Her Strength, His Weakness

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The first thing that he noticed as he awoke was the constant dripping sound that seemed to echo throughout the room that he was in. Then came the smells, horrid smells that one should never have the chance of smelling in a lifetime. The smell of death, death in the most cruelly unnatural ways.

As his head stopped spinning and came to a standstill he came to the realization that he was completely restrained. His hands chained well above his head while his feet were chained to the walls below. Giving a hard tug Maru was assured he would not be getting out of them anytime soon.

Calming himself from the rage consuming the inside of him at being restrained, Maru took note of the room he was being held within. It was small and dark with two wire grate covered lights hanging from the ceiling, one above him and the other across the room. The walls were made of cement, of that he was sure even though it was hard to see any of the cement through the blood covering the walls. There were no windows only a door, the door was a heavy wooden one that had metal reinforcements running throughout it. By the cool temperature while in the middle of one of the hottest heat waves they have had in years, as well as the fact that the air was stale, he easily deduced that he was in a cellar or basement of some kind.

In one corner he could see a cracked water pipe where the dripping was coming from. Sure that there was nothing held within that particular corner of any help Maru turned to the next corner. There he found what appeared to be a large pot of, judging from the smell, bodily waste. From there his eyes went to the third corner. It was in this corner that he became aware of what the smells he first experienced when waking were from. There was a pile of human bodies laying there, one on top of the other. Most of them were in pieces, some nothing but a mass of torn meat…none recognizable.

While his attention was upon the pile of discarded bodies his ears caught what seemed to be a whimper to his immediate right, the corner he had yet to look at. Whipping his head around so fast his neck popped, Maru took in the sight of a young girl covered in blood stained clothes that were ripped close to shreds curled up as far into the corner as possible. While taking in her appearance he realized that, though she was covered in blood and her hair was in complete disarray, he recognized her.

It was not even an hour ago, he believed though unsure of how long he had been out, that he had seen her picture along with others on the television. She was part of the group of high school students that had been missing for close to a month now. As the young girl whimpered yet again Maru came to the sick understanding of just exactly who made up the pile in the other corner.

“How long have I been here” his voice rasped from the temporary damage the prior gas had done to his throat.

“Y-y-you arrived last night I think. I’m not sure though cause my watch was broke.” came a quiet and obviously scared voice. She still had yet to look up at him, though he knew by her voice that she was quietly crying.

She had lost her watch while trying to fight off their kidnaper from forcing himself on her best friend Kya a while back. It only resulted in her getting a busted lip and knocked out, which was probably the kindest thing the man ever did for she didn’t have to be tortured by her best friends screams as she did with the others. However, because she was out she couldn’t try and help her friend again. When she awoke it was in a pool of Kya’s blood with her dismembered body lying next to her. Even with all the other deaths she had watched it was looking at her childhood friends decapitated head drooling white that disturbed her the most. She figured it was probably because they had taken a pledge together when they were ten and both had kept to it, to save themselves for love. Neither had yet to find love so she found herself crying the tears she thought she no longer had to cry over the circumstances of her friends first time, as well as her own.

She still cried silently, for the monster of a man had not been as kind to her as the others, he didn’t put her out of her misery. She feared that he would keep her around for his sick satisfaction longer because she was the last one left to play with. He had played with and killed all the others, though judging by the different ways they all died she was still unsure which would truly be worse.

They remained silent for a while until she finally swallowed her fear and spoke.

“They were my friends.”
Friends, she found it funny in an ironically morbid kind of way to be calling them all such a title. Especially Taryn. She came on this trip with her only two true friends in the world, Kya and Tiff. However, it was by the end of the last death that she had nine of the group of ten to call a friend. She found it ironic that Taryn and her little group had always said that it would take death itself for them to be friends with her. It appears that it truly took death to bring them together. Even the most hated enemies found friendship in a time of desperation.

Maru looked over at her in surprise at hearing her voice, though no one could ever tell.
“I know.”

“How?” the girl finally looked up at him with a look of complete confusion. It was now that Maru saw her completely. She had ebony black hair that contrasted greatly with her pale complexion and her eyes were the most unique ones he had ever seen. They were almost ghostly in their shade of light blue, truly beautiful. Maru couldn’t help but wonder what she would look like without all of the dried blood and dirt on her. He was so caught up inspecting his new cellmate that he almost forgot to answer her.

“You and your friends have been all over the news for a month now.”

“A...A…mmmonth?!?....has it really been that long?”

“It appears”

Hearing this she started to cry even more.

