Cause of Death: Autopsy! Finally!
Yes, after ages(meaning nearly a week now)of consulting with my friend over this and passing of it back and forth, I have finally completed the final draft of CoD:A! Here it is! WooHoo!!!!!!!!
Title: Cause of Death: Autopsy
Author(s): moondragon_kaga and singingbelle27 (my first...and last joint-write piece)
Rating: I'd have to say PG-13 to PG-15 for graphic descriptions of torturous events.
Warnings: Well, this is our Kill Tritter fantasy. The worst that could happen to him, does and we hold nothing back. There are graphic descriptions of painful events. If you are in any way squeemish, please turn away now. If you're one of those people who love Tritter, you probably shouldn't read this either. You have been warned.
Word Count: A whopping 4,558.
Summary: The team has had enough of Tritter and all that came with him. It's time for payback and everyone wants a piece of it. There is severe Tritter-bashing(Duh) and a whole lot of painful events... Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own, or this would've happened on the show...okay, maybe not in this much detail, but Tritter would've been out of it a lot sooner...
Author's Note: There are MAJOR spoilers for the Tritter arc as well as MAJOR spoilers for "Finding Judas" (3-9) I advise you don't read if you don't already know what happens...
Cause of Death: Autopsy
A cell phone abruptly began to ring. Tritter groped around in his coat pocket while glancing at the clock on his dashboard. It was 12:36-past midnight. Who would be calling him now? He flipped open the phone one handed as he came to a stop at the traffic light that shone red.
“Tritter,” the cop stated to his caller.
“About me testifying against House…” A soft male voice came from the other end.
“Well if it isn’t the good Doctor Wilson. Having second thoughts are we?”
“Oh no, just the opposite in fact,” came Wilson’s reply. “I was wondering if we could meet. Now.”
“Now?” Tritter questioned, preparing to take a U-turn at the next intersection, redirecting himself to the hospital.
“Yes. Could you meet me at the coffee shop on Fifth?”
Rechecking the surrounding street signs, Tritter found that he was only a few blocks away.
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” he confirmed. There was something different in Wilson’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure what it was.
Two blocks down the street, sitting outside the coffee shop was the Good Doctor himself rehearsing what he was about to say. On the roofs of the surrounding buildings, three crouched silhouettes could barely be seen, sitting like gargoyles on their haunches, ready to strike. In a parked car nearby, Foreman nervously shifted behind the wheel, eyeing his glove compartment. An air of intensity and anticipation filled the scene, as what was unmistakably Tritter’s car rounded the corner on the next block. Wilson rose to his feet. Small rocks crunched on the concrete as the tires rolled the car’s front bumper only inches from Wilson’s knees. Tritter emerged from his car, looking especially complacent.
“So, Dr. Wilson, what was it you wanted to tell me?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his gleeful smirk.
Wilson approached the detective, the open car door between them. Tritter’s expression hardened slightly.
“I wanted to tell you,” he began, “That you can keep the silver.”
It was the signal to-
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three gunshots rang out, the bullets having found their way to Tritter’s heels. Wilson hit the deck behind the car for cover. Before Tritter had even reached for his gun, baseball-sized rocks began to rain down on him, striking with incredible force. A last larger rock came hurtling towards his head, and knocked him out cold. Tritter slid down the side of the car and onto the ground with a thud. Foreman lowered his handgun, Wilson rose from the pavement, and House was eyeing Cameron, the origin of the final blow to the head.
“Older Brother,” Cameron said in reply to House’s pointed look. Foreman rolled his eyes.
“Let’s get him back to the hospital,” Chase said in his Aussie accent. “I want to get started.”
***
Tritter’s head was swimming. It felt like his head had been cleaved in two by whatever had hit him. Gunshots. He remembered now, he had heard gunshots. Just then, his feet erupted in pain. He had been shot. He wanted to sit, get off his feet. He could imagine the shattered bones slicing him from the inside out with all his weight on them. He tried, but could go no lower than a half-squat. Something was stopping him. He tried to raise his hands to feel around, but discovered he was restrained. He needed to know where he was. Attempting to pry open his eyes, he found them sealed. Duct tape? He could smell the glue. He shifted himself into the walls. He was in a box, no, a cage. A cage that was too short for him to rise to his full height, too skinny to sit down. He began to panic, realizing that he was captive. Everything throbbed with his heartbeat, which was swiftly climbing to an erratic pace. Everything felt swollen. He yelled out. Maybe someone would hear him. He banged himself into the walls, thinking that maybe he could escape that way.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” A loud voice came from beyond the cage. Tritter stopped. It sounded as if it came from a speaker system.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Tritter interrogated savagely, trying to keep an air of authority despite the circumstances. His body throbbed again. He knew that voice. If only his mind would cooperate with him and bring a face to that voice. No answer came and he threw himself to the walls once more.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Cameron and Cuddy said in unison. They were in a high room with one glass wall, overlooking Tritter in the cage, along with House, Wilson, Foreman, and Chase.
“I can,” Chase said in reply. “Don’t look at me like that! It was House’s idea.”
“…And you all agreed, and are here now, so it doesn’t matter whose idea it was, does it?” House reminded as he disappeared from the room. They fell silent.
Tritter heard a door open and close nearby.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
House crept silently up to the cage and noiselessly slid his cane between the horizontal bars. With the skill of a pro cricketer, House whacked Tritter squarely across the shins. Letting out a fretting gasp, Tritter writhed and squirmed trying to avoid another hit. His attempts were futile. House continued to strike Tritter, stopping only to retrieve a pair of professional grade earplugs from his pocket and shove them in his ears.
