A dripping sound echoes in through an open room.
Worn rendered walls wail, years of water exposure and lack of care showing through every crack and trail.
Mould growing in the corners, ever so slowly crawling outward, trying to latch onto anything it deems suitable.
Chains rattle like a choir of tone-deaf singers, scratching at the ears of any who dare to tune in to their words.
Soft and hard thuds vibrate in an inconsistent rhythm through the hollowed floorboards.
A muffled voice makes its way through a hallway.
"Just leave him there, but make sure he's restrained properly."
The sound of skin and cloth being dragged across uneven flooring haunts the air. A limp body hardly being carried by two men in all black, their shadows like hungry serpents, twist toward the body with greed and desire.
"What's the time?"
One of the men, pulling a free arm from his coat checks a worn silverish watch with a brown leather strap, shaking it to try and get it to work.
"Damn thing's broken."
With a sigh, and a bit of a grunt. The two men press the limp body against a squared wooden pole, stretching their backs after completing their task.
"I told you time would catch up with that old thing."
The feeling of steady drops of water sliding down past his face woke Leon up. Immediately his head was assaulted, screaming at him in aching pain.
Hovering over him, a towering figure, slyly dressed in all black, covered by a dark, draping cloak.
The blurry figure above, seeming colossus from Leon's angle, was tying a rope around his hands with great efficiency. They knew what they were doing, and they were doing it well.
The awkward silence was filled with the sounds of cloth shifting, and rope tightening in its attempt to tear through the fragile skin of its prey, as if a leviathan was strangling its prey.
Soon, the strange character above him was done and leaving the room with fading footsteps. The knot holding his hands together was tight. Too tight for Leon to dream of escaping it.
"We're done with this one. Come on, let's finish with the rest."
Eventually the blurry silhouettes disappeared, seemingly not noticing that Leon was now awake.
Trying to remember what had happened, the memory snuck in like a thief in the night. Slowly the images started to connect together, with each piece making the pain more painful.
He winced at each strike of pain; the injuries were taking turns to assault the sides of his head.
"The sides of my head?"
Then, the last piece clicked into place.
It was complete.
And it hurt.
Leon remembered eating his potato in a solemn mood, when the sound of wood breaking cracked through the night.
A wave of pain hitting the right side of his head in full force, followed swiftly by a second blow to the left when he met with the ground.
He remembered laying there for a few seconds, confused, the world had spun, his vision was littered with stars, and everything was a blur.
Through the blur, a slowly creeping puddle of crimson paint crawled outward from where his head laid. The deep red liquid staining the cobbled path, slipping between the cracks and holes, painting an abstract art around him.
In the reflection of his blood, he saw a reflection moving closer. The faintly distorted shadow becoming more and more clear, taking its true shape as it slowly nestled over his skin.
The shivering feeling of being watched wasn't his intuition playing games on him. The shadows dancing like jesters before their lord hadn't been the reaction to the wind, they had been welcoming something dark and sinister.
The shadows were bowing.
He had been attacked, and now he was in a precarious situation. His arms were tied to a wooden pole, its squared, rotted edges uncomfortably pinching at his unprotected skin.
His heart was racing. He was in a strange place, his arms now out of commission. Why was he here? Why had they attacked him? How long had he been unconscious for?
Did he even get to finish his potato?
No. He hadn't finished his potato. It was probably still laying there on the ground, mixing with his blood.
Slowly coming to his senses and restraining the onslaught of tremors in his head, he begun to assess his surroundings.
This wasn't the time to get comfortable without possibly paying a costly price.
And it certainly wasn't the time to be mourning a bloodied potato.
With the images of everything clearing up. The atmosphere became much darker.
Leon was in a relatively open room with the only natural lighting being sharp streaks of littered moonlight slipping through the cracks of a poorly held together wall, its surface showing signs of rot.
He wasn't too deep into this building, if it could even be called that. In fact, he was sure he could ram his way through the wall with enough effort.
What was truly harrowing about the scene before him though was the fact that he could see a head. It looked as though it was detached from its owner, shadows nestling into it.
All around him was a similar scene. Trails of blood leading in from where the shady figures had left, forking in several directions and meeting with broken bodies either tied to squared out poles like his own, or laid down in darker corners with limbs bound together.
Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes to hide from the horror show before him, he let out a stifled cry.
Not because he was worried about himself though.
The detached head looked strangely familiar. Although he couldn't see the face, it had the kind of frizz you'd only see once and never forget. White hair stained with a deep red patch of dried blood.
And peeking through the mess of hair, a pale nose, painted with an almost glowing lilac finish.
The scene before him seemed like a dream. Or rather a nightmare.
A stifled yelp escaping his mouth.
"No..."
Tears were flowing like rivers falling to meet his ragged, torn up pants.
Closing his eyes tighter, now biting his lips till he was drawing blood himself, he was hoping desperately to wake up at the Memorial Center before he had been attacked.
The head was Sable. She had been brought here too.
"Why... Why her? Why us?"
Yet the world that had birthed the two on equal grounds was not as forgiving to his greatest friend.
"It shouldn't have been her—no... Why is it her..."
Or maybe this was the worlds way of being merciful.
Maybe she was luckier than him.
And maybe Leon was about to find out why.