Absence of Light
by
sam

Disclaimer: I don't own anything that even pertains to the realm of the X-Files, nor do I intend to
foolishly claim I do. I don't even own a drivers license for Christ sake....

Rating: R

Summary: Punishment is paid and Mulder remembers

Thanks to Rebecca, who has become more than a beta-reader, but a true friend. Invisigoth a.k.a.
my sightly good twin, who has kept both my sarcasm and defense mechanisms from biting me in
the ass. And those of you who sent feedback. Thanks.

Please ask author for permission to archive

All comments/flames are found amusing and welcome Cody@hurricane.net

_____________

The ancient floorboards were coarse. Splintered and cracked with age. Worn down from too
many years of treaded soles tripping and dragging on its once unscathed and beautiful surface.
Standing, you could define crooked paths hidden deep within the wood, circling off to the left
then shifting to the right, leading to everywhere and nowhere.

His cheek kept scraping against the floor, leaving a bloody streak where splinters had broken off
and imbedded themselves into his beaten skin.

He lay there on the floor.

Dead to the world, but not quite. An eye swollen shut and the other at half-mast, the pupil a huge
black hole of the unknown, he couldn't even find the strength to slide it to either side. So tired
that the darkness didn't need to pin him down and crush the breath out of him. He couldn't
breathe. It hurt. It hurt so much, and he had failed. Failed miserably.

He had paid alright. He was suffering alright. When their fists had gone bloody and they had run
out of pleasurable ideas, imagination spent, on how to use that lovely blunt thing that invaded him
from every angle, they'd uncuffed him and attached the lead of his new choke collar to one of the
chain loops imbedded in the floorboard. Laughed down at him for awhile and nudged him with
their boots, shaking their heads.

In sympathy?

The thought brought a cruel rasp of noise that fell miserably from his broken lips.

No, not sympathy. It was a poor attempt to shake off the remnants of the bad joke that lay
twitching at their feet.

Fuckin' prick had learned his lesson alright. They'd clean up the bloody mess tomorrow.

It was raining again. Wasn't sure when it had started. Didn't know. Couldn't remember that part
of the day... Was it before the switchblade or after the baton? Couldn't remember. Didn't want to.

He could hear it though. The steady sshhh brought tears to the back of his eyes and soothed the
ache in his chest. The noise of it pounding the roof into submission seemed certain, encircled his
body and ran a chill down his stomach to his groin. That sound. It told him to be quiet, seemed
dirty in its normalcy. It sounded like the first night he had been kept here.

No talk, just metal against flesh and flesh against bruised flesh. No broken bones. They'd cuffed
him to the heater after that. After he'd made the mistake of shitting on their mothers sacred, holy
names. After he'd bloodied one of their lips. Insults were his forte for a time....

The heater sat attached to the farthest wall. It was an older model, metal with cream colored paint
chipping off. His hands were behind him and they'd sat down so they were facing him. He'd
growled, but didn't utter a word. Just stared savagely while they admired him. They'd turned it on
and waited for the fun to begin. Watched him squirm for awhile until he fully realized just what
they were doing.

He yelled fucking everything at them when the warmth turned to unbearable heat, spreading up
the metal of his cuffs and searing his wrists.

They told him about Scully that night.

He'd gone berserk.

They told him how sweet she was. What a shame it was they didn't need a female. How she'd
been waiting in the car for him. Waiting for him to come back with the gas... She had fought and
screamed for him.

For him.

They had hurt her bad. He could see it in their faces. In their eyes. She had fought. Marks of their
encounter with her lay visible on their faces. Oh god they had hurt her bad...

He'd lunged at them then. Gritted his teeth and swore to fucking Christ that he'd kill them. Jerked
back again and again when the cuffs wouldn't give against the iron. The branding metal cut deep
slits into his wrists, scraping the burns and blisters into a conglomeration of abscess and blood
that dripped off his fingertips in a steady course. His eyes had clouded over with tears that came
and went with the pain.

Vision muddled, a combination of rage and guilt made their way down through the grime and
blood on his face until the anger was too much to bare and the exhaustion silently crept up on
him. The unbearable pain in his chest took him down hard.

They hurt him after that.

It didn't matter.

They held his back to the grill of the heater and watched his eyes go wild with more pain and
more tears.

It didn't matter.

His eyes had gone surreal, glazed over with a somber sheen, simply shut down and lost focus...
He hadn't felt a thing.

