From Murder to Dust

ALP - 7 - Life

"Let them go!" Nightmare grabbed Ink's arm with one of his appendages, only to be flung across the room.

"I'm afraid not." Ink chuckled; Killer and I struggled as the rest of our family tried to make Ink let us go, failing.

"Put us down!" Killer struggled.

"If you want!" Ink slammed us on the floor; that was a poor choice of words. "Here we go."

"Don't!" I yelled; it was to no avail. "Please!"

"Do you really think your pleads will do anything?" Ink smirked.

Before any more attempts could be made, Ink took his chance to pull one of each of our arms behind us and break them with relative ease, receiving screams of pain. My left arm was snapped, while Killer's right was broken. The rest of our family rushed up to us when Ink finally let go.

"That should be a sufficient lesson." Ink smiled happily; he was sick.

"You'll pay for that!" Error growled.

"I highly doubt it!"

"You're going to be all right..please, please be all right.." Nightmare cried, holding us close, being careful of our arms; we were whimpering.

"Right, what should we play next?" Ink questioned, grabbing Horror and Cross by their hoods; that wasn't good.

"N-nothing!" Cross pleaded. "We-we don't w-want to play!"

"Did I ever say you had a choice?"

"Please, let them go!" Error begged.

"Hm..all right." Ink dropped Cross and Horror, but he quickly scooped up Error, who wasn't thrilled, but he was happy that the others were safe. "I'll just play with you for a while."

After three hours of cracks, bruises, and cries, Ink finally let us go; he always made excuses for why we were so beat up after being alone with him, such as: "Killer and Dust thought it would be a good idea to balance themselves on my head," or "Error decided to see what happens when I'm used as a jungle gym." Those were the ones he used this time, and they somehow worked, just like all his other excuses; I wondered if the friends were suspicious of him at all, because we were only injured badly when we were left alone with him. They seemed to believe him, despite our hopes. When Ink finally stopped, Killer had a broken arm and a lot of bruises, Error had been badly beaten, and I had a broken arm paired with some cracks in my skull from trying to stop Ink from hurting Error; we were the worst injured, but we would live. When the friends returned, they were worried about us, but they never suspected that Ink was behind our injuries; we received medical care, though, which was good. When the day eventually ended, we were relieved, since we didn't have to lay our eyelights on Ink for two days; that was pleasant. We spent the two days playing with the friends, and we savored every second of it; we had to - Ink would be coming back soon.

After our two-day reprieve, Ink returned at 4:00 A.M. the next day, ready to give us more pain; we didn't like pain. Pain was commonly used as a warning not to do something again when dealing with children; with us, it was just normal. Every third day, we suffered through pain, and there was no way to stop it. We had tried being obedient, accepting it without a word, and even begging, but he would never stop! He never..stopped. Some of us were starting to accept it as normal; there was nothing else to do. He wouldn't stop unless he was caught, and he would never be caught; we were starting to lose hope. When the morning search was over, we cried without even having to be put through pain; we knew it would come anyway. Ink seemed to enjoy our crying; he was a true monster. With magic and proper medical care, our broken bones had healed already, but they would just be broken again; we knew they would. Ink started out the day by sitting us on the floor and making us watch as he tortured us one by one; we cried harder, even pleading for him to stop, but he wouldn't respond. He would never respond! When Dream walked in at two o'clock, he didn't even notice our underlying pain; Ink made sure of that.