"As a student of these things," began Abbadonando, half turning toward his companion, Oscuro, and their struggling captive, Casimir Spencer, "I have come across one very important means of extracting information."
"I don't know where he is!" blurted out Spencer, a fit of trembling indignancy overwhelming him. He was swiftly made silent again, Oscuro's heavy glove cupping his mouth and holding it tight.
"Oh, shh, shh... Hush now, Mr. Spencer, our friend is telling us a story," Oscuro replied, a pitched motherly tone as if he were speaking to a child.
"I do not believe you do know, but I do know that you believe they might," Abbadonando answered Spencer's concern, smiling a brittle smile. "So, I think that, as a good host, you'll introduce us to them."
Spencer only struggled harder at this suggestion, squirming and fussing like some half-stuck piglet, unaware it only digs the knife in deeper. Sometimes better to endure pain and death than know what is waiting on the other side of that door.
"The syrup?"
"The syrup."
Muffled cries and tormented quaking quickly turned to stone silence.
"What would inspire such horror, do you imagine?" Oscuro asked, hefting the chunky body over one shoulder with light ease.
"Men who never dream," Abbadonando answered.
"Thi-ti-hate-a-do, c-i-j sanes-chee pra, wim-nu-hao wene, te-hieg Seh-ubb-ane-aggi. Spider-Man, Spider-Man, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man..."
He crawled up over of the side of the bathtub, sore, sick. Memories flickering in and out, empty pen memories, creeping, slithering, sore, sick. He sang-song what he could remember, voice bubbling up, gooey, sick.
"Action is his reward, to him... life is a great big bang up..."
Dr. B. had gone, or had he gone? Yellow transfusor box still clamped around the wrist, memories of long plastic tubes, green radiant life. Chittering from the hole in the ceiling.
"Where ever there's a hang up... reneoi dunnu aeru pr he hene..."
Words overlapped in his mind, nonsense, unmatching verses as one form overcomes another. Dream language hardening. Vomit eating through the floorboards, sore, sick.
