"Hello, dear reader. I've missed you." A crooked smile appears, stretching a bemused face. "Perhaps, just perhaps, this will allow you to forgive me for my slights against you. I plead for that, dear reader; I beg for your forgiveness." Knees hit the ground and hands are raised, the body contorted in an almost penitent positioning. "Allow me to assuage your bloodlust so that you do not seek my own blood on your instruments of torture. Allow me to present to you the word 'Fear', which I believe in this case should be synonymous, dear reader, with hopelessness." Hands are wrung and the crooked smile disappears to be replaced with one much more sinister.

"For where the sun does not shine there is no light, and where the light has disappeared, so has hope. Fear flourishes in the dark corners of our minds, dear reader."

Her feet pound across the concrete floor, her shoes are gone. She is desperate to escape; her right arm hangs limp and useless at her side. She slams her left shoulder into the door in front of her; flinching at the pain it sends shooting through her body. Blood trickles down her right arm, dripping onto the concrete at her feet as she slams her shoulder into the door again.

It does not budge and the woman weeps. She slides down against it in a broken heap, and tears slip down her cheeks as she hears a high pitched giggle sweep through the almost completely dark building she is being held prisoner in. Her hand desperately clutches the right arm, and she winces as she feels the broken bones grind together. More blood runs in rivulets down her arm to gather in the palm of her hand; it slowly seeps through the cracks of her fingers. She barely feels the pain anymore.

The giggles are closer now, and she struggles to her feet; desperation surges through her again. She darts down a dimly illuminated hallway, and hope rushes through her when the light at the end of hall begins to grow brighter. She bursts through the open door way, feeling triumphant for a brief, flitting moment.

His voice is cold as she skids into the room, and he casually closes the door behind her. "I've been waiting for you to finally arrive. Your procedure was scheduled an hour ago. Quite irresponsible you know, to not inform the attending physician you will be tardy."

She screams as he steps towards her, and he just laughs as her eyes dart around the room, seeking some sort of exit. His hands are slack at his sides, and his smile is more disturbing than the hysterical giggles that had been sliding from his throat a moment before.

"Perhaps I should sedate you," he muses. "Too much stress can cause your heart to overwork itself. I wouldn't want you to die on the table; not for something as routine as what we are going to be doing."

She darts back towards the door, willing to face the dark instead of the bright lights of his dissection table. His hand snakes out as she rushes past him, grasping her by the wrist as he tugs her back into the room. Her fingertips brush against the doorknob and another scream rips itself from her throat as she feels the needle slide into her throat. His arm is wrapped around her waist now, and he supports her as she feels her grip on consciousness slip through her fingers like the blood from her arm.

She droops in his grasp and he chuckles as he adjusts his grip and brushes her long blonde hair over one shoulder. "Ah, my dear, the things that I can do to you. The things I can do to make you better; the things I can do make the world a better place with the knowledge that I will gain from you. Ah yes, the world it is. I'm sorry, my dear, but you must be a sacrifice for the betterment of mankind and scientific research."

She does not hear him, lying limply in his arms, her breath coming gently as her heart beat slows down from the anesthetic he injected into her. He looks down at her for a moment, and his free hand reaches up to twist the screw that protrudes from his skull.

"Don't I know you?" The question hangs in the air for a long moment as he ponders on the answer to it. He finally shrugs and pulls the woman up to place her on an operating table, before he decides a different approach will be much more beneficial to scientific research.

His scalpel slides delicately across her thigh, descending gently into the skin. She does not move, though there is a small tremble in her leg as he neatly severs her femoral artery. She now has about five minutes to live; he decides to wake her and tell her.

Perhaps she will beg for her life. Perhaps she will weep some more, and that thought pleases him. The woman's tears tug at something in him that he has never had touched before. They sound like something that he has never wanted to hear, never has been able to hear before. Tears of fear, a new sensation that he feels certain that she has never had evoked in her before. A sadistic grin splits his face as he imagines the sounds that she will make.

