Hey, I followed through!

It's a surprise when he grabs one of them, links of metal with a rusted hook on the end. A surprise that it feels so cold and familiar, just a tool of a different stroke. He whips it through its brethren and hears the reflective rattling of the forest, the lone squelch of skin and muscle parting, metal sinking down to bone. He hears the roar, but he does not see the fist come screaming from the darkness, chains wrapped around it that knock pennies into his mouth.

He spits red copper and stained enamel, clenching his gums behind pursed lips. His arm twists, going taut, and the mesh pattern of the platform is pressed into his chest. Something hot, fierce with barely contained energy, presses to his temple as a tremendous weight settles on his back and crosses its legs. The barrel of a recently fired rivet gun. To his temple. Dammit.

"All right. We've got the here and now settled. How 'bout we cover the past?"

He grimaces as best he can, missing teeth and all, and struggles to get some freedom, any freedom, but the steel is on one side and the body is pressing into the other. His shoulders go slack, the rest of his muscles following suit.

"Good. Shall we start from the beginning?"

His fingers are trapped at his belt buckle, but they still have some wiggle room. He shifts them inside his waistband slowly, carefully, making absolutely certain that he doesn't alert his captor to his efforts. In the meantime... Keep him distracted. Talk to him.

"Fine. It was a dark and stormy night. A peal of thunder announced my birth as the clock struck midnight. Born at the cusp of the witching-"

The butt of the rivet gun removes another few teeth from his increasingly sore mouth.

"You're full of shit. I know the real story, but I want to be damn sure you do, too."

A laugh of blood and acid, splashed against iron.

"After all, what good's it gonna be to kill you if you don't know why I'm doing it?"