Fill the trough with cyanide

Walking through the hallways of a seemingly familiar building, I study the intricately sculpted structuring scaling the walls and doorways. The light pours in from a distant stained glass window at the end of the corridor illuminating the dull marble floors. It slices through the dust permeating the air. I heard the faint sounds of a piano playing, a rhythm-less, nonsensical bashing of keys harmonizing with an odd howling of agony from the vocal chords of something I could only describe as inhuman.

Glancing up I notice a grandfather clock hanging in the air upside down from the ceiling staring me in the face. A maniacal sound emits from it's depths, distorted and bleak, it was oddly mesmerizing. "Check the time", I say to myself out loud, quickly grabbing the face of the clock and, staring into it, noticed that the traditional numbers had been replaced with odd symbols and random numbers: "Z, 24, T3"...making no sense whatsoever. I began to realize, I'm in a dream. The walls open up revealing the brilliant light of the skyline.

Twisting stairwells began to form above my head seemingly leading upward though the stairs themselves angled down. The sound of cement scraped against itself as the building changed, morphing into a floating enigma. The sky split; one half was a bright summer's day radiating with sunshine and blue skies while the other side was a dark and starry night, glistening against the distant unmeasurable landscape cloaked in blue shadow; the sun and moon hung in the sky together. Suddenly the floor beneath my feet begins to crack and crumble as odd rust colored veigns creep up the walls beside me. I stand there, accepting of my fate, without worry. When it finally gives way I plunge into darkness.

As I fall, the distant howling of the mysterious creature became a dull roar of a group choir humming an odd multitonal symphony. I floated to a stop resting my feet atop a golden bridge. It overlapped the infinite ocean of darkness that lie beneath it. Behind me, giant stone pillars which stretched and skewed in no particular direction into the space above. In the distance ahead I see a group of men wearing hooded robes surrounding a giant statue of an owl. It's wings stretched over the group as if protecting them from the darkness outside. Each man held a torch in one hand, and a dagger in the other. The only light in this dark temple emitting from their distant circle. As if my feet hitting the bridge activated an alarm, they immediately turned in my direction and the sound stopped. Silent and still, they stood and stared.

A deafening silence swept through the distance between us. I felt as if an invisible hand picked me up and lifted me into the air. I was floating toward them. I set down just behind the owl statue which had hidden a black throne atop a stairway made of grass. Sitting in the dark chair, a man with the head of a goat clutching a golden septor which radiated a red light from it's tip. He stared as I fell to my knees against the cold stone floor. His eyes black and hollow, emitting an ancient wisdom cut through me to my core, paralyzing me in fear. I couldn't move or speak. "How have you found this place?" The words came from this creature without it's mouth moving to form the words. He was in my mind. "I fell." I replied. He screamed in a chaotic rage lifting his septor in the air.

The men cloaked in robes lifted their daggers and in unison began drawing symbols in the air. The symbols floated in the air emitting brilliant green, red, blue light which saturated the statue. "Unworthy one, stained with the light of the wretched, speak not of this place or bare witness to the wrath of Baphomet." Feeling as though I were being sucked into a vacuum the dream dissipated and I flew into consciousness. Panic gripped my chest as the feeling of hands pressing my arms to the floor startled me into lucidity.

A rancid fume piercing my nostrils and stinging my eyes as I realized a towel dipped in gasoline had been draped over my face. "What is the position of your base!?" a man screamed in a rasp voice as he poured more gas over the rag, suffocating me beneath it. "Tell us or you will meet a fate much worse than death. We know all about you Jack, we could make you and everyone you care about into ghosts and nobody would ask a question." I held my breath, trying to remember what I was taught in militia training. Stay calm. Pace your breathing. Two full minutes had gone by, it felt like an eternity before they finally lifted the rag from my face. "Are you ready to cooperate?" He asked in an oddly calm manner. I whipped my head to the side, trying to get the pools of gasoline out of the crevices of my eyes. "Who are you? What militia do you belong to? What are you doing in these mountains?"

"The real question is who do you work for?" I asked condescendingly. "I know you too, I know your kind. Blindly serving your corporate masters, following orders like a good little lap dog compartmentalized and unknowing of the purpose behind your missions. You are a slave and you justify elitist crimes with propagandized bullshit about stopping terrorism. You're the fucking terrorists! Kill me motherfucker! I'm ready to die for my beliefs, I hope you can say the same."

"Well I'm glad to hear that Mr. Michaels, I'd be more than happy to accomidate you as well, however, there is some information I'm going to dig out of you first. Now, you will talk, you think you're going to somehow brave through the torture and keep your mouth shut, but we've only just begun. Have you ever had your finger nails pulled off before? Agent Cole, assist this man in jarring his memory." A prick of a needle entering the vein in my neck surprised me. "A little something to calm the nerves."

I felt a hand press down on mine and a sudden rush of excruciating pain go up my arm as my index finger's nail was pulled off with needlenose pliers. "Ahhhhhhhhh! You motherfuckers! I'm going to kill every one of you!" I screamed. Just then, explosions and gun fire erupted as the ground shook beneath us. "Secure the prisoner and go check what's going on!" the agent barked. Just as they left the room I could hear gun shots and bodies hitting the ground in the hallway outside. "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" A voice called out to me.

"I'm here! I'm in here!" My militia-men were unlike any other in the U.S. we train harder than Navy Seals. Considering most of our men are ex-special forces it comes as no surprise that they were able to infiltrate and overwhelm a highly secured FBI safehouse with only four men. "Grab him and let's get out of here. We don't have much time."