Nihilist Under Narcotics
“What do you mean ‘he hasn’t been talking’?” barked Keith Hibbert to his armour-plated goons as he stormed through the double doors. His feet stomped against the sangria tiled floor.
Wolverine heard the doors slam shut, and struggled to suppress a delirious giggle at the fat, pin-stripe-suit-wearing Hoser’s angry outburst. The blood had rushed to his skull a good few days ago, and now it felt like his brain was rapidly dissolving into the red stuff flooding his cranium, as he idly spun anti-clockwise with that blasted rope tied around his ankles and attached to a surprisingly sturdy yet small hook stuck in the peeling, charcoal-coloured ceiling (matching the walls).
Granted, he also couldn’t think straight because his asshat-captors had him routinely pumped up with enough drugs to kill a large animal in less time than it takes to say ‘I’m not telling you anything about where the X-Men are based, now let me fucking go’.
His uniform was in tatters. The once-bright yellow hue now looked like a damp sandstone, and he was missing his right glove and left boot. The mask had been torn off when he first woke up in the abandoned factory he still was trapped in. Holes peppered the fabric in random places, and there was an ambiguous stain or two or three that he didn’t remember the cause of, or what they were (he didn’t really want to know).
He writhed a little, trying to shift the chains around his sore elbows a few precious centimetres lower before Hibbert got less than a metre near him; his world spun, and he quelled the bewildered shout that he felt build up in his dry throat, and clamped his jaw shut. He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything.
Wolverine hadn’t gotten any kind of sustenance in...he couldn’t really tell, the room he was primarily being held in had no windows, and no noise from outside slipped in; and he could feel the starvation and dehydration untangling the meaty mess in his noggin like a ball of yarn, and he’d been swallowing down whatever saliva that would build up in his parched mouth in a useless attempt of relief - until two days ago; when, in his disorientated, exhausted, confused state, he came up with an idea.
Pain suddenly exploded across his scalp and his view melted into itself as the room became a blurry mess. He screwed his eyes shut, whatever was left of his brain by this point bouncing against the inside of his skull.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking up (or down, he honestly couldn’t tell) at the pale, round, humorously furious face of Keith Hibbert, whom he’d momentarily and completely forgotten had existed. Hibbert scowled and waved his hand across Wolverine’s face in an attempt to get his attention. He idly watched the large, white hand go from left to right, from right to left, with long black lines plastered to his palm.
‘Hairs’, a voice at the back of his head whispered with an echo of numb horror as Wolverine continued to sway, ‘They’re my hairs. That asshole grabbed me by my hair’.
“Okay, Tom Thumb-” Hibbert snapped, grabbing the ends of Wolverine’s hair and yanking downward so that he was at eye level “I don’t know what you’re playing at here. You don’t cooperate, you get hurt, we’ve made sure you learned that...” Wolverine groggily recognised the stench of greasy chargrilled beef wafting off his words “...you said it yourself that you’re useless as ransom, so the only way out of this, mutant scum, is to tell us where they are.”
Slowly, Wolverine blinked. Blinked again. His eyes were glazed, and a small stupefied smile flickered on his lips. He knew he was dangerously blitzed, and some half-asleep part of him seethed with loathing at the utter lack of control, but the potent junk running through his system lay thick and heavy on his nerves like a smothering quilt.
Keith’s face reddened. He looked like a beetroot. A beetroot with a silly blond toupee.
Wolverine snickered.
Suddenly, his vision swam, dull colours bled into and out of each other like watercolour paint except the paper was on fire and the artist had been harshly slapped across the face while roped to the ceiling. His cheek stung.
On the bright side, Hibbert had let go of his hair.
Unfortunately, Wolverine was now spinning around the room like a goddamn pendulum. The walls and floor and ceiling were folding in on each other, and his stomach twisted and churned, his throat shrivelled - God, it felt like it was shedding like a lizard - he needed to swallow. He needed to swallow, or he’d vomit. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t - he had to be patient. The act of doing what he needed to do...it’d be gratifying, for one thing; but it might piss Keith off enough to get rid of him.
Wolverine felt the rope stop dead with a strong tug. His captor’s fugly face swam into view, a nonchalant sneer plastered on his sweaty, pale mug; the pigeon’s goons surrounded the room like some kind of heavily-armoured fence. The annoying sound of those keeners chuckling seemed to wake him up a little.
Wolverine glared straight into the beady eyes of the pig on two legs and spat at him.
A cry followed, a squawk of disgust, from both Hibbert and his minions as Keith tumbled back onto his ass, using his pin-striped sleeve to mop up the glob of un-swallowed saliva; and he let go of the rope, sending Wolverine spinning again.
The colours were melting again, sickeningly, and his mouth was sorely dry, but by Thor it had been so damn worth it. His brain felt like it had finally mollified, like the one thing keeping it together was the notion of making that asswipe scream like a little kid.
Wolverine laughed like a madman, sometimes being interrupted by a sputtering cough before starting back up again, fresh blood trickling down his chin going completely unnoticed.
He was out of his head.
Hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps years - he didn't know! - of being narcotized until he was too dopey to recognise his hands as his own, of being slapped across the face until it drew blood, of being constantly interrogated time and time and time again...it was so flaming worth it.
He was stuck in another coughing fit when his body crunched into the floor, neck snapping forward. A heavy weight dropped onto the small of his back - presumably a boot, and arms pinned down his limbs. His body wracked with a sudden shiver when his face pressed against the tiles. They’d cut the rope.
“Take him to the furnace,” ordered Hibbert from out of his vision “Even if the other X-Men did come for you, Wolverine, despite your claims - they surely won’t recognise you once we’re done with you.”