Another needle is slid into her skin and her eyes flutter open after a moment.

"Congratulations," he says with a glint in his eyes, "your procedure is over. You're welcome to leave." He hides the smirk as she unsteadily rises, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of the table.

Blood streams down her left leg and she looks down at it. He can tell when she realizes that just pressing her hand against it will not stop it; the blood seeps between her fingers, pumping in time with her heartbeat, and as he watches the flow increases in speed. Wide eyes look at him.

"Ah, that. You have maybe… four minutes, yes that sounds right, four minutes before you die. Perhaps two before you lose consciousness."

The blood pumps quicker between her fingers and she stands suddenly, hitting the floor as she does so.

"Fr-Franken…"

He tilts his head and he suddenly realizes that her fear has disappeared, to be replaced with something else; desperation, determination. Her shouted words send a shock through his soul, and something inside of him twists painfully. He ignores it.

"You won't let me die, Franken!"

There is true belief and faith in her voice and she pulls herself up unsteadily to her feet before she collapses against his chest. Her movements startle him, but she has more in store, and he suddenly feels fear course through him, yet he doesn't know why.

Her hand reaches up beside him and he feels a tingle of electricity surge through him as something clicks and rotates in his head. His hands find her shoulders and he shoves her away from him, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he tries desperately to understand what she has just done to him. He staggers back.

She crashes into the operating table, and the blood running down her leg has changed from a trickle to a small stream. She grasps at the wound and applies pressure, tears streaming down her cheeks as she feels her own fear crash back over her. She didn't reach him, and she knows this. The man standing across from her is not the man that she knows. She stands and sways as he stands across from her, his eyes unfocused.

She is dead, and she knows it, but she still fights for survival. She staggers to him, her hand reaching up to grasp at the screw and twist it yet again. She is pressed flush against his body, and the man stands there as she twists the screw, his hands slack at his sides. She sobs against his neck as she repeats the twisting process.

A hand suddenly wraps around her wrist, and he jerks her backwards, slamming her against the operating table.

"You couldn't be content with a beautiful death, could you?! I was going to let you bleed out before I sliced you open. I was going to make certain that you felt nothing! It was my final present to you!" his voice screams at her, and she freezes, terror arching through her.

He grabs her roughly, thrusting her body back up and onto the operating table. He doesn't bother with gloves or even restraints; he grabs a hand scalpel and slides it into her stomach as she screeches. His eyes are unfocused as he slides the scalpel across her throat, and he wonders briefly if he has done it correctly as no blood follows the thin line across her throat. Then the blood slips free from its casing of skin and vein and artery and dribbles down her throat and her eyes roll up in the back up her head. A frenzied giggle escapes from his throat as he leans in to smile down at her.

"It's still going to be beautiful. It will be the most gorgeous, beautiful shade of death I have ever created, I promise you."

Her breath rasps in her throat as she struggles desperately to breathe, to form words. The scalpel slips into her stomach again and he tears almost savagely at her skin, not caring that the incisions aren't straight or even in the proper locations. All that matters to him is delving into her skin while she is still breathing.

She whimpers, the only sound that she can make with the blood pouring down her throat, from her leg, and from her abdomen. He just laughs and his left hand violently draws the scalpel through the muscles in her chest. She doesn't have the strength now to scream, her life flowing from her with each beat of her heart. It beats faster, and she thinks that it will burst as she sees a sudden flash of sanity in his eyes as the scalpel stops its hectic movements. He leans in and asks a question that hangs heavy in the air again just as she loses her grasp on consciousness.

"Don't I know you?"

She never answers.

A smirk stretches a disinterested face. "I hope, dear reader, that I have satisfied you with this offering based on the word 'Fear', given to me by Greyvss. I pray that your bloodlust has been tempered for now. Or perhaps, that I have only whet your appetite for more. Remember, I implore you, that I do not own Soul Eater. And now, à bientôt."