing about shadows was that they rarely made sense, even though they were incapable of lying.

After pondering the response, "The red button," for what seemed like years, but was actually half an hour he'd had enough.

Upon almost joining his body in falling asleep, he tried to stand. This was evidently a mistake, which he realized once the the sharp pins of pain pricked his limbs and he almost fell back down.

He may not have fallen, but he did end his movement staring at the ceiling. There was indeed a red button glaring down at him like the eye of an animal. It was like a blemish on a porcelain doll the way it stood out and didn't belong.

There was no obvious way to reach it, but he didn't see any way for them to be monitoring him, so he thought why the hell not?

Jumping to reach didn't work, trying to climb the walls didn't work; nothing was working.

He was about to give up when his shadow spoke once more.

"Let me lift you," it said. Its voice sounded like rusted nails being rubbed together; one of the many reasons he didn't trust or talk to it.

"Um no; you're about as trustable as you are attractive, in case you forgot."

The shadow chose to ignore his comment and replied with, "It is your best option, unless you want to sit again and twiddle your thumbs until they return."

Reluctantly he moved towards the wall. He saw his shadow grow longer until it was able to wrap its hands around his sides and push him up. Yet another reason he hated his shadow; it was freezing cold. It left him at a glacial temperature inside and out.

He was shivering so intensely he couldn't even hit the red escape dot the first few attempts. He somehow managed to eventually get his spasms under control for long enough to brush against it, but he was still completely unsure of what it would actually do.

Not much could have prepared him for what happened next.

----/--/----

He thought he'd died and gone to hell when he hit the ground with a solid thud. Upon spitting clumps of metallic tasting dirt out, and trying to wipe a thick layer of it off his hands, he realized this wasn't the case.

It wasn't the world that was on fire; it was just him emanating red light, and through that red light he was able to see only a few feet in any direction. The rest of the world may have been plastered in darkness that was thicker than molasses, but his little light bubble was almost pleasant. He stood and saw the dirt he'd landed in was very odd; it was thin; as powdery and silvery as ashes. There seemed to be grey plants that he'd crushed that were wilting even more the longer he stood by them.

He walked forwards, having no idea what direction he should even be going in.

He was entirely alone again, even his own shadow was gone now that he was a walking lightbulb. After walking around for what seemed like hours; feeling like he was about to pass out from exhaustion, he stopped.

There was a small glowing path winding infinitely through the sagging grey trees like a piece of string through a maze. An end wasn't visible to him; all that was beside it was a chasm; which when he walked towards and looked into was void of even a drop of light. Even his own light couldn't burst through more than 3 feet down. Of course he couldn't properly see any of it over the thick, gloopy fog that blanketed everything but the path in a thick cloak of misery.

It seemed like a better option than wandering aimlessly or jumping headfirst into a bottomless pit; he followed it.

He was almost suicidal by the time he actually reached a fork as he was even more bored than he would've been in the room, only now he was also exhausted and confused.

When he tried to take another step he clanged into a large wall, but he couldn't see anything in front of him besides the 2 new paths that might've been his only chance of escape.

Trying to look for a door was nearly impossible, like looking for an invisible needle in an invisible haystack. He clawed desperately at the wall with sweaty, aching fingers, but to no avail. Once he realized this wouldn't work, he threw himself at it with all the energy he was capable of producing, but that was worse for him.

All he received as a result of his actions was a bruised arm and maybe a head injury. Some part of his brain was starting to panic as he drifted in and out of consciousness, but a bigger part had already been subdued by darkness not unlike the likes of which he was surrounded by at that moment. Before he could even reach his arms out, he was already gone.

----/--/----

In his unconscious state, he dreamt. It started off normally, with glimmering gold liquid flooding down streets; moonlight stripping away most of its colour so it would've looked almost silver to anyone who didn't know better.
Soon the liquid poured over him in waves of soothing, slippery warmth. He had thrown his hands up to welcome it, so he was almost surprised that when it passed, he was left in a cage of rusting black iron bars. There were various shadows starting to surround him. Faced with the unfamiliar feeling of fear, he started waking up.

The remnants of sleep that were still drifting away completely vanished and were replaced with disappointment. He was back in the white room, and everything was the same as it was before he'd left.

He'd expected there to be rips in his clothes; blood on his fingertips, but there was none. None of it had felt like a dream, yet he knew anyone would tell him that's exactly what it was.

He was too busy plotting revenge against his shadow for failing to get him out, and contradicting everything he'd thought he'd known about them to notice when something did change.

He only saw the door had opened when someone's heels clickety-clacked to where he lay.

"Are you having fun?"

He tensed, ready to spring at whoever it was and make a run for it.

"Oh don't be shy; I've heard all kinds of things about you."

He was so focused on the woman, he didn't notice the guards either until they had already bound him and lifted him painfully to his feet.