“Hey Copper!” House shouted. “I’d like to introduce you to the dulcet tones of Dj-Cudz.”
With that, a high intensity, very loud continuous blast of noise was issued from the operating theatre’s speakers. It dimly registered to Tritter that his eardrums might explode, but the sound drove any other thought from his mind. Something clicked deep in his mind; an epiphany. Everything came together. House. The din was too much to bear. House was going to pay… Overwhelmed with vertigo and realization, Tritter blacked out.
“Take him away boys,” House instructed Foreman and Wilson, as Cuddy cut the note. The cage door was opened, and Tritter flopped out. As House took a few steps back, Wilson and Foreman grabbed a limb, unmindfully dragging the detective from the room.
Some part of Tritter’s mind knew that the sound was gone and that relief had finally come with him losing consciousness. Another part of him barely registered that someone was holding him up. He might have been rescued but what was left of his rationality threw that out. After all, no one knew where he was, and they couldn’t have gotten there that quickly besides. He had realized something important. He struggled to recall his thoughts as he slid along a very smooth floor, that had just changed into what felt like tile.
He was cut off mid-thought as a sudden cold, wet environment made its way around his face. His eyes opened wide, and he spluttered trying to get some air. As soon as it came, it was gone again as his head was lifted, and re-dunked into the water, then out again. Streams of droplets rolled down his face and blurred his vision, still obstructing his view of what was happening. Then his epiphany hit him again. House-this was all House’s doing.
The water came once more. He tried holding his breath this time to conserve air and energy, but spluttering was inevitable. He thrashed around hoping to come in contact with leg or cane and trip his captor, but he could find no purchase anywhere.
When his head lifted again, his vision finally cleared enough to see the object he was being dunked in and felt an instant wave of nausea, but held it in. He knew the symbol that this gave as his head was lowered.
A bully remains just that until a bigger bully comes around…
It was a toilet.
After about 20 or so dips-Wilson and Foreman had lost count-they decided to drag him back to the operating theatre where Cuddy, Cameron and Chase, under House’s direction, had hopefully set up the rest of the equipment. Cameron, on her way to retrieve them, met Foreman and Wilson in the doorway, having unceremoniously pulled Tritter from the bathrooms. With Cameron’s help they heaved him onto a strange table. Wilson and House set to work tying his arms at the wrists, and legs at the ankles, to the archaic device. Wilson went to stand by the crank. Cameron, locating the pack of cigarettes and nicotine gum on the instrument table, made sure they were well in sight of the soon-to-be-woken cop.
All Chase had to do was make sure he got a strong pair of pliers. He held those now, fingering the dull teeth absently. House presently grabbed the smelling salts that he had prepared, and wafted them right under Tritter’s nose. After a few moments, he jerked awake, the first thing he saw being the cigarettes and gum. He struggled, but was unable to move.
He had started to give up the nasty habit a couple weeks ago, but realized that he would really like a bit of his gum, or maybe just one drag of the cigarette. Still, he couldn’t move, and his addictive hunger roared inside him. Forcing himself to tear his sight from the cigarettes, his eyes met the icy gaze of our diagnostician. The rest of the team, all but Wilson, stood around Tritter and House, watching.
“You’re going down for this, House,” Tritter informed. The toilet was still fresh in his mind.
“Well that’s a shame, isn’t it?” With a look somewhere behind Tritter, House nodded his head. “Do it, Jimmy.”
Tritter’s body began to lengthen. He looked up as far as he could to see Wilson manning a crank, winding it, and causing an unpleasant feeling to spread through his muscles. Tritter pulled again, trying to get free.
House began to move around to his backside, picking up a long, thin scope as he went.
“What are you doing?” he asked, slightly bewildered, but suspecting where that scope was about to go.
House flipped up the medical gown that Tritter just realized he was wearing. Confirming his suspicions, Tritter began to struggle, but winced as Wilson gave the crank a good hard yank.
“What are you doing?” he yelled again. It was now more of a statement than a question.
“You see, we’ve been worried about…infections in your lower intestine… That’s why we’re going to do this quick and relatively painless procedure that we doctors like to call a colonoscopy. Relax now,” he heard House say from behind him before the thing was shoved carelessly through his anal sphincter and into his rectum. He winced again, this time letting out an accompanied pained gasp. He tried to edge away from the scope, but was denied any such movement by the rack that stretched his limbs to the point of dislocation.
His thoughts were brought back to that fateful day in the clinic when House had so deftly stuck a thermometer up his rear and left him with his pants around his ankles.
“All finished!” House said in a singsong voice as he twisted the scope inside him and withdrew it.
Relaxing slightly, Tritter managed to open his eyes again. His hunger reared its ugly head again as his sight was drawn to the cigarettes and gum once more. Feeling something cold brush against his foot, he forced his gaze to his lower extremities, seeing Chase hovering near his foot with a particularly sinister grin on his face. Chase held up a pair of pliers rather menacingly.
Oh, no… Tritter’s grim suspicions were once again proved right as Chase looked down to his exposed toes. His struggles increased, even though he couldn’t move at all. Anything was better than this. Chase lowered the pliers to his left big toenail and latched on. At that point, Tritter struggled to move everything except his left leg. The pressure was enough to make him sick with dread. The pain that was expected left a metallic taste in his mouth, and nothing even happened yet. Chase grabbed the pliers with both hands. At the detective’s next exhale he pulled.
Cameron resisted the urge to cover her ears at the man’s scream. She had experienced one of her nails being ripped off before, but it had been unintentional, and she didn’t even notice until one of her friends had pointed out that she was bleeding; nothing like this. Tritter knew exactly what was happening to him and that only gave him more pain.
