jackbotsattack | THIS IS A POST

Stocks suck.

Jack hasn't felt this sore in a long, long time, and it's only been one day. His back aches, his legs fell asleep a long time ago, his wrists throb, and he didn't get any sleep at all for risk of crushing his windpipe against the wood. And that's only the start of the complaints - his stomach growls, his throat burns, and he hasn't been allowed a single bathroom break.

Really, the only the only thing that could make this worse would be if everyone could see him in this state - oh wait, they can! Of course they can.

Jack fixes his eyes on the dirt, to avoid looking at the free people of the campus. This can't get worse.

Now Jack, never say never. After all, this is COMPASS we're talking about and it is their goal to ensure you receive quality misery.

To this end Jack had been left in the socks for the past twenty-four hours. Every so often, the white coated figure would appear, a flurry of multiple tentacle like limbs scurrying across the ground as it came close. Due to Jack's position, one eye stalk had to bend down to peer up into his face, human hands making a note on the clipboard before the legs scurried off once more.

It was just a few hours after the start of the next day, when the sun was up and people were definitely moving around (wanted to make sure everybody was awake!) when Jack would feel the stocks shudder. There was a jerk, a clatter and then the top half lifted up and off his neck but before Jack might get it into his head to try to rabbit, unseen hands grasped him.

He was pulled back and away from the stocks, turned towards what looked to be a metal guillotine, just a few feet away. Here the hands failed Jack, because while they propelled him forward, they did nothing to support him, leaving him to his own devices on legs that had gone to sleep, hours ago.

Jack can't hope to stand. He goes falling forward, only saving his face by sticking his hands out at the last minute. His palms are scratched and bruised from the impact with the dirt, and his elbows smart from the sudden jarring of the fall. His knees will sport bruises, too.

Groaning, he flops over on his side. He momentarily forgot what was happening, but now, panting, he remembers the guillotine.

With a raspy yelp, he pushes himself back up as though to run, but his legs are still failing him and his back screams in protest being stretched out. He only succeeds in flopping over the other direction, onto the ground again.

There came that scurrying of too many limbs and in short order Jack would find a pair of eye stalks staring down at him. The white coated figure made no effort to either help him up or stop him from crashing around on the ground like a landed fish.

If anything, it appeared amused, one eye stalk going so far as to look out, beyond the Void, purposefully drawing attention to the fact that quite a number of people were bearing witness to Jack's display.

The other eye stalk twisted around and in a voice that came from somewhere around the collar of the coat, it spoke with very clear, distinct tones.

"Could you not have waited before soiling yourself?"

Was it telling the truth? Was it telling a lie? Did it matter, now that everyone had heard it's words?

Jack's breath hitched and he turns a bright shade of red that suggested the answer. He still can't really move, other than wiggling along the ground a bit, but he does his best to draw up to the best height he could and try to look intimidating. Hard to do when your eyes are puffy from crying and lack of sleep and your clothes are covered in dirt.

"Shut up! What do you know, you stupid worm? Don't you have any brains between those two creepy eyestalks!? I didn't do anything!"

The bright shade of red was answer enough and the eye stalks glanced down to the clipboard as notes were made.

It refused to be engaged in Jack's ranting, tentacle limbs scurrying past the boy with the same regard that some would give an ant, which was to say none. The unseen hands returned, grasping Jack at the back of his shirt, picking him up and showing him off in all his humiliating glory.

There was a blur of time then, the Void and the unseen hands a swirl of confusing motion until the next thing Jack knew, he was hanging between the metal frame of the guillotine device. On the positive side of things, this meant there was no blade in the guillotine. On the negative, Jack now hung by his ankles, like a pig held up for slaughter only beneath him he could see a deep, wide tub of black, bottomless water.

An eye stalk slid into view, the lidless eye peering at up at him.

"You worked for us once."

Jack doesn't take his eyes off the pool of water for the comment. Dread's growing in the pit of his stomach, and he's broken out into a cold sweat. He can't even think about the eye stalk looking at him or the people who are looking at him, right now his world is just him and the water.

The words filter through to him, and he responds automatically, "You guys fired me."

"You ceased to be useful," the white coated figure pointed out.

Then, without further preamble, Jack could hear a lever being thrown and a crash and would find himself hurtling downwards towards the pool of water.

A splash and he was submerged up to mid-torso, so he could not curl out of the blackness. It was just as dark within the water as the water had looked from without, making it impossible to see even if he did open his eyes.

Jack screams as the lever as pulled, but it's quickly cut off as he disappears under the water. Soundlessly, he keeps screaming, his mouth filling with water, which doesn't help.

He flops about like a fish on a hook.

Just that split second before the act of drowning may have released Jack from this terror, he was yanked back up and left to dangle, dripping.

Only long enough to grab a few breaths, to pick up a bit of hope and then the machine shuddered once again and he was dropped into the murky water. This would continue for as long as Jack either remained conscious or continued to flop and flail about.

The intention wasn't to actually drown him (though it probably felt that way at times) but to see just how long, he'd continue to struggle against the inevitable evidence of his own failure.

Jack catches enough air to scream, the first time.

He gives a tired squeak the second.

By the third dunk, he doesn't have the air to do more than wheeze pathetically. He's almost begging to pass out, to not have to feel the sensation of drowning over and over.

But it's not even that that really gets him - it's the laughing. He's hallucinating, but doesn't know it. All he knows is that hundreds of voices are laughing at him in unison, screaming with mirth and yelling out encouragements to the thing in the white coat.

It's that, the relentless mockery, that finally makes him give up struggling on the fourth dunk. They're all right. He must look ridiculous and pathetic. He deserves to be laughed at.

He sinks in for a fifth dunk, but he's not fighting it anymore, just panting harshly as he's dragged up, hands dangling down. Snot is falling down his upturned face from the repeated dunks. Good, it just completes the picture.

He's done. He's given up.

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