What the cat dragged in.

8 Humanity in focus.

He could hear heavy footsteps on the floor above him. Every so often they would pause. Every so often little plumes of dirt would come through the cracks in the floorboards. The old man was getting himself ready. Getting himself good and drunk. Letting the alcohol get him good and mean. He knew what was coming next; he just didn't know what form it was going to take.

A beating? That hadn't satisfied the old man last time because Victor hadn't screamed. No, he'd want blood and screaming, and the more the better. 

Victor pulled at the chains holding him to a thick wooden post, but his eight year old arms were too weak to budge the heavy fittings. They were too far over his head to dig out with his claws. Terror tore at his heart and made his head spin. He did his best to push it aside, to replace it with rage and indifference.

Finally, weak, yellow light pierced the darkness and he could hear the old man's heavy boots on the narrow stairs. He carried a pair of pliers.

"You sleepin' ya bastard freak?" The alcohol slurred his words, the stink of that and the hatred was almost enough to make the boy vomit. That would have pleased the old man too much. "Gonna make ya normal 'f it fuckin' kills ya."

The pliers grasped the claw on the little finger of his right hand. He tried not to scream. He told himself not to scream. The old man pulled. The boy stayed silent as long as he could. Before the claw was ripped from its bed, a scream was torn from his throat. The pain made him retch.

The old man started to laugh. "Nine more to go, ya pussy freak. Then I'll get to those fuckin' teeth of yers." 

The old man grabbed the claw on Victor's ring finger and started to pull.

*~*~*~*~*~*

He woke roaring, claws extended, slashing at the darkness. He wanted to slice, to tear flesh from bone, to rip through intestines and drag them out into the light. He wanted to destroy all vestiges of that dark time, to forget he was the chained boy in the dreams. The vision of dirt and darkness lingered, as did the stench of his own blood and terror. The rage kept one of his feet planted in the past.

The present returned in pieces. He was on his feet; the other pieces of the dark room replaced the phantom images of the dream. The scents were hardest to banish, mostly because terror and rage had been rolling out of his pores for so long the air was fucking saturated with it. There was another scent too. Something sweet laced with soft vanilla clung to the pillows and a subtle difference in the scent of the fear in the air.

He ripped the shredded blankets back, searching for her, for her blood, for any trace of the frail who'd fallen asleep curled up against his shoulder. There was nothing. He turned on the light, just to reassure himself that what his other senses were telling him was accurate. Aside from long slits in the sheets and blankets, nothing in the room was out of place.

Creed followed her scent to the closed closet door. To be fair, it was more of a room where he hung his clothes than the usual idea of a closet. Whatever you called it, it seemed like a goddamn stupid place to hide. Course it was the only avenue of escape that didn't take her within his sight-line. Maybe it wasn't so fucking stupid after all. He opened the door slowly. Even without the light from the room, he would have picked her out easily enough. She was hugging her knees as if trying to disappear into the far corner of the space. She'd put on one of his shirts, and her dark chestnut hair was hiding her face. He could tell that she was holding her breath.

What the fuck was he going to say to her? If he'd found her in his unconscious rage he'd be cleaning pieces of her off the ceiling right now. He got the feeling that she knew it too. "Frail."

She shifted slightly, so that she could look at him from behind the curtain of her hair. "Are you..." she paused, searching for the right words, "You were so..." She took a deep breath. Her body shook with the effort.