He deserved it, but it didn’t make Tritter’s screams any more enjoyable to hear. By the time House and Foreman had also picked up a pair of pliers, she was ready to do something. After the nails of one foot were halfway pulled off; and Chase was working on the fourth, House on his right hand and Foreman on his right leg, Cameron grabbed the syringe that someone had left on the nearby instrument table and rushed toward the table, knowing exactly where to aim.
After a jolt of movement, Tritter was cut off mid-scream and Cameron finally sighed in relief. The syringe was sticking out of the man’s neck at an odd angle, having been stuck deep in his larynx, paralyzing his vocal chords. She looked up, only to find everyone staring at her, House giving her a pointed look of disappointment.
“I couldn’t- I just couldn’t take it anymore! He’s screaming, have the decency to shut him up!” Cameron shouted, drawing sighs from nearly everyone. Wilson, seeing her point, intervened before House rounded on her again.
“She’s right. His screams might have attracted some attention and we can’t afford that kind of audience.” Cameron turned to him, slightly shocked before regaining a relaxed look.
Tritter observed the order of events, mute, but found himself curious at the actions of the woman. She seemed to be the weak link of the crew. If maybe he could somehow win her over…
The next thing he knew, his left hand was being adjusted slightly and Tritter managed to glance up and through the white-hot haze of pain, he saw Wilson grab the pliers from Chase and grip the thumbnail of his hand. The new pain, in combination with everything that had happened so far, caused Tritter to black out for a moment.
Tritter willed himself into the darkness, knowing that it was the key to the relief; a way to escape the constant pain. For all this effort, he was quickly jerked back into consciousness by the salts under his nose.
“Can’t have you passing out on us yet, Detective,” House said, managing to get in one of those cliché villain laughs at the end. To drive his point home, House roughly peeled off the last of the nails on his right hand, causing a silent scream to be ripped from Tritter’s mouth again.
Wilson was only halfway through Tritter’s left hand when he blacked out again. House motioned for Cuddy to bring the salts and he took them from her, waving them under Tritter’s nose yet again. He jerked awake, squirming in pain and gasping.
As soon as he flinched, Wilson resumed his role with the pliers. Just as soon as Wilson yanked off the final nail of Tritter’s left hand, the cop blacked out once more. Not wasting any time, House made his way limping for the door. Before he left, he turned, addressing his underlings.
“Minions! Take him and come with me to the Batcave!” House exclaimed, breaking the small silence. “Okay, maybe not the Batcave, but the morgues should do!” he yelled again, motioning for Cuddy and Wilson to follow him as he exited and left Tritter to the others.
When the black haze dissipated from Tritter’s vision, the first thing he noticed was his arms were in a tremendous amount of pain. They both felt as if they had been dislocated. The next thing he noticed was that he was hanging by his wrists. He looked straight ahead, only to find a wall shrouded in darkness save for the waving lines of blue. He looked down to see the source as a large vat of water with fast moving things in it.
His instincts made him jerk, only to have him wince in pain as the feeling radiated from his arms, eventually spreading throughout his body from what happened who knows how long ago.
“Let me go!” he tried to say. No sound came out except for a strangled gasp and the memory of Cameron stabbing him in the neck with the needle came to him just then, causing him to wince again. At the suddenly booming voice around him, he flinched again, causing his arms to let out another twinge of pain.
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the main event of this evening! I hope to draw your attention to the center ring, where our very own detective Tritter will be demonstrating his piranha dive!” House yelled into the microphone of the observation room. Tritter snapped his head around as far as it would go at that. Piranha dive? Did that mean what he thought it meant?
Before he had any more time to contemplate that, his thoughts were torn from him as the chains were slackened and he was thrown into a free fall, his mouth open in a pitiful attempt at a scream.
Inches away from the surface, his chains were pulled tight and-If his arms weren’t dislocated already, they were now-he swung back and forth, his arms screaming with pain.
What he didn’t quite register yet was the fact that his feet were in the water. His legs were, actually-up to his shins. It took him only moments to notice that the fish were eating away at his feet. As fast as he could, he drew his knees to his chest as best he could. Blood was streaming down and dripping into the pool, drawing the piranhas to that exact position, now hungry.
Then they jumped.
Tritter learned something that day. He never knew that piranhas could jump out of the water. Reality was, they could…and they did. His legs were being torn up and there was nothing he could do but gasp, clench his fists, try to scream, and take it. He was inches-yes, inches-from blacking out, when he was slowly lifted from the pool. He breathed a sigh of relief, but pain still laced his knees and shins… He couldn’t fall into the darkness now. The pain kept him from going where he wanted.
That was when the lowering began.
Inch by inch, very slow and every passing moment had Tritter feeling the pain all over his body, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part of all this wasn’t the pain, wasn’t the humiliation, but the anticipation of it all. Awaiting pain is more torturing than the pain itself…he could now make actual sense of that statement.
When the razor-sharp teeth closed around his ankles again, he winced and tightened his fingers around something, anything to keep his attention away from his feet. It wasn’t really any use, the teeth not really painful until a few minutes after they had released their grip. At that point, the white-hot pain glazed over his eyes, making sure that it was the only thing he paid attention to.
Again, he was pulled up. Quickly, this time, making sure that his arms felt a little of the pain as well. He caught his breath, but wasn’t given any warning before the tension was released yet again, causing the cop to plunge into the pool below. With no signs of renewed tension anytime soon, he was afraid. He held his breath-
-And hit the water.
The fish, which had been satisfied with his dripping blood, found him to be an appealing main course. He could barely defend his head from the teeth, but everywhere else felt the full onslaught of the razor-sharp slices. One persistent fish eventually reached his head, which caused Tritter to release the precious air in a gasp of pain. He started thrashing, doing anything he could to keep the fish away from him.