He shifted painfully at the memory. The floorboards dug harder into his cheek, and he visibly
cringed, trying to ignore the steady thud of the rain.

___________

Noair.

Handsaroundyourthroat.

Time to die.

Is this what she felt!?!

Another tug from somewhere above urged his eyes to open, stutter, then close when he could
breath again.

"Rise and shine! It's daylight in the swamps!" A kick to his side for the hell of it and another jerk
on his choke chain.

Couldn't open his eyes. Knew there were tears in them.

"Hey Sunshine, I'm takin' to you!" A foot to his stomach and this time the collar lifted him off the
ground. Chain links slid back across each other creating a strange rattle in his ears as they closed
around his throat, held him up for a moment, then a boot slammed his chest back to the floor.

Silence and a screwed up face, lips pressed together tightly, denying the rough collision of teeth
and sound.

Opened his good eye and let the tears slip down. A harsh voice in his ear, a simple reminder of the
crack of bone and anguish.

"Let's get you cleaned up, boy."

___________

To: Cheshire Cat
From: Porter_c.s.lwis.
Subject: Surety

Product is in good hands. C. S. Lewis is fine. Fixed price is no longer fixed. Surcharge will be
forwarded to your account as per your request. Product was found with suspect and extracted.
Good condition, though not for long. Training is in order for this one. Fits all pre-requisites
you've specified and should benefit your needs nicely. Surtax in order for future beneficiaries and
safety. Product is extremely volatile as was suspect. Be advised, product is experienced and has
certain *needs*, pre-caution is extreme. Depreciation value is still set at bargain trial agreement.
Sooner is better than later.

p_

___________

Transparent light passively milled about in a frantic stupor, swaying drunkenly to the left, then
righted itself. His eye followed it, vision slanted and sliding after it sluggishly. Then squeezed his
eyes shut against it, just for a moment, when it hurt too much.

Concentrated on hunter green again. The cotton sweater his only hold on sanity. The texture
somehow seemed foreign to his calloused and bloody fingertips. Broken fingers knotted in the
course material for support between the two of them. Its color steadily becoming stained with
crimson that made his grip slippery as they dragged him outside.

The tree line stalked the back porch with a dark menace that silently crept up the twisted wooden
steps from the dirt path below.

The day was almost done. Overcast and gray, the sky seemingly dark, painful to look at. Light
refracted off of it at every angle and beat down the cold. He shivered hard beneath shackles and
clenched the man's sweater even harder as they forced him down the steps. His feet dragged
behind him, catching on splintered fibers that tore at the soles of his feet. He tried to get them
under him, somehow resist the force of forward movement, and growled when all he found was a
network of pins and needles painfully making their way up his sticky thighs.

"Nooo!"

One of them yanked the leash to his collar and the other slammed him face down into the dirt.
There was no time to recover, they had him by the arms again and dragged him to the tree line.
Found a spot just for him and finally said hello to the forest floor again when a boot slammed into
his back.

He screamed in pain and exhaled hard into the ground, blowing bits of dirt and shredded leaves
away from him. Tensed and inhaled harshly, found clear double edged air that cut though him, left
the scent of cold lingering on the tip of his tongue and a nice burning in his chest.

Warmth on his ear and fingers entangled in his hair. The fingers jerked his head up and moist
words were spoken too loudly.

"I don't want none of your shit today, sunshine." Heard a rattle of chains and a slight yank on his
leash.

Just let his lip tremble.

"We're just gonna clean your filthy ass off s'all." Slight chuckle and the hand slowly slipped down
from his scalp to massage his neck below the collar.

He hid the catch in his voice well enough, "Motherfucker."

The rough hands continued to massage his constricted shoulders and he could feel the man's sneer
from behind. "Well, ain't we loquacious today?"

Blunt fingernails took him by surprise and dug into his skin just above the collar bone. "That
fuckin little prim title of your's don't mean shit anymore! You hearin' me, boy? I think you
figured that out already though. You're a smart little fucker ain't you? Come on meat, say
somethin'! Say somethin' smart for me..."

He swallowed hard, let the words tumble out past his lips in a blur, and grinned fiercely into the
dirt. "How about a brief justification for the illogical necessities of modern man's existential
dilemma... or maybe we should take it slow and thread through the rationale of just how a sadistic
fucking cocksucker like you, came to be?"