‘A month…and no one has found us! I guess this means that my hopes of being found before I meet the same end as my friends is hopeless.’

Getting uncomfortable with the girls crying, for he had always hated when females cried, Maru decided to try and distract her from the depressing fact of the time period of her kidnapping.

“What’s your name?”

Sniffling she calmed herself down enough to answer, “Raya…Raya Hara”

“As in the late Samuel Hara?”

Calming down a little more upon hearing her long dead father’s name Raya took a better look at the man to see if she recognized him. Coming to the conclusion that she didn’t know him and had been alone in this cell for a few days now with no one to talk to Raya decided she would much rather end her loneliness than sit in this offal room in silence any longer.

“Yes that was my father’s name, but he has been dead since I was ten. How do you know him?”

“Ten hu? Well I guess that makes you around 16? I am Maru Cane, My father Alex used to do business with Sam. I met him through my father.”

“Oh, um…yeah I’m sixteen, just turned. I think I remember hearing about a Cane, if I remember dad was on his way home from a business meeting with Cane Enterprises when he died.”

“Yeah, I think so”
Again it was silent and they were left to their thoughts. Noticing Raya shrinking back into herself, as well as her eyes growing blank Maru came to the conclusion that with him chained to the wall he would need her to help in order to escape. However, with her retreating from the living world every time she was left to herself to dwell on the tragic events within this past month, Maru found she would be useless unless distracted. The problem was that he was not a very sociable man unless it was with Ava. So forcing himself to attempt to be sociable Maru started speaking.

“I thought it was supposed to be a graduation trip for the graduating seniors, what were you doing on it?”
Startled out of her dangerous thought and memories Raya looked up to Maru.

“It was, but the graduates were allowed to bring up to two guests as long as they paid the extra money. My friend Tiff used to live right next door to me when we grew up; she invited me and my best friend Kya to go with her…we used to be inseparable…” It was here that she started to cry. She had to watch as her best and only friends were tortured and killed in ways not even the horror movies she was banned from watching could imagine. The sick bastard still had Tiff’s skin from when he skinned her alive, he said that her skin was exceptional and reminded him of his mother’s so he wished to keep it. Sick bastard.

Seeing that she was once again crying Maru tried another topic.
“So…Raya…what do you like to do?”

Looking up at him with a glare, Maru received an unexpected answer.
“Look I may be an emotional wreck, hell from everything that has happened I may be insane by the time I get out of here, but don’t treat me like a child. If you want to talk, talk. But don’t go around in circles treating me like a fragile doll, cause I will crack there is no way around that, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll be useless. And don’t try and be my friend, incase you haven’t figured it out being my friend is a death sentence lately. Besides your only going to die, like me, so there is no point. No one is coming to save us…not after a month…” she had started out with such anger that had been unleashed after it’s silence for so long, but by the end she was speaking with barely more than a whisper.

After her outburst it was only silence that remained between them for the rest of the night, neither truly wishing to hear from the other.

They became alert the next morning to the sound of the door opening.

“Ahh, I see you are finally up Maru” the man’s raspy voice echoed throughout the room. As he stepped closer to Maru and further into the room he mistakenly left the door slightly open Raya noticed this, but Maru’s attention was elsewhere.
His eyes widened as he looked upon the familiar appearance of his kidnapper. The man was tall and muscular, his dark skin much darker from the lack of sunlight and his eyes so dark they were almost black. However it was the teal hair that clicked it all into place, apparently Lucas still loved teal hair like he did those four years ago when their father and his mother died in the crash. Maru was surprised to see Lucas out of the insane asylum that he personally forced Lucas into.

It was four years ago after his parents died that Maru came home to find his older half brother had finally followed his birth mother’s path and snapped. With his father’s death Lucas had gone insane and killed all the household pets in such brutal ways that it had the previous house staff refusing to ever set foot in the house again. Maru still remembers how he came home after dropping Ava off at her friend’s house for the day so she didn’t have to be there as he went through their parents things and packed them away. He had just entered the house when he slipped on a puddle of blood. It was there as he got up and stood in the entryway of the house that Maru witnessed what had, until this day, been the worst scene he had ever laid eyes on. There was blood all over the foyer and sitting on the ground in the middle of it was Lucas making a decapitated cats head talk. Maru had not known what to do, his parents had just died, and he gained total control over the family company and guardianship of his younger sister. He was unsure what to do in this situation or how to deal with Lucas period, for his father had always dealt with Lucas, though Lucas had never been this bad before. Scared and unsure Maru did the only thing he could think of in order to protect Ava and himself, he hit Lucas over the head knocking him out and drove him to the Asylum two towns away. It was there that he bribed some hospital officials to keep his older half brother against his will in silence for protection of the family name. Maru had not seen or heard from Lucas since.