When he felt that he was about to black out, he was drawn up and out of the water. The water streaked with his own blood streamed down his body and trickled to the pool, tinting the water with an ominous red color.
Again he was lowered in a slow drop. Tritter felt the teeth scraping at his legs and thrashed again. He no longer cared what was going to happen, so long as he got free of this Hell.
When his knees touched the water and the teeth started cutting at his thighs, he had enough… Everyone looked on as he lost consciousness again. House looked to everyone else, lastly to Wilson who manned the controls. They nodded; this would all be over soon…
***
It was cold, so cold. Tritter shivered, dreading what was next. He was weak, unable to move even if he wanted to. Still soaked from being dunked in the tank, he lay flopped on his back on the icy, hard steel table like a dejected, lifeless fish about to be gutted. He did not know where he was and he no longer cared, so long as it was all over soon. His body was mangled; his flesh bruised, punctured, and sliced. Almost unrecognizable as the man he was when he agreed to meet Wilson; he no longer felt any physical pain. His nerves had simply stopped responding for now. House ambled past, carrying a bucket of something, which he placed on a separate table before rummaging around in the morgue drawers, looking for things he thought would be fun to use.
Flicking on the bright, buzzing light overhead, he aimed it directly into the cop’s face. Tritter scrunched his eyes tightly shut at the light penetrating his eyelids. All he could see was the glowing red of the blood in his skin.
“Wake up!” House yelled into his ear.
Tritter flinched at the sound, but other than that and his squinting eyes, gave no response.
“I said, WAKE UP!” House repeated. He grabbed the bucket of salt water and tossed all its contents over the body that lie before him.
Tritter mouthed a mute scream, voiceless air rushing through his throat. White-hot pain exploded like burning electrocution over every surface the water touched. His nerves definitely responded to that one. House watched the unfortunate detective, whose back was arched in anguish, and face was pinched so tightly, it looked as if it might be sucked into itself. House laughed, gathering his utensils and letting them drop with a clatter onto the instrument table to get Tritter’s attention. It worked. With surprising difficulty, Tritter turned his head to locate the derivation of the noise.
“Have a nice swim?” Tritter heard the man say.
“What-?” he gasped, a weak whisper reaching House’s ears.
“Shhh… It’s okay. I’d be cold and in pain if I were in your position. Would you like some Vicodin? Oh, that’s right! I don’t have any! Well, good news is, it’s almost over. Bad news is, you’re going out the back doors. The thing is, you should already be dead from the pain and blood loss you went through. I have to do an examination to see why you haven’t died yet. However, this examination happens to be very dangerous to certain people,” he said, snapping on the latex glove.
“What…?” Tritter breathed. House stood there, letting him finish his question.
“What are you…going to…do to me?” he asked, wincing at the pain in his throat from lack of moisture and the loss of his ability to speak.
“It’s a common examination that is performed here all the time. The most deadly side effect of this procedure is what we like to call hypovolemic shock,” he explained.
“What?”
House picked up the scalpel from the small table, holding it up to the light and making sure Tritter could see the blade.
“It’s called an autopsy.”
House slowly-oh so slowly-and delicately inserted the keen knife into Tritter’s upper abdomen. He looked down at himself, breathing heavily, and watched as hot, deep-red claret seeped out and over him. His blood felt like a soothing, spreading blanket over his chest and stomach. House continued his path, slicing the man in half, leaving a gaping slit like an open jacket down his entire front side. It would have been quite interesting to see his own heart beat, had it not been so disturbing and not to mention messy. His face seemed to be burning under the light, with the salt grains still lodged into his cuts.
The silence was deafening. Now he really couldn’t move. All of the muscles that were needed for the sitting up process were now halved at his thighs.
“Hmm. It would seem that I have cracked a couple of your ribs,” House said absent-mindedly, truly in awe of seeing all of the human body’s systems functioning and living before his eyes.
Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, House plunged his arm into Tritter, under his ribcage, and gripped his heart.
“You do have a heart,” House said aloud. The heart’s throb continued it’s mad fluttering beneath House’s fingers. He released the beating muscle, and took hold of another sharp surgical tool.
At this point, Tritter was watching with an absent mind, unable to do anything except tremble as the first stages of hypovolemic shock hit him. Blood was everywhere now. He wouldn’t be alive much longer. He was going to die. Against his will, salty tears began to leak from his eyes and follow their own paths down his scalp, each feeling like a slice across his temples. For each tear, two more came, and Tritter was unable to stop this eventual reaction. He was going to die. The revelation hit him and wouldn’t let him go, torturing him every time the sentence repeated itself within his mind.
Working smoothly and silently, House disassembled the detective, organ by organ. Stomach-less, liverless, gutless, and heartless, Tritter exhaled a last breath, his eyes becoming finally empty.
House, shedding his mask, robe, and gloves, took his cane and strolled out of the room, leaving someone else to clean up the bloody mess…
***
The elevator doors opened and James Wilson looked up from his paperwork to see House limping out of the lift. Coming up to the front reception desk, House glanced at what Wilson was working on, smirking at the name on the header of the file before speaking.
“What-cha doing there, Jimmy?” he asked.
“Work, just like you should be doing,” Wilson retorted. House looked over his shoulder, watching as his left hand scratched the last letters of “Hypovolemic Shock” in the “Cause of Death” box before closing the file and placing it with the others. Turning, Wilson addressed his friend.
“Shall we go?” Wilson asked.
“I got beer,” came the reply.
“I got old, cheesy horror movies.”
“Let’s go then.”
