XLV

Duke woke to once again find himself in a cell. How long he had been in that cell he had no idea. He had lost track long ago. The number of times he had awoken in the same cell. The same spot. The same position. Every. Single. Time.

The number of times he had escaped that cell was just as high. But no matter how many times he escaped, no matter how many times he made changes in what he did: what hallways to avoid, rooms to hide in and those not to, he always got caught in the end.

He had no idea how they found him but they always did. The fact that he was damn sure that the layout of his prison was constantly changing confused and angered him. This blew his mind in its own. In his favor it was set on a fixed pattern that after repeating it enough times, he managed to slowly learn the layout of each.

Unfortunately however they all crossed each other in such away that no matter which way he turned, they would always intersect and lead him away from escaping. Also in his favor he learned that there was a set distance in which he could travel in any given direction should he managed to survive escaping his room to begin with.

Unfortunately though no matter what he learned it always got worse in the end. Oh yes. Much. Much. Much worse for Duke. Each time he was captured was worse than the last. Each time he escaped, IF he escaped and IF he survived his escape, was much more elaborate, hazardous and extreme than the last.

Each time he was caught, he died. Or the proper term was murdered. Well tortured technically. Each death was much more elaborate than the last. More painful. Each time was different. Duke never died in the SAME EXACT WAY TWICE. Another piece of useless information he had learned.

He had been skinned alive. Eaten alive by animals and insects, wild and domesticated. He was cannibalized. He even suffered the same fate as Phatt Tonnie. He had a sawed off 12 gauge crammed up his asshole quite literally and had his guts splattered out through his brain.

He had had different giant animals with massive cocks ram him up the ass and down his throat and literally tearing him in half long ways. He was trampled on by over a thousand thousand heards of different animals from sheep and goat to bulls, elephants, rhinos and more. Shredded by lions,tigers and bears.

He had died by waterboarding, electrocution, multiple stab and gun wounds. Burned alive over a million different ways. He gave up trying to list them all. Waking up the next day to find himself in the same room and everything like its the same exact day on a never ending, repeating loop, had him eventually trying to commite suicide only to find that he would reawaken exactly as he had that same day.

However after the first time he escaped,died, and woke up, some changes had been made. And subsequently each time after he died and awoke, the room had changed somewhat. With each new awaking came a new puzzle for him to solve to escape.

Duke swore the inventor of his prison had watched waaayyyy to many horror movies and such and chose these as the reference for Duke's prison. The puzzles Duke had to solve would make the bad guy in that one movie franchise with the serial killer who captured people and had them to escape his puzzles on pain of injury or even death, terrified shitless.

Every once in a while, Duke wouldn't try to escape and would just lounge about in his makeshift bed. He was going crazy. The constant escaping, running, and being caught and tortured to death on an almost constant basis was messing with his mentality hard-core.

Today was a bad day. Duke was laying curled into a ball wishing that he could just die and stay dead. He hadn't bothered trying to solve today's puzzle for escaping.

Thankfully it wasn't something straight out of a Saw horror film. That shit was scary and terrifying on a whole different level. In Duke's mind, as someone who was a big horror and Saw movie fanatic, compared to some of the "Escape Puzzle Games" as his captor called them that Duke had to deal with, Saw was just an ordinary kids cartoon in comparison.

Duke found each experience so utterly terrifying that each one was blacked out and suppressed with each death, sorta as his minds way of trying to persurve itself from completely shattering. Unfortunately it didn't work completely. It only worked on his most horrifying experiences. This last time he had died, he had been eaten from the inside out by some kind of colony of horrific creatures. That was a memory he wished he could forget but was stuck with.

Suddenly he heard the sound of his outer cell door sliding open and a set of footsteps headed in his direction. Instantly Duke shook from terror from the sound of those footsteps though he had no idea why or from where this sudden terror had come from.

Before this mission Duke had been a hard ass, no fear, no bullshit, kind of guy. He had done 3 tours of duty over seas in a special division of the armed forces. He had been taken captive and held as a hostage and tortured for 6 weeks. But this mission had broken him. Castle Smrt had broken him.

At the sound of the footsteps stopping outside his door, Duke scampers off to the farthest corner of his prison cell and curls into a ball on the floor cowering in sear terror as the footsteps entered his cell.

"Well well well. Look at this Leon. Poor poor Duke. Once such a great and fearless man. Now nothing more than a cowering infant afraid of his own shadow. Nothing more then just an empty shell of his former self."

Jack spoke in a mockingly soft tone as if speaking to a frightened creature as he knelt next to the cowering man just out of arms reach.

"Duke. Duke.Come here Duke." Jack mockingly coaxed the frightened man. "Would you like to leave here? Would you like to escape the torture of your prison? Would you like to not be afraid anymore?"

With these questions, Jack stood up and walked back towards the outer cell door leaving the innermost door open. He turns back towards the cell and becons for Duke to follow him.

"It's ok Duke. Follow me and do exactly as I say and no one will hurt you for I shall protect you as all fear me."

Duke had stayed curled into a ball in the far corner cowering as far away from the man who had entered his cell as he physically could. But when the man spoke and asked him if he wanted to leave, something changed and Duke suddenly began to relax a little. When the man stood up and began to walk out of the cell, Duke himself sat up and turned towards the back of the dark figure.

When Jack stopped and turned back towards Duke to become him to follow, something screamed inside of him to look away and Duke quickly jearks his head down almost giving himself whiplash.

Duke stood up and walked out of the cell, but the instant he crossed into the outer cell room he stopped because everything inside of him was suddenly screaming to run, turn back, it was a trap, he was in mortal danger.

To late though did Duke realize that his instincts was correct, for suddenly the dark figure that had spoken with Jack's voice turned to reveal blood red eyes in an otherwise black void. Duke to late to realize his fatal mistake fell to the creature's attack.

Duke had time only to utter a scream of shear terror as e pisses himself as his vision goes black.

Though he could not see, he could still feel the pain and hear the sound of his own flesh tearing as the creator ripped into him. After about 5 minutes Duke slowly slipped away into complete blackness as the pain and sounds slowly fade away.

Suddenly Duke sits up right in terror as his screams die on his lips and the sent of his own piss fills his nostrils. Looking around Duke quickly realizes that he is once again in his prison cell and the dark figure was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly a noise draws Duke's attention over to the cell door.

To Duke's utter horror, the dark figure with glowing blood red eyes stood and Jack's voice escapes from within the void, "You are a mighty tasty morsel Dukie Duke. I do so enjoy devouring your flesh and organs. However I have other uses for you. Come work for me and this hell will stop for you. Or spend eternity here. For here you shall die but awaken the same day only to die again. Your only other option is to kill me but you are incapable of that. I made sure. So think on it and I'll return for you when I next feel like it. Enjoy your eternal death."

And with that the dark figure disappears and Duke is left sitting in his own piss wide eyed and full of terror. Under it all a small glimmer of hope started to form as his brain processed Jack's last words 'Your only other option is to kill me but you are incapable of that, I made sure.'

The old Duke would have seen that as his chance of escape. The old Duke wasn't defeated yet either. He still had one last card up his sleeve but he had come to believe his situation so hopeless that he hadn't even bothered with it. However those was just the words Duke had needed to hear and his brain was instantly planning his next escape attempt.