“Lucas? How did you get out?!?!” Maru asked in absolute shock.

“Aww so you do remember me hu brother? I’m surprised, seeing as how you locked me up and forgot about me for so long.”

“You snapped Luke; you went crazy on the pets I couldn’t take the chance. How did you get out?”

“Funny thing brother dearest, those officials you bribed…they aren’t in charge of the asylum any more and the new guys, well lets just say they noticed that I had no paperwork and was being held against my will. Silly idiots were SO easy to fool, they released me right away.” At that Lucas started to laugh, a laugh the sent chills down not only Raya’s spine but Maru’s as well.

“Why, why do this?”

“WHY…WHY???? Because you destroyed my family! It was because that whore of a mother of yours that father betrayed mother’s memory only a year after she died. It was because of you that father was no longer proud of me, no longer gave all his attention to ME! It was YOU that got father’s company and it was YOU that scheduled father to leave on THAT day…it is YOUR fault that father is dead!” With this Lucas started punching Maru as hard as he could in the gut.

After Lucas stopped Maru attempted to speak through his panting.
“I understand that you hate me Lucas, you always have. I was asking why the students…why them…”

Laughing Lucas could only look at Maru as if he was crazy.
“Because there is nothing as beautiful as destroying innocence, and while the younger the better for such a delightful task, the teenagers are so much fun to play with. You can have different kinds of fun with them and they aren’t so fragile that they would break and die before you are finished.” It was the lustful look Lucas gave during his speech on fun that gave Maru a disturbing feeling of the need to vomit. Lucas was even more of a monster then he feared and Maru was really wishing right about now that he had just allowed the family name to tread through the dirt a little and turned Lucas in that long time ago.

Growing bored with all this talking Lucas raised up his blade and gave a sinister smile as her raked it down Maru’s chest tearing his shirt off in the process. Laughing as Maru bit his lip to keep from making a sound; Lucas continued to cut even deeper slices any where he could get his hands on. By the time he stopped Maru was covered in blood and panting from the attempt to remain upright and silent. Standing back to look at his work Lucas smiled.
“It appears that I will have to do more to you to make you scream for me hu brother?”

With that Lucas started to peal at some of the slices on Maru’s body taking off parts of layers of skin. At this Maru couldn’t hold back the Screams of pain, making Lucas enjoy it just a little bit more.

While this was happening Raya who sat forgotten in the corner, started to silently make her way to the unsupervised door. Desperate to get out she all but forgot about Maru until she heard the pained scream. Stopping she looked over to the scene that was taking place. It was then she realized just what she was about to do and felt a disgusted sickness fill her at the thought that she was seriously just about to abandon this man to the dementedly twisted monster. Though desperate to get out she knew that she couldn’t live with herself knowing that she left another to the horrid fate she knew awaited him.

With this she ran full force as fast as she could at Lucas and jumped on him from behind pulling at his hair and hitting him as hard as she could with what little strength she had left after being deprived from food and water for the past few days. Realizing that she was not going to achieve anything at this rate she looked up at Maru with a desperate look asking for help. All she got was a gasping man with a thankful look on his face; apparently it was when he screamed that he turned his head in the right angle to see her by the door and so close to leaving. Unsure what to do but desperate for anything Raya dug her ripped and jagged nails as deep as she could into Lucas’s throat and pulled. Screaming in pain Lucas threw her to the wall further bruising her and breaking open her already split lip again. With his hand covering the surprisingly deep and bleeding gash on his neck Lucas ran out of the room screaming that there would be punishment.

After the door once again shut and locked Raya pulled herself up from the ground and limped over to Maru. Picking up his torn shirt she started to try and stop his bleeding.

“Why?”

Looking up at the grunted question she saw the curious gaze of an injured man looking down at her, for the first time she saw him without his emotionless mask on.

“Why what?”

“Why did you stay and help when you were so close to escaping?”

After a bit of silence she responded “because I couldn’t live with myself if I had left you to such a fate.”

“Thank you”
Hearing such a genuine and heartfelt expression leave this previously emotionless mans lips Raya looked up and smiled. Maybe there was hope for them; maybe if they worked together they could survive this. For certainly it was better to fight then lay back and die. Maru had not been there as long as her; he still had most of his strength which could come in handy.