The man above grinned and leaned harder into him. "How those fingers of your's doin'?"

He froze, breathing hard, too scared to notice how abrupt the woods had gone silent.

"I could have my friend take a look at em for you...." The fingers digging into skin shoved down
a bit farther, raking calloused fingertips and nails across his shoulders.

Shook his head slowly back and forth. "D-don't." His breath hitched when he felt the other man's
presence above. The man leaned down and reached out for his shackled hands cradled beneath his
chin.

Yelled at the dark that was slowly subjugating the woods and buried his hands under him,
"Nooo!"

The man sitting on his back forced his hips still with a knee grinding against his spine as a hand
fisted his hair and yanked his head up, exposing his hands.

The other man got down on his knees and jerked his hands out from under his chest. "No! Don't!
Shit please. No!"

The man grabbed his cuffs by the linking chain and forced his hands out until his arms lay fully
extended, pinned to the soft rocky soil that littered the ground like a curse. He screamed fiercely
when the man went to touch his bruised hands. The fingers in his hair tightened instinctively and
yanked hard, a warning.

He yelled savagely at the man peeling his fingers back, staring cruelly at his own hands in despair
with tears threatening to spill down.

He stopped yelling when the man paused, holding on to his twisted fingers with just enough
pressure to hurt. The man glanced at him, but he wasn't concentrating on the man. He kept his
eyes open a slit and focused on his blood stained fingers, gritting his teeth, heart beating so fast it
hurt. He knew they'd do it. No matter what. They'd make him suffer for the hell of it....

He saw the man break eye contact with him, the moment of hesitation over.

Fuck.

He screwed his eyes shut, forcing hot tears to spill down his cheeks as the man refocused on his
fingers. Screams welled up in his chest when the man twisted his finger back right. Heard another
sickening crack, then a shriek forcing itself between his clenched teeth that came out a sharp
guttural noise exhaled hard and fierce.

The hand holding his arm flat let go and he just laid there, paralyzed. His face flushed and the pain
still coursing through his veins. He couldn't move. Couldn't breath. Could only see the dark
seeking him out through the haze of pain and sound. They were talking above him. So soft and
quiet, hidden under the throbbing noise in his ears... A soft whimper rolled up his throat and off
the tip of his tongue.

The silence stood still. The static a long line of disquiet soldiers marching back and forth across
the heavens.

Time collapsed, its steady coarse ticks stopped, went dead, then started up again when metal
closed tight around his throat, lifting him up-up-up.

His hands flew up to his throat and desperately ripped at the collar. Every sound was suddenly
clear, cutting though the haze and forcing his eyes to go huge. He stood on his tip-tip-toes, unable
to breath and swaying slightly.

His breath came in short little gasps, broke off when he lost his footing, then regained their tempo
just before the darkness consumed him. It was like looking out of a barrel, darkness and strange
sounds echoing off walls that didn't exist.

It was silent for the shortest time and all he could hear was his own harsh breathing and the forest
din echoing throughout its wooded interiors. They became a deafening roar. Fear tickled the back
of his throat as the wind whipped past him. The noise empty and heavy, hard and hurting as it
danced delightfully, flicking a playful tongue at him, in his ear, while the world spun in disgusting
circles.

The wood erupted with a resounding noise of anguish when frigid water hit his body at full speed.
He cried out, determined, until his screams died off. Little cracks of noise struggling, hanging
horribly in the air.

Soundless and shrill.

Pleas gurgled sloppily past his lips, struggled to be heard, couldn't breath. The man with the water
hose kept spraying. Couldn't stop the shivers that disrupted his precarious footing. He strained
against the metal cutting into his throat. His fingers stopped scraping his neck bloody, just hung
from his collar, jerking on it every so often.

Death.

It only seemed fair.

It was only right....

It was almost dark out, he was numb from head to toe, hands hanging at his sides, tongue moving
languidly against the back of his teeth. Water hit his face again, but didn't posses the energy to
flinch. The black edges around his vision finally caved in, tumbled down and fragmented the last
bits of light he was straining to keep in focus.

He fell with ease into the dark in a downward spiral.

Down there you would feel nothing, know nothing. Just peace. An oblivion where time spent its
days standing still, watching you go by in a race of madness that always made sense.

Rushed up to meet the cool waters of the unknown when his body hit something solid. A lazy
tongue lifelessly caressed his lower lip, and tasted dirt. Realized he could breath again and shook
hard as he inhaled violently.

