text: [Themes: horror]
  
  You press the parking garage button on the elevator panel, holding a box of everything you had on your desk. These last two years had been the longest you've held onto one job for quite a while. You knew this was coming. Your last three defense cases failed because you couldn't get your act together and stick up for your client. And of course, your job had to end during this week. This week held the anniversary. The anniversary of when you put an innocent man in prison for murder. You tried to convince yourself for years that you were right and that there wasn't a hole in your prosecution big enough for an innocent man to fall into. Around this time each year it eats at you and questions what kind of a person you really are.
  
  This year it's a bit different, however. This year that man you sent away is free. After another analysis of the evidence from the case, this time with some new technology, Matthew Emerson was released from prison. He was let out a year ago yesterday but you haven't heard from him or anything about him since. You wonder if he got some of his life back together or if the nine years you put him away for ruined his chances. In Matthew's stead, the fed's are now searching for one of the other suspects that the evidence now points to, Alexander Grayson. You remember Grayson clearly as suspect #2 for the case. Nobody has seen or heard from him since Emerson's conviction.
  
  You step out of the elevator and walk swiftly to your car. On your way over you feel a pair of eyes on you. You look around but only see your car and a couple other cars left in the dimly lit parking garage. You're probably just paranoid, it is the anniversary after all and you just lost your job. If Emerson wanted to confront you he's had a year to do it and hasn't. No reason for anything to change.
  
  You get into your car and head back to your apartment. Your paranoid self makes note that the door was locked and everything is just as you left it. The living room area is strewn with clutter as usual, the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, and the counter piled high with documents and mail. The apartment hasn't truly looked clean since before your partner left a year after the case. The drinking and sulking after the case cost you the love of your life, your job, and every job after that, and it has almost cost you your life, several times. Every year since then, around the anniversary, you bring out a bottle of pills and place them on your bedside table just in case you finally get the courage to end it. Tonight might actually be the night.
  
  Three letters are on the floor under the mail slot. You pick them up and look through them. The first is from your sister Whitney, surprisingly, you haven't spoken with her for months. It's a letter inviting you to a dinner party at her house tomorrow evening. You make note of it and put it on the counter. The second is just another bill. You add that to the pile of other unpaid bills on the counter. The third isn't labeled nor does it have a postage stamp. You poke your finger under the flap and pull slightly. Immediately, dozens of small spiders crawl out of the hole onto your hand, the envelope, and onto the floor. You drop the envelope, pull back in disgust, and try to swipe the spiders off your arm, trying to step on as many as you can on the floor as well. Who the hell would put spiders in a letter?? Is this some sort of a sick joke? You see a folded letter poking out of the envelope with a couple spiders on it. You brush them off and pick it up. Unfolding it, you see that there are words sprawled across the paper. "End it now and you won't have to live through what's coming" it said. No postage, no writing on the envelope, that means someone knows where you live and must have dropped this off personally. You hope it's just a crazy prank, but something doesn't feel right. Just like in the parking garage, you have been feeling like someone is following you. So then what's coming? This job was your second chance at the world and you blew it. The day couldn't really get any worse. Maybe the crazy prick is right, maybe you should just end it. You pick up the envelope and feel something else inside. You reach in and pull out a small vial of clear liquid. What is this? Poison? Is this what will end it all like the note says? Death threats, spiders, no job, you decide tonight would be a good night to break out the whiskey and just think.
  
  > give up and drink what's in the vial.
  You break out the whiskey and have a couple glasses on ice. If you're going to end it, you need some liquid courage to do it. If the note that came with the vial is true, then that must be the easiest way out and as long as it ends, it doesn't matter how right? You sit down at the table, pour another glass of whiskey, and set the vial next to it. You unscrew the cap and sniff at the vial but don't smell anything.
  
  "Well, he goes nothing," you say under your breath. You throw back the vial of liquid, then take a sip of the whiskey. There was a strange tingling feeling as the unknown liquid went down your throat. You decide to go to your bedroom and lay down on the bed while the liquid does its work, whatever that may be. Before you lay down, you decide to take one last look out the window. All this will be gone after tonight. As you turn back to the room, you think you see a large shadowed figure on the street below, facing your window, but when you look again it's gone. Must be just your imagination but you close the blinds anyway. You lay down in bed and shut your eyes, waiting.
  
  You wake up to a loud high-pitched drilling sound behind you and slowly open your eyes. What you see in front of you is the most horrific sight you have ever seen. Blood, various body parts, knives, and chains are splattered and nailed into the wall across the room. You try to turn your head but it's held in place by a strap around your forehead and a collar around your neck, both hooked to the chair. To the left, you can make out a metal table, with knives, hammers, and other tools on it. In the corner on the right there is a door with a long deadbolt locked across it.
  
  "What the hell is going on!?" you scream. The drilling sound stops. You try to move but you can't feel your legs and your arms are strapped to the metal chair you are in. That vial wasn't full of a lethal liquid at all, you were drugged.
  
  "Glad to see you're finally awake," a deep guttural voice says from behind. A large man walks into view from the left, holding a hand drill up in the air.
  
  "Wh-who the hell are you?!" His face is unlike any you have seen. There are scars that run down the side of his face and through his right eye, which is just a white sphere. Looking closer, The light is just bright enough in the room to make out who he is beneath all the scars.
  
  "Grayson...."
  
  "I'm surprised you remember me." His jaw seemed to move unnaturally when he spoke and was angled down slightly.
  
  "Why are you doing this!? Why me!?"
  
  "Some people I choose fight back, but you—," he revs up the drill a few times, "—you were ready to give up, ripe for the pickings. Did you really think it would be that easy to end it? You don't deserve a quick end."
  
  "You got away with the murder of all those people... two whole innocent families killed and burnt in their homes!"
  
  "I got away, yes, but my brother didn't! You put my innocent brother away for almost a decade! He lost it when he got out. Everything he had was gone because of you and he killed himself because of YOU! And those families weren't innocent, they treated Matt like shit his whole life."
  
  "You're Emerson's brother...? What the hell happened to you?"
  
  "Some of them fight back when they realize they want to live. Those are the ones you see on the wall. I gave each of them the same choice with a vial of the same liquid." Some of the scars on Grayson's face looked somewhat fresh, and poorly stitched up. You also notice his right ear is missing, the whole lobe torn off. You look behind Grayson and count six heads nailed to the wall, facing you with a look of absolute terror and pain. Their eyes and mouths are shut with various parts of their faces missing or with long scars. Since opening your eyes in this hellhole, you regret drinking that vial. This is not how you wanted it to end. There must be some way to get out of this place.
  
  "I suggest you don't fight back." Grayson threatens as he revs up the drill again. He brings it close to your face, then moves it down toward your feet. Suddenly he jams the drill into your foot and you scream in pain. But you can't feel it at all, there is no pain. You can only watch as the blood spurts out and a hole appears in the middle of your foot. "Didn't feel that did you? Good. You won't be running away anytime soon, all thanks to that poison that you so stupidly drank."
  
  You look at your legs and your destroyed left foot and try to feel a sensation, you even try to imagine and feel the pain that the drill must have caused to your foot. You scream as a sharp pain is sent up your leg but you only feel it for a moment. You focus on your right foot and see your big toe wiggle a bit. The paralysis must not last as long as Grayson thought. Grayson walks over to the metal table and sets down the drill. He starts inspecting each of the other torture instruments on the table. While he's distracted, you inspect your bindings more closely. The strap around your forehead is tight and the collar is almost choking you. However, you notice the strap holding your right hand is loose. You might be able to try and squeeze your hand out.
  
  "Well, what shall we cut first?" Grayson wonders aloud.
  
  > try to Get Free
  "Shall we go with the toes first? Maybe the eyes? No... the fingers?"
  
  You move your wrist around, trying to loosen the strap as much as possible. It is just loose enough to squeeze your wrist through, then finally your hand is free! You unbuckle the rest of your straps and unhook the collar as quietly as you can. Grayson is still deciding which piece of you to cut next. Your right foot is gaining its strength back and you can move it, but with a good amount of effort. Your left foot throbs painfully as you try to move your leg and you muffle a groan as it sends a sharp pain through your body. You feel confident you have the strength to get up as the adrenaline rushes through you. You may be able to sneak behind him and attack him from behind, or you can try to sneak over to the door and escape without him noticing.
  
  > Attack!
  You slowly take your right foot off the chair step and plant it on the ground quietly, then you do the same with your left, wincing from the pain as you set it down. You stand up as Grayson picks up two carving knives and starts to sharpen them, running them across each other like he is getting ready to carve a turkey. As soon as you take a step toward Grayson, a piercing scream echoes around the room. You turn toward the wall of horror and look straight into the open eyes of one of the six faces. Each face's eyes are now open and staring straight at you, with their mouths wide open and quivering, their shrieks piercing you like a banshee's scream. Some of the hands reach out from the wall toward you, begging.
  
  "No, no, NO! Don't fight it, just give up!" Grayson yells as you turn toward him and see him heading toward you with an axe. You turn and try to run but your leg collapses and the pain in your foot makes you scream. You see Grayson raise his axe as you try to crawl away, then it crashes down into your skull.
  
  "I suggest you don't fight back." Grayson threatens.
  
  "Please! I want to live, just let me go please!" the woman cries. You open your eyes and see the woman struggling in the chair across from you, trying to get out. You scream and try to reach out your hand toward her as Grayson picks up his carving knives.