31_days | [November 1st] [Original] Defiant

Title: Defiant
Day/Theme: November 1st - He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror
Series: My post-apocalyptic-pre-industrial vampire story
Character/Pairing: Unnamed male of ideterminate supernatural species
Rating: PG-13
Crossposted to octoberwriting

A.D. 2145 – Shift Year 15

Midnight.

The whip cracked, smacking flesh. There was a wet squelch, but the pale haired man refused to utter even one single moan. Not a syllable would pass his lips. He would persevere. He simply had to. He would not waver. His thin frame was strapped to an old office chair and every time he was struck, it moved a little on it's wheels, only to be kicked or pushed back to place. The whip cracked again, rocking the man. Dazed from the pain in his back and malnutrition, he looked about himself. At his captors.

”Why was it done?” was asked of him once again. The words were wearing at the edges by now, having been used so often already. But the man would not budge.

Yet the trouble he was in was because, deep under his skin, he was no man at all. He might look like a human male, but inside he was something completely different. Something fantastical. Something humans feared. But it was not his person which had prompted the assault, the torture. It was what he represented. Otherness. The Great unknown. Even when his kind had been out in the open for years now.

But he still bled like any man, any son of human.

Scarlet droplets dripped onto the floor from the lashes of the whip. The man drew breath, his lungs burning as he did so. He coughed up a little blood, courtesy of cracked ribs. Had he been human, that would have had him unconscious by now, as he was not, it mostly only hurt. Like hell warmed over. His long ivory hair was stained with blood and hung on matted tails down his back and front, partly glued to his skin by congealed blood.

He knew that he ought to be scared, knew that he would most likely end up being killed, once his captors were done with him. He was not sure if he should be terrified or not. For what was terror for someone like him? The humans were around him in a semi-circle, they had dragged him into an abandoned building full of skeletons of the past, gadgets and gizmo's which did not work. He had seen his captors look at the computers, knowing full well what they were but angry at themselves because they did not know how to use them, not that they could have, had they known, for there was no electricity at all in the whole of the world. Hadn't been for fifteen years. Not since the Shift. He saw one woman look at a computer with interest and then look away, a blank look in her eyes. That's how it always started. The anger triggered something. Soon enough, the world would forget and everything would be better.

He drew a deep breath, not deigning his captors the pleasure of seeing him grimace, how ever much he would have loved to do so. Although he might not show it, but he was actually in quite a bit of pain.

Should he deign his captors with an answer?

What answer did he owe to people who had ambushed him, tackled him to the ground, kicked him and finally dragged him and tied him up and then proceeded to torture him for information? How were they any better, them humans, than what they claimed any Myth creature to be? Ever since the Shift humans had, for the most part, accused the Myth community as being violent and not adhering to human morals. Even when humans themselves seemed to mostly take any opportunity to capture and kill any non-human creature they came across. With the world in chaos, well, the human part of it with it's governments and different types of societal structures, there were those who were determined to blame the Shift on the Myth community. Torturing those they caught, determined to get to the truth. Wanting to make the world like it had been, overcrowded, polluted, sick and failing.

There was no reasoning with them.

“Why was it done?!” Was demanded of him again, following a whiplash. His captors seemed to think that if they wore the words thin, bleeding them into his mind, he would give them an answer, any answer. However, he was quite sure that any answer he could give them would not satisfy them.

He remained silent. He observed. He persevered.

His captors were a group of both men and women. Four and three. The men buffed, armed, looking at him with loathing. The women a mixed bunch of two armed and one equipped with the fitting of a witch. So the group was not as loathing of the Otherworld as they were trying to portray. Not with a witch in tow, her powers the same that the Myths who wielded magics used. Or something like that. The blood made all the difference. He wondered if the other humans knew that their witch probably had some Fey blood in her, or some other Mythos blood, depending on where she was from.

The whip sang again,, his flesh squelched and he did not flinch.

He let his shining pale green eyes look at each individual in turn. Some of them were beginning to fray at the edges by his resistance. They were getting restless the longer he remained silent. The longer he remained defiant. He would show them the nature of resistance, of dexterity. Of strenght in the face of adversity.

Later, hours later, he did begin to feel that if he could have given them the answers they were trying to beat out of his flesh, he would have been more than happy to hand them over. He knew that in death, he would overcome the current pains of his mortal body, yet the thought was not as comforting as it should have been when the humans uncovered bone.

He did scream, at the end, his blood a pool on the floor, his body broken. He took the truth he did not know with him to his death.