Chapter 12


Light.
Haze.
Shadows.
Haze
Did I think that already?
	Pain
Ow, my head.
"Your head should be just fine buddy"
"What, wait, did I just say that?"
"Say what? You've been groaning and mumbling for the last few minutes, but none of it made much sense."
Dan opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, and one of the men from his last karaoke hit was peering at him through some bars.
"You've been out for hours mate, welcome to your new home!"
"What are you talking about?" Dan looked around. He was laid in a bed, I what could only be described as a prison cell. The room he was in contained eight of these cells, four along each wall. The walls were made of large stone brickwork, and the cells made from a sturdy looking iron. The air had a musty smell hanging about. Four other cells were occupied by the misfits he had seen whilst singing karaoke earlier, the blond woman and skinny redheaded man were asleep. The stocky man was keeping himself to himself in a cell in the far corner. The fat man who tried to grab the microphone from his hand earlier was beaming away at him just a little bit too close for Dan's liking. 
"How's your head buddy?" he asked
At that moment Dan's head suddenly started pounding.
"It was all right until you mentioned it." he rubbed the sore spot. "Where the hell am I?"
"As I said buddy, welcome to your new home!" 
"New home? You make that sound like it's a good thing. Again, where the hell am I?"
"This is Sylvester's little dungeon, he's keeping us here for the time being." 
The incessant chirpy attitude of this man was starting to get on Dan's nerves already.
	"So what's your name?" asked Dan, in a mildly pissed of manner
	"Chad Logan at your service"
Chad put out a hand for Dan to shake. Dan didn't shake it.
"I don't get it, what's this all got to do with me? Why the hell would anyone want with a low life karaoke addict?"
"Hey buddy don't put yourself down like that, isn't it nice to feel needed? Besides, you're not the only addict around here, we all have our addictions you know."
"You mean you're all addicted to karaoke too?"
"Not all of us no, Tom over there can't stand it, neither can Matt, in the far corner over there. Then Me and Kate can't get enough of it now. But you're the first purist they have managed to get. None of the others were purists either."
"Others?"
"Yeah, this room was nearly full a couple of weeks ago, seven of us in all, but day by day, people haven't been coming back from the tests. We're the last four. Five now, including you. We don't even know what happened to them, but anyone of us could be next"
Dan didn't really want to ask what the hell this was all about. His head hurt enough already, and now he was having to take in all this information. Not only that, but he was having to deal with this chirpy lunatic grinning away at him from the edge of his bed. But he supposed that if he didn't ask now he may have to spend the rest of his days pretending like he knew all along what this meant.
"So what's a purist?"
"You are buddy, you gained you karaoke addiction by yourself, it's your primary habit. At least that's what we figured, it was the first thing you got to do when you came in here."
"And you guys didn't?"
"No sirree bob! We were all addicts when we came here, but for different things, that's how they got us. But now we all have a love or hate relationship with the thing. Since we got here, they've been testing on us, sometimes torturing us, with karaoke."
"Torturing?" asked Dan.
"Yeah, Matt and Tom, they hate karaoke. I mean positively petrified of the stuff, I don't know what Sylvester's men are doing to them, but each time they come back they look like they've nearly died. Kate, and me, we've been forced to take it for weeks, and it didn't take too long before we began to beg for the stuff."
"But what about the other you said were here."
"To be honest, I don't know. There were three of them, and they didn't last too long. Rory hated karaoke with a passion, and every time he came back from a 'session', he was in a worse state, complaining about shooting pains in his chest, and what looked like more and more needle marks in his arm. He became less and less coherent by the day until eventually he was never brought back at all. Then there was Max and Clare. He was an addict, she was a hater. One day they got taken away at the same time. Clare never came back. After that Max never spoke to us, never explained what had happened. Two day's later he was found dead in his cell. He'd killed himself Dan, it was awful.."
"Shit ..." said Dan
Chad for a brief moment looked very upset, and slightly scared. This was soon vanished and was replaced with his usual smile.
"But there's nothing we can do about that now, hey buddy? Life goes on."
"Wait, you said you had other addictions?"
"Yeah, Matt, who stays in the cell in the far corner, he's kept separate for a reason. The cell next to him has always been empty. Max was next to him for a day, but had to be taken away as he was giving Matt his fix."
"And what's that?"