And so they both started walking, in step with one another, toward the double doors, leaving behind the file at the top of the stack that read the two words: “Tritter, Michael.”
Fin.
Title: Cause of Death: Autopsy
Author(s): moondragon_kaga and singingbelle27 (my first...and last joint-write piece)
Rating: I'd have to say PG-13 to PG-15 for graphic descriptions of torturous events.
Warnings: Well, this is our Kill Tritter fantasy. The worst that could happen to him, does and we hold nothing back. There are graphic descriptions of painful events. If you are in any way squeemish, please turn away now. If you're one of those people who love Tritter, you probably shouldn't read this either. You have been warned.
Word Count: A whopping 4,558.
Summary: The team has had enough of Tritter and all that came with him. It's time for payback and everyone wants a piece of it. There is severe Tritter-bashing(Duh) and a whole lot of painful events... Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own, or this would've happened on the show...okay, maybe not in this much detail, but Tritter would've been out of it a lot sooner...
Author's Note: There are MAJOR spoilers for the Tritter arc as well as MAJOR spoilers for "Finding Judas" (3-9) I advise you don't read if you don't already know what happens...
Cause of Death: Autopsy
A cell phone abruptly began to ring. Tritter groped around in his coat pocket while glancing at the clock on his dashboard. It was 12:36-past midnight. Who would be calling him now? He flipped open the phone one handed as he came to a stop at the traffic light that shone red.
“Tritter,” the cop stated to his caller.
“About me testifying against House…” A soft male voice came from the other end.
“Well if it isn’t the good Doctor Wilson. Having second thoughts are we?”
“Oh no, just the opposite in fact,” came Wilson’s reply. “I was wondering if we could meet. Now.”
“Now?” Tritter questioned, preparing to take a U-turn at the next intersection, redirecting himself to the hospital.
“Yes. Could you meet me at the coffee shop on Fifth?”
Rechecking the surrounding street signs, Tritter found that he was only a few blocks away.
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” he confirmed. There was something different in Wilson’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure what it was.
Two blocks down the street, sitting outside the coffee shop was the Good Doctor himself rehearsing what he was about to say. On the roofs of the surrounding buildings, three crouched silhouettes could barely be seen, sitting like gargoyles on their haunches, ready to strike. In a parked car nearby, Foreman nervously shifted behind the wheel, eyeing his glove compartment. An air of intensity and anticipation filled the scene, as what was unmistakably Tritter’s car rounded the corner on the next block. Wilson rose to his feet. Small rocks crunched on the concrete as the tires rolled the car’s front bumper only inches from Wilson’s knees. Tritter emerged from his car, looking especially complacent.
“So, Dr. Wilson, what was it you wanted to tell me?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his gleeful smirk.
Wilson approached the detective, the open car door between them. Tritter’s expression hardened slightly.
“I wanted to tell you,” he began, “That you can keep the silver.”
It was the signal to-
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three gunshots rang out, the bullets having found their way to Tritter’s heels. Wilson hit the deck behind the car for cover. Before Tritter had even reached for his gun, baseball-sized rocks began to rain down on him, striking with incredible force. A last larger rock came hurtling towards his head, and knocked him out cold. Tritter slid down the side of the car and onto the ground with a thud. Foreman lowered his handgun, Wilson rose from the pavement, and House was eyeing Cameron, the origin of the final blow to the head.
“Older Brother,” Cameron said in reply to House’s pointed look. Foreman rolled his eyes.
“Let’s get him back to the hospital,” Chase said in his Aussie accent. “I want to get started.”
***
Tritter’s head was swimming. It felt like his head had been cleaved in two by whatever had hit him. Gunshots. He remembered now, he had heard gunshots. Just then, his feet erupted in pain. He had been shot. He wanted to sit, get off his feet. He could imagine the shattered bones slicing him from the inside out with all his weight on them. He tried, but could go no lower than a half-squat. Something was stopping him. He tried to raise his hands to feel around, but discovered he was restrained. He needed to know where he was. Attempting to pry open his eyes, he found them sealed. Duct tape? He could smell the glue. He shifted himself into the walls. He was in a box, no, a cage. A cage that was too short for him to rise to his full height, too skinny to sit down. He began to panic, realizing that he was captive. Everything throbbed with his heartbeat, which was swiftly climbing to an erratic pace. Everything felt swollen. He yelled out. Maybe someone would hear him. He banged himself into the walls, thinking that maybe he could escape that way.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” A loud voice came from beyond the cage. Tritter stopped. It sounded as if it came from a speaker system.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Tritter interrogated savagely, trying to keep an air of authority despite the circumstances. His body throbbed again. He knew that voice. If only his mind would cooperate with him and bring a face to that voice. No answer came and he threw himself to the walls once more.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Cameron and Cuddy said in unison. They were in a high room with one glass wall, overlooking Tritter in the cage, along with House, Wilson, Foreman, and Chase.
“I can,” Chase said in reply. “Don’t look at me like that! It was House’s idea.”
“…And you all agreed, and are here now, so it doesn’t matter whose idea it was, does it?” House reminded as he disappeared from the room. They fell silent.
Tritter heard a door open and close nearby.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
House crept silently up to the cage and noiselessly slid his cane between the horizontal bars. With the skill of a pro cricketer, House whacked Tritter squarely across the shins. Letting out a fretting gasp, Tritter writhed and squirmed trying to avoid another hit. His attempts were futile. House continued to strike Tritter, stopping only to retrieve a pair of professional grade earplugs from his pocket and shove them in his ears.
“Hey Copper!” House shouted. “I’d like to introduce you to the dulcet tones of Dj-Cudz.”
