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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 6427863" data-attributes="member: 73653">Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays - Session 4aAgent SÁBADO awoke still handcuffed to the rail of his hospital bed. He was still heavily sedated, numb, and unable to move without great effort. Agent RAPSCALLION slept in a chair at the foot of the bed snoring softly. The room was dimly lit from somewhere in the corner, and a thick line of light peeked in from under the door. SÁBADO’s vision was blurry as well, but slowly he focused his eyes on the clock. The hands came into focus before the numbers, but he didn’t need the numbers to read the clock. It indicated the time was 1:38, and the darkness outside the window implied it was early morning.The door to the room opened quietly, and out of the corner of his eye, the IRS agent could barely make out the silhouette of a man. As the man approached, SÁBADO could see that he wore a black suit and carried a green canvas bag over one shoulder. The man leaned over Agent SÁBADO, and a whip-like tentacle shot from his mouth striking the seemingly helpless agent. Before the tranquilizer could flow, SÁBADO managed to flail an arm up to push the tentacle away.The man simply grinned and dropped his bag in a nearby chair. Drawing a serrated hunting knife, the man in the black suit approached the sleeping and snoring Agent RAPSCALLION. With a quick motion, the Marshall’s throat was cut, and blood sprayed. Agent SÁBADO tried to scream, but all he could manage was a forceful exhale.The man then took what appeared to be a plastic or foil pouch from the bag on the chair. He moved to pull down the neck of SÁBADO’s gown, but the agent again managed to flail an arm wildly to block the attempt. Every pathetic attempt at resistance only seemed to amuse the man in the black suit even more. Again the man moved to pull down the neck of the gown, and this time he was successful.With SÁBADO’s chest exposed, the man placed the pouch over the agent’s heart. The sensation it produced was immediately one of intense cold which then became a numb, dull pain. When the pouch was removed, the area was a pale blue-white. The man drew his knife across the pale area easily parting the flesh and cutting into the bone. Setting the knife aside, he then reached into the wound with both hands, ripping flesh and bone apart to expose Agent SÁBADO’s rapidly beating heart. The process caused a strong but numb and dull physical pain, but it was the psychological pain that really hurt. The poor IRS agent was powerless to do anything but watch as the man drew a pocket watch-sized, grey object with many twitching legs from his jacket pocket. He placed it directly on SÁBADO’s beating heart, and it burrowed in.The man in the black suit grinned as he forced the bone and flesh back into roughly the right places. He then applied the pouch to the area once more, and after the intense cold, the wound was sealed. The area remained the same pale blue-white.As the man stood over the bed grinning, the door silently opened once more, and a nurse entered. She was very tall – nearly seven feet – and she was very thin. It seemed as if a regular person had somehow been stretched out. She walked over to the man in the black suit, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said simply “You don’t belong here.”The man turned to look at her, and as he did so, she began to glow with a pale white light. The light seemed to slowly intensify, and as it did, everything outside about a three-foot radius seemed to get darker. It was as if either she was pulling all the light from the room to surround her, or the light emanating from her was pushing back the darkness and condensing it. Either way, the effect was the same; total darkness everywhere but around the nurