Cradle-Snatcher [Forewords]
Title: Cradle-Snatcher
Author: .flavored
Rating: PG-15 (for disturbing implications)
Genre: Dark
Pairing: Leeteuk-centric
Summary: It starts in a dark room, grows and festers and earns for release. Then it gets tired, and knows its time has come... curling up and surrendering... before it starts again.
Forewords
The child lay silent in its cage.
The cage was in a room. And this room was many things. It was dank like the musty tunnels of sewage underground. It was cold like the exposed body of a corpse (and it stank like one too).
And most of all, it was dark.
The darkness in the room was the child’s shroud, for the rags put around its frail frame were certainly in no condition to provide it any comfort or warmth. Most of the time, the child welcomed the darkness and the solace it brought. Its emptiness was balming and it chased away the nightmares the orange light brought whenever the door creaked opened and the evil man came.
But now, the child’s heart was restless. Right now, the darkness was boring.
It had been more than a thousand breaths that the evil man had last come. The child waited. The light was coming to chase away the darkness - he could feel it in his bones and in his heart. And with it, it would bring the evil man and with him the relief of boredom.
The child was right. Thirty breaths later, the door creaked open and the light evaded like the Nazi with their big threats and big guns. And a familiar shadow crept in the way Dracula did when he entered Lucy’s room, with it came the smell of cigarettes, sour wine and greed… and cologne.
That last smell was unfamiliar. Rare. There had only been one other time when there had been this smell.
Him.
“Well, boss? Take a look?” a familiar voice to the child sounded, but it was unfamiliar in its rusty humility. “This one’s broken in good. Good job, this one.”
The child watched as a second shadow immerged from the light. It passed through the sea of brightness like a royal predator - silent, sleek and deadly. The child felt each footstep as it came closer. Every vibration as hard rubber met dead cement.
Abruptly, the shadow stopped and it was covered by the action of meat and bone working in tandem to bend, lowering a mild gaze that tore up and down the body of the child in sharp observation.
It stared back at the plain brown eyes that stared at it.
“Well, boss?” the greed for praise oozing out of the evil man’s mouth. “This one’s a pretty little thing, ain’t he?”
“…Hmm.” The mouth below the gaze finally moved, and the words that came out of it were flat. “Yes. He is a ‘pretty little thing’.”
The child shivered slightly once the plain brown gaze shifted away from him - there had been a strange hunger in that seemingly unassuming gaze.
“He’ll fetch a pretty price too.” The evil man was now excited, talking in his language of greed. “Easiest is to sell him as a play-thing to ‘em rich, saucy happy men. Or we could train ‘im to do hits, cost a bit more grub but pay-off’s usually better.”
“Quiet. We will do none of those.”
The sickening giggling faded away into awkwardness, and the room filled with the sense of frightening silence.
Finally, the smallest of a pensive whisper. “So… what will we do with ‘im, boss?”
The silence that followed was a more of a contemplative nature - less threatening, but perhaps more deeply steeped in danger.
The child sensed, rather then saw, the plain brown gaze shift onto the cage. And it felt fear, surprising itself, for it had been a long time since it had felt anything.
It felt good.
“Ah.” There was a smile rising in the plain brown gaze - one of the twisted variety. “That would be telling.”
“Yes, boss?” the evil man rubbed his hands nervously. The child could see the shadows wavering, flickering in the light. “Telling what?”
“Plans. But nothing the likes of you need to know.” The voice that came with the plain brown gaze was, for the first time, cold. For before, there had been no hint of any darkness in the voice - only plain unassumption, which was suspicious in itself.
“Yes, boss.” The shadow of the evil man, shrunk and quivered, as if the man’s fear had passed even into the un-substance of himself.
“Good. Make sure you take care of him.” Greed filtered into the plain brown voice, tingeing it into the colour of diseased earth. “He’s special after all.”
“Special?”
“Yes… special… This child will become a special person in this world… Leeteuk.” A pause in thought, then the smug air of satisfaction. “My Leeteuk.”
Ten breaths later, the man with the plain brown gaze had gone, exiting the room the way a king would have his banquet hall. And like the shifty attendant, the evil man had scurried after him as a cockroach would have.
There had been a click, and the light retreated in strategic planning. It was as if it sensed that it wasn’t welcome in the child’s world. Darkness flooded in like the welcome denizen upon entering his home and covered the child once again. But it could not chase away the memory of greed, cologne and a plain brown gaze.
The child took his hundredth millionth breath since his time of acquaintance with the darkness…
And like always, the child remained silent in its cage.
~*~
Chapter