With that, a high intensity, very loud continuous blast of noise was issued from the operating theatre’s speakers. It dimly registered to Tritter that his eardrums might explode, but the sound drove any other thought from his mind. Something clicked deep in his mind; an epiphany. Everything came together. House. The din was too much to bear. House was going to pay… Overwhelmed with vertigo and realization, Tritter blacked out.
“Take him away boys,” House instructed Foreman and Wilson, as Cuddy cut the note. The cage door was opened, and Tritter flopped out. As House took a few steps back, Wilson and Foreman grabbed a limb, unmindfully dragging the detective from the room.
Some part of Tritter’s mind knew that the sound was gone and that relief had finally come with him losing consciousness. Another part of him barely registered that someone was holding him up. He might have been rescued but what was left of his rationality threw that out. After all, no one knew where he was, and they couldn’t have gotten there that quickly besides. He had realized something important. He struggled to recall his thoughts as he slid along a very smooth floor, that had just changed into what felt like tile.
He was cut off mid-thought as a sudden cold, wet environment made its way around his face. His eyes opened wide, and he spluttered trying to get some air. As soon as it came, it was gone again as his head was lifted, and re-dunked into the water, then out again. Streams of droplets rolled down his face and blurred his vision, still obstructing his view of what was happening. Then his epiphany hit him again. House-this was all House’s doing.
The water came once more. He tried holding his breath this time to conserve air and energy, but spluttering was inevitable. He thrashed around hoping to come in contact with leg or cane and trip his captor, but he could find no purchase anywhere.
When his head lifted again, his vision finally cleared enough to see the object he was being dunked in and felt an instant wave of nausea, but held it in. He knew the symbol that this gave as his head was lowered.
A bully remains just that until a bigger bully comes around…
It was a toilet.
After about 20 or so dips-Wilson and Foreman had lost count-they decided to drag him back to the operating theatre where Cuddy, Cameron and Chase, under House’s direction, had hopefully set up the rest of the equipment. Cameron, on her way to retrieve them, met Foreman and Wilson in the doorway, having unceremoniously pulled Tritter from the bathrooms. With Cameron’s help they heaved him onto a strange table. Wilson and House set to work tying his arms at the wrists, and legs at the ankles, to the archaic device. Wilson went to stand by the crank. Cameron, locating the pack of cigarettes and nicotine gum on the instrument table, made sure they were well in sight of the soon-to-be-woken cop.
All Chase had to do was make sure he got a strong pair of pliers. He held those now, fingering the dull teeth absently. House presently grabbed the smelling salts that he had prepared, and wafted them right under Tritter’s nose. After a few moments, he jerked awake, the first thing he saw being the cigarettes and gum. He struggled, but was unable to move.
He had started to give up the nasty habit a couple weeks ago, but realized that he would really like a bit of his gum, or maybe just one drag of the cigarette. Still, he couldn’t move, and his addictive hunger roared inside him. Forcing himself to tear his sight from the cigarettes, his eyes met the icy gaze of our diagnostician. The rest of the team, all but Wilson, stood around Tritter and House, watching.
“You’re going down for this, House,” Tritter informed. The toilet was still fresh in his mind.
“Well that’s a shame, isn’t it?” With a look somewhere behind Tritter, House nodded his head. “Do it, Jimmy.”
Tritter’s body began to lengthen. He looked up as far as he could to see Wilson manning a crank, winding it, and causing an unpleasant feeling to spread through his muscles. Tritter pulled again, trying to get free.
House began to move around to his backside, picking up a long, thin scope as he went.
“What are you doing?” he asked, slightly bewildered, but suspecting where that scope was about to go.
House flipped up the medical gown that Tritter just realized he was wearing. Confirming his suspicions, Tritter began to struggle, but winced as Wilson gave the crank a good hard yank.
“What are you doing?” he yelled again. It was now more of a statement than a question.
“You see, we’ve been worried about…infections in your lower intestine… That’s why we’re going to do this quick and relatively painless procedure that we doctors like to call a colonoscopy. Relax now,” he heard House say from behind him before the thing was shoved carelessly through his anal sphincter and into his rectum. He winced again, this time letting out an accompanied pained gasp. He tried to edge away from the scope, but was denied any such movement by the rack that stretched his limbs to the point of dislocation.
His thoughts were brought back to that fateful day in the clinic when House had so deftly stuck a thermometer up his rear and left him with his pants around his ankles.
“All finished!” House said in a singsong voice as he twisted the scope inside him and withdrew it.
Relaxing slightly, Tritter managed to open his eyes again. His hunger reared its ugly head again as his sight was drawn to the cigarettes and gum once more. Feeling something cold brush against his foot, he forced his gaze to his lower extremities, seeing Chase hovering near his foot with a particularly sinister grin on his face. Chase held up a pair of pliers rather menacingly.
Oh, no… Tritter’s grim suspicions were once again proved right as Chase looked down to his exposed toes. His struggles increased, even though he couldn’t move at all. Anything was better than this. Chase lowered the pliers to his left big toenail and latched on. At that point, Tritter struggled to move everything except his left leg. The pressure was enough to make him sick with dread. The pain that was expected left a metallic taste in his mouth, and nothing even happened yet. Chase grabbed the pliers with both hands. At the detective’s next exhale he pulled.
Cameron resisted the urge to cover her ears at the man’s scream. She had experienced one of her nails being ripped off before, but it had been unintentional, and she didn’t even notice until one of her friends had pointed out that she was bleeding; nothing like this. Tritter knew exactly what was happening to him and that only gave him more pain.
He deserved it, but it didn’t make Tritter’s screams any more enjoyable to hear. By the time House and Foreman had also picked up a pair of pliers, she was ready to do something. After the nails of one foot were halfway pulled off; and Chase was working on the fourth, House on his right hand and Foreman on his right leg, Cameron grabbed the syringe that someone had left on the nearby instrument table and rushed toward the table, knowing exactly where to aim.
After a jolt of movement, Tritter was cut off mid-scream and Cameron finally sighed in relief. The syringe was sticking out of the man’s neck at an odd angle, having been stuck deep in his larynx, paralyzing his vocal chords. She looked up, only to find everyone staring at her, House giving her a pointed look of disappointment.
“I couldn’t- I just couldn’t take it anymore! He’s screaming, have the decency to shut him up!” Cameron shouted, drawing sighs from nearly everyone. Wilson, seeing her point, intervened before House rounded on her again.
“She’s right. His screams might have attracted some attention and we can’t afford that kind of audience.” Cameron turned to him, slightly shocked before regaining a relaxed look.
Tritter observed the order of events, mute, but found himself curious at the actions of the woman. She seemed to be the weak link of the crew. If maybe he could somehow win her over…
The next thing he knew, his left hand was being adjusted slightly and Tritter managed to glance up and through the white-hot haze of pain, he saw Wilson grab the pliers from Chase and grip the thumbnail of his hand. The new pain, in combination with everything that had happened so far, caused Tritter to black out for a moment.
Tritter willed himself into the darkness, knowing that it was the key to the relief; a way to escape the constant pain. For all this effort, he was quickly jerked back into consciousness by the salts under his nose.
“Can’t have you passing out on us yet, Detective,” House said, managing to get in one of those cliché villain laughs at the end. To drive his point home, House roughly peeled off the last of the nails on his right hand, causing a silent scream to be ripped from Tritter’s mouth again.
Wilson was only halfway through Tritter’s left hand when he blacked out again. House motioned for Cuddy to bring the salts and he took them from her, waving them under Tritter’s nose yet again. He jerked awake, squirming in pain and gasping.
As soon as he flinched, Wilson resumed his role with the pliers. Just as soon as Wilson yanked off the final nail of Tritter’s left hand, the cop blacked out once more. Not wasting any time, House made his way limping for the door. Before he left, he turned, addressing his underlings.
“Minions! Take him and come with me to the Batcave!” House exclaimed, breaking the small silence. “Okay, maybe not the Batcave, but the morgues should do!” he yelled again, motioning for Cuddy and Wilson to follow him as he exited and left Tritter to the others.
When the black haze dissipated from Tritter’s vision, the first thing he noticed was his arms were in a tremendous amount of pain. They both felt as if they had been dislocated. The next thing he noticed was that he was hanging by his wrists. He looked straight ahead, only to find a wall shrouded in darkness save for the waving lines of blue. He looked down to see the source as a large vat of water with fast moving things in it.
His instincts made him jerk, only to have him wince in pain as the feeling radiated from his arms, eventually spreading throughout his body from what happened who knows how long ago.
“Let me go!” he tried to say. No sound came out except for a strangled gasp and the memory of Cameron stabbing him in the neck with the needle came to him just then, causing him to wince again. At the suddenly booming voice around him, he flinched again, causing his arms to let out another twinge of pain.
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the main event of this evening! I hope to draw your attention to the center ring, where our very own detective Tritter will be demonstrating his piranha dive!” House yelled into the microphone of the observation room. Tritter snapped his head around as far as it would go at that. Piranha dive? Did that mean what he thought it meant?
Before he had any more time to contemplate that, his thoughts were torn from him as the chains were slackened and he was thrown into a free fall, his mouth open in a pitiful attempt at a scream.
Inches away from the surface, his chains were pulled tight and-If his arms weren’t dislocated already, they were now-he swung back and forth, his arms screaming with pain.
What he didn’t quite register yet was the fact that his feet were in the water. His legs were, actually-up to his shins. It took him only moments to notice that the fish were eating away at his feet. As fast as he could, he drew his knees to his chest as best he could. Blood was streaming down and dripping into the pool, drawing the piranhas to that exact position, now hungry.
Then they jumped.
Tritter learned something that day. He never knew that piranhas could jump out of the water. Reality was, they could…and they did. His legs were being torn up and there was nothing he could do but gasp, clench his fists, try to scream, and take it. He was inches-yes, inches-from blacking out, when he was slowly lifted from the pool. He breathed a sigh of relief, but pain still laced his knees and shins… He couldn’t fall into the darkness now. The pain kept him from going where he wanted.
That was when the lowering began.
Inch by inch, very slow and every passing moment had Tritter feeling the pain all over his body, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part of all this wasn’t the pain, wasn’t the humiliation, but the anticipation of it all. Awaiting pain is more torturing than the pain itself…he could now make actual sense of that statement.
When the razor-sharp teeth closed around his ankles again, he winced and tightened his fingers around something, anything to keep his attention away from his feet. It wasn’t really any use, the teeth not really painful until a few minutes after they had released their grip. At that point, the white-hot pain glazed over his eyes, making sure that it was the only thing he paid attention to.
Again, he was pulled up. Quickly, this time, making sure that his arms felt a little of the pain as well. He caught his breath, but wasn’t given any warning before the tension was released yet again, causing the cop to plunge into the pool below. With no signs of renewed tension anytime soon, he was afraid. He held his breath-
-And hit the water.
The fish, which had been satisfied with his dripping blood, found him to be an appealing main course. He could barely defend his head from the teeth, but everywhere else felt the full onslaught of the razor-sharp slices. One persistent fish eventually reached his head, which caused Tritter to release the precious air in a gasp of pain. He started thrashing, doing anything he could to keep the fish away from him.