"Matt's masochistic. He's addicted to being beaten up. Spends his whole time trying to rile people to a fight. When he succeeds, he just stands there and takes it. One of these days he'll pick on the wrong person I can tell ya! They keep him separate from anyone now so that there's no chance he can have the satisfaction of a beating.
"Then there's Tommy over there, he's an arborphiliac."
"A what-a-wooliac?"
"An arborphiliac." Chad moved closer to Dan's ear and whispered "A tree lover"
"Like a hippie?"
"Not quite. He loves them a little bit more than your average hippie." Chad winked, Dan shuddered, "Anyway, Kate, she's addicted to books."
"Books? Is that it? They're everywhere. What's so tough about that?"
"She has got to the point now that she reads so fast that the book can't cope and get's torn up as she goes. She's been banned from every library in town, those that actually have any books left that is."
"So what about you? What's your addiction?"
Suddenly, the friendly, annoying, outlook of Chad's face became very serious, perhaps even a little nervous.
"I-I-I'd rather not say."
"Oh come on, it can't be that bad. I mean, worse than Mr Tree lover over there."
"I said that I'd rather not say, now leave it. Okay." Chad definitely had a streak of anger about him, but no sooner had he said that, then he simply carried on in his usual happy way.
"So the gang used our addictions to lure us in here. They preyed on our desperation, as I'm sure they did with you too."
Dan thought back to the night in the toilet. He shuddered, but wondered if they all had to do similar things to prove their desperation too.
	"But what do they want from us all? Why are they torturing us? What are they testing for?"
	"Boy do you ask a lot of questions buddy, ha! None of us know what's going on in here. All we know is that they are testing on us, forcing extreme reactions to karaoke, good and bad. Matt and Tom suffer every time they get taken away by those midgets. Kate and I only suffer when we are away from it all. I think they're trying to work out what this karaoke addiction is all about. The problem is, we all now have two habits to deal with. They give us a fix of our primary habits every time we cooperate with their 'tests'."
Dan was starting to feel like an annoying child who won't stop asking why.
"But why are they doing this?"
"I told ya buddy, we just don't know. But as I said, you're the first purist. You're a self-induced karaoke addict. You're addiction must be way stronger than ours, much more powerful."
A loud scream came from some distance away, followed by the muffled sound of guitar and the screeching feedback form a speaker system. In the distance Dan could hear the melody of the Divine Comedy's 'Something for the Weekend'.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Probably just Matt, he hates that song."
"What the hell are they doing to him? Isn't there something we can do?"
"We don't even know what they do to him, Tom and Matt don't talk about it, they always come back with a look as though they have stared death in the face, and narrowly escaped."
Dan tried to imagine what it must be like to hate karaoke to the same extent that he loved it. Kate slowly woke up and looked over.
"How's they new boy doing?" she grumbled in her half asleep state, "Is he okay?"
"He's doing just fine, aren't ya buddy?" replied Chad
"Well actually, no!" he shouted, "I'm not fucking okay. First I lose everything I had in my life. My job, flat friends, everything. Then I get fucking kidnapped by a gang run by bloody dwarfs, and now I find out that they are using karaoke as a form of torture and that everyone else that was here is now missing, presumed dead? I'm not fucking okay, I'm fucking shit. And on top of that I need some more karaoke soon, because all this is too fucking much for my fucking head to take."
"Whoa buddy, calm down, it's not so bad."
 "And stop calling me fucking buddy you annoying twat. How do you get away with being so damn happy all the time?" 
Kate looked over, "Leave of the man, he's not put you here, your addictions got you here. We're all in this together and we need to stick together if we're gong to get out."
"Hey I'm sorry slick," said Chad, "Happy is all I know to be. And besides, we've got a plan."
Just then the door burst open. Paddy walked in with two suited men and a man in a lab coat.
"Get him." said Paddy
Within a matter of seconds the two suited me grabbed Dan, picked him up and carried him out of the room. Nobody put up a protest, and Dan himself was to weak to struggle. Once they had left, Kate and Chad just looked at each other.
"Do you think he'll be okay?"
"I'm sure he will. He must be their prime catch. I don't think they're stupid enough to waste the opportunity."
"And we'll need all the help we can get if we're gonna get out of here."
All went quiet. The two of them both simply sat in silence, and waited for the inevitable noises to begin from the other end of the corridor.





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