Vasyl's Raccoons: A Fictional Narrative

He slowly got on his knees as tears started to flow from his eyes. She was visibly disgusted at the sight of his crying, sending a powerful kick towards his stomach, causing him to cough up spit. He coughed violently as he held onto his stomach. She looked down at him shaking her head as she pulled him up by his head.

Guinevere dropped down onto the grass beside her friends. “Very well. He misses home and insists he’s doing his best to make sure this is the last extended campaign away from home for a very long time.”

He placed his huge hands around Vladimir’s throat and squeezed hard. Vladimir could feel his eyes pressing against their sockets from the pressure of Andrei choking him. His lungs hopelessly tried gasping for air.

Melisende's injured hand lay limp in the bonds as her other worked feverishly trying to free herself from the makeshift bonds keeping her ankles and wrists held together. Her fingers curled beneath the string in an effort to get her palm curled enough to free her hand however just as she managed to get one finger lodged through, she heard the hard clumps of his boots as they approached her bound form before she felt his roughened hands moving around her svelte body before lifting her up over his shoulder and flopping her down on her stomach, her wrists and ankles still painfully held together behind her. Melisende inhaled sharply in pain as her stomach was pressed painfully against his shoulder.

Gentle hands caressed my face, and I slowly opened my eyes. Hester Prynne's eyes were sparkled with crystal tears, and I moved to sit up and wipe them away, but she pushed me back down.

The world blurred before him, his eyes unable to focus due to the pain he was in. Sound rang through his ears as another slap struck his face, delivered to him by his torturer. Sheril was violent and overemotional, beating Lavi into submission and then soothing the wounds he’d caused. He’d proclaim his love for the redhead and then break another bone. Lavi had lost count of how many had been crushed, how many scars he’d gained. Even with his excellent memory, when he tried to think of the old panda or those he knew at the Order, Lavi kept drawing blanks. All he knew anymore was the man in front of him.

Blaize panted and took a shaky step back. Blood dripped onto the floor in thick, heavy splatters. The man in front of him was past the point of screaming, his voice hoarse and fractured, with tears and blood running in rivulets down his contorted face. But Blaize wasn’t done yet. The thick pools of blood spilled on his lap weren’t enough. There was a deep, cavernous hunger that rose in Blaize, that sent heat rushing through every vein in his body. He grabbed Lawrence’s chin /hard/, pulling him so that the pathetic man looked him in the eyes. Blaize chuckled. Those pretty eyes looked so /scared/, shaking and filled with tears.

Her eyes shot open at the noise of a loud clunk, not that her eyes were being put to much use because there was nothing around her but darkness. As she reached both her arms out, she discovered two walls on either side of her.

“It’s my fault... It’s my fault for all of this!” he shouted. “Mom died, dad was captured, Miss Ingrid was hurt, Alis lost her legs, and it’s all because I’m so damn

        "Why in the hell did you put me out there to be killed?!?!" she yelled in a voice only a mother had. Jedediah twitched as his mate yelled at him. I tried to move away from him, but he just shoved me closer.

Even though I was very weak, I could feel warmth through my arms that gave me strength. My grip was not painful but yet their eyes grew wide as their necks stiffened. I was replaying all of the moments that they had wanted to forget. Death, violence, childish innocence. All with my bare fingers. “Sylwia, leave.” I said softly. All of my energy is destroying itself in this moment as I continue to press my fingers. I can barely speak already. I tried to make her understand the severity of the situation. Her thoughts ran through my mind, all of them panicked. She ran to grab some of her things. Before both of our hearts could burst, she whispered, “I will see you in the next life, Leon.” How could she know? I tried opening my mouth to speak, but suddenly the muscles in my jaw clenched shut. All of the lights flickered in the apartment. I could not utter a single world as my head knocked back to reveal a new world of

The rest of his dreams might have been overrun by his shell shocked memories that were caked with the dirt and scabs. His eyes filled with snakes, wearing their death masks, and his voice became coarse from the continuous babbling caused by battle fatigue. Mirroring a punch drunk fighter, he walked on wobbly knees, and frequently, he turned his head side to side as if looking for the hunger, which dogged him like the stench of dirt and sweat. I couldn’t help but notice the grime gathered in the hollow at the base of his neck.

“My name,” she snapped sharply, ”is Loriel….as you well know.” She paused, then drew in a slow breath to try and calm herself. To everyone else in this room, fighting and injuring and being injured and killing and watching others be killed and capturing and being captured might be old-hat; to her, it wasn’t. Now that the adrenaline and euphoria of this situation was wearing off, the strain of the predicament she was in was starting to get to her.

She tried to fight back, but the blows to her head made her dizzy and her thoughts slow, and before she could stop it, she’d fallen forward onto her face in the mud.

Scuttling innocently through the twisting corridors I bore the same expression; head down, shoulders hunched, avoiding any eye contact - my desperate attempts to deter the despot for one day at least. Despite my efforts, there was no escape, as seemingly within the second of having that naively optimistic thought, a cruel, callous voice demanded I surrender my broach. Fear spiked, as it always did, but with it came something else, an alien emotion ... Looking back now, I see that it must have been the cumulative effect of months of torment that brought me to the realisation that at this point I had reached the nadir of my life. Deriding cackles pierced my ears and this time I recognised the emotion, fury. It burned through my veins, along with the memories of the past to form a feeling of overwhelming power. I met the daggers that would usually invoke terror, and calmly, I said “No.”