When he felt that he was about to black out, he was drawn up and out of the water. The water streaked with his own blood streamed down his body and trickled to the pool, tinting the water with an ominous red color.
Again he was lowered in a slow drop. Tritter felt the teeth scraping at his legs and thrashed again. He no longer cared what was going to happen, so long as he got free of this Hell.
When his knees touched the water and the teeth started cutting at his thighs, he had enough… Everyone looked on as he lost consciousness again. House looked to everyone else, lastly to Wilson who manned the controls. They nodded; this would all be over soon…
***
It was cold, so cold. Tritter shivered, dreading what was next. He was weak, unable to move even if he wanted to. Still soaked from being dunked in the tank, he lay flopped on his back on the icy, hard steel table like a dejected, lifeless fish about to be gutted. He did not know where he was and he no longer cared, so long as it was all over soon. His body was mangled; his flesh bruised, punctured, and sliced. Almost unrecognizable as the man he was when he agreed to meet Wilson; he no longer felt any physical pain. His nerves had simply stopped responding for now. House ambled past, carrying a bucket of something, which he placed on a separate table before rummaging around in the morgue drawers, looking for things he thought would be fun to use.
Flicking on the bright, buzzing light overhead, he aimed it directly into the cop’s face. Tritter scrunched his eyes tightly shut at the light penetrating his eyelids. All he could see was the glowing red of the blood in his skin.
“Wake up!” House yelled into his ear.
Tritter flinched at the sound, but other than that and his squinting eyes, gave no response.
“I said, WAKE UP!” House repeated. He grabbed the bucket of salt water and tossed all its contents over the body that lie before him.
Tritter mouthed a mute scream, voiceless air rushing through his throat. White-hot pain exploded like burning electrocution over every surface the water touched. His nerves definitely responded to that one. House watched the unfortunate detective, whose back was arched in anguish, and face was pinched so tightly, it looked as if it might be sucked into itself. House laughed, gathering his utensils and letting them drop with a clatter onto the instrument table to get Tritter’s attention. It worked. With surprising difficulty, Tritter turned his head to locate the derivation of the noise.
“Have a nice swim?” Tritter heard the man say.
“What-?” he gasped, a weak whisper reaching House’s ears.
“Shhh… It’s okay. I’d be cold and in pain if I were in your position. Would you like some Vicodin? Oh, that’s right! I don’t have any! Well, good news is, it’s almost over. Bad news is, you’re going out the back doors. The thing is, you should already be dead from the pain and blood loss you went through. I have to do an examination to see why you haven’t died yet. However, this examination happens to be very dangerous to certain people,” he said, snapping on the latex glove.
“What…?” Tritter breathed. House stood there, letting him finish his question.
“What are you…going to…do to me?” he asked, wincing at the pain in his throat from lack of moisture and the loss of his ability to speak.
“It’s a common examination that is performed here all the time. The most deadly side effect of this procedure is what we like to call hypovolemic shock,” he explained.
“What?”
House picked up the scalpel from the small table, holding it up to the light and making sure Tritter could see the blade.
“It’s called an autopsy.”
House slowly-oh so slowly-and delicately inserted the keen knife into Tritter’s upper abdomen. He looked down at himself, breathing heavily, and watched as hot, deep-red claret seeped out and over him. His blood felt like a soothing, spreading blanket over his chest and stomach. House continued his path, slicing the man in half, leaving a gaping slit like an open jacket down his entire front side. It would have been quite interesting to see his own heart beat, had it not been so disturbing and not to mention messy. His face seemed to be burning under the light, with the salt grains still lodged into his cuts.
The silence was deafening. Now he really couldn’t move. All of the muscles that were needed for the sitting up process were now halved at his thighs.
“Hmm. It would seem that I have cracked a couple of your ribs,” House said absent-mindedly, truly in awe of seeing all of the human body’s systems functioning and living before his eyes.
Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, House plunged his arm into Tritter, under his ribcage, and gripped his heart.
“You do have a heart,” House said aloud. The heart’s throb continued it’s mad fluttering beneath House’s fingers. He released the beating muscle, and took hold of another sharp surgical tool.
At this point, Tritter was watching with an absent mind, unable to do anything except tremble as the first stages of hypovolemic shock hit him. Blood was everywhere now. He wouldn’t be alive much longer. He was going to die. Against his will, salty tears began to leak from his eyes and follow their own paths down his scalp, each feeling like a slice across his temples. For each tear, two more came, and Tritter was unable to stop this eventual reaction. He was going to die. The revelation hit him and wouldn’t let him go, torturing him every time the sentence repeated itself within his mind.
Working smoothly and silently, House disassembled the detective, organ by organ. Stomach-less, liverless, gutless, and heartless, Tritter exhaled a last breath, his eyes becoming finally empty.
House, shedding his mask, robe, and gloves, took his cane and strolled out of the room, leaving someone else to clean up the bloody mess…
***
The elevator doors opened and James Wilson looked up from his paperwork to see House limping out of the lift. Coming up to the front reception desk, House glanced at what Wilson was working on, smirking at the name on the header of the file before speaking.
“What-cha doing there, Jimmy?” he asked.
“Work, just like you should be doing,” Wilson retorted. House looked over his shoulder, watching as his left hand scratched the last letters of “Hypovolemic Shock” in the “Cause of Death” box before closing the file and placing it with the others. Turning, Wilson addressed his friend.
“Shall we go?” Wilson asked.
“I got beer,” came the reply.
“I got old, cheesy horror movies.”
“Let’s go then.”
And so they both started walking, in step with one another, toward the double doors, leaving behind the file at the top of the stack that read the two words: “Tritter, Michael.”
Fin.