Suddenly, steel edged water licked harshly across his back, seeking out the welts there, and the
cries pent up in his chest rushed forth in a flow of profanity and pain. He buried his head into his
arms. Curled around his knees and rocked to and fro on his haunches. Sobbed pitifully and
moaned under his breath. Tried to tell them to stop. Stop doing this! Begged them to just lay off
the fucking collar. Begged and screamed...

The cold swept his frantic thoughts under his subconsciousness and a brought gentle fingertips
down over his eyelids, caressing them closed with soft, swelled lips.

Rough hands grabbed him and shook him hard, his eyes fluttered, vaguely recognizing that he was
being screamed at.

"I'm not draggin' your ass back, boy!"

A boot found his chin.

He thankfully traced a winding path back to the darkness with a little smile as his head snapped
back from the blow.

___________

One side of his face was annoyingly dry. His scalp was uncomfortably hot and itched while the
other seemed soaked and cold. He cracked his eyelids open at a shuffle of movement above him.
The man who seemed to enjoy the snap of his fingers was leaning directly over him and examining
his damaged eye. He took a deep breath, noticing the collar had been removed, for now. He
inhaled again, this time savoring it as he let his eyes roam to the side of him.

The heater.

He jerked up, inhaling sharply, and was quickly shoved back down by a gloved hand. He looked
up into the man's eyes. Flecks of golden honey reflected horror. A shake of the man's head and a
slightly painful, insistent hand on his chest explained that wasn't his purpose.

The hand kept forced him down again, then finally left. His head lolled away from the heater and
he breathed a bit easier. He found his mind wandering, dully realizing he had dozed off when he
heard a crinkle of plastic being ripped away. He forced himself to concentrate for just a few
fucking minutes until he was out of the woods...

The man appeared in his skewed vision with a needle and panic soared.

"Y-your a doctor?" God damned catch in his voice.

The man tapped the needle and ignored him.

Fluid went flying.

He lifted his head up, checking out how they'd situated his cuffs to the floorboard and yanked at
them uselessly. "Nurse?"

The man back handed him and his head snapped back, cracked against wood. A small trickle of
blood descended slowly from the corner of his mouth, rolling leisurely down his chin. He groaned
at the bite of the needle as it nipped at his elbow. He struggled feebly against the strong hand that
forced him over onto his stomach, and jerked when the needle jammed itself into his backside. A
boot flipped him back over onto his back with a sigh that seemed hollow in his ears.

He screwed his face up as a horrible taste developed in the back of his mouth.

The man watched him warily. The federal agent below was blinking hard and gagging slightly,
nose wrinkled up and eyes squeezed shut as if tasting liver for the first time. His lips were moving
soundlessly, trying to form words, but unable to correct his tongue to form the necessary
syllables.

The agent's neck was badly bruised, scraped raw and bloody from his persistent attempts to rip
the collar off.

"W-what... What did you give--"

The man was short with him. "Nothing. Just be still and stay quiet."

His vision was sloppy as he saw the clean-cut man stand up and walk out of his eye line. Fear had
him by the throat while he viewed the world as if submerged under murky water. Sounds were
muddled and far off, but he was conscious. A tremulous groan slipped over his lips like a rush of
water, letting his limbs tremble oddly. Dread crept up from his stomach and gave his heart a light
squeeze, just to get the blood racing. He couldn't think.

Apprehension warped his mind into a twisted mass of gray matter bent on finding a nice safe place
to hide.

He whimpered and waited instead.

___________

To: Porter_c.s. lwis
From: Cheshire Cat
Subject: Re: Surety

All matters concerning green and colors alike have been taken care of. It sounds like the treasure
hunt is over. C.S.Lewis is perfect is he? You're not painting the white roses red are you? He
seems a bit surreal by the sound of it. I'm very pleased, though I do prefer Carrol myself. Follow
the short-cut, proceeded with caution alike.

I appreciate obedience, although Lewis sounds fairly lacking in the area. I can't wait to meet him.
How's our suspect? The transaction has been halted until I know loose-ends have been tide off. I
would hate to have to cut off the spades head for an act unprofessional conduct.

C.c.
___________

Feedback is worshipped Cody@hurricane.net

And may have tremendous impact on how fast the next installment comes out...

"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars."
-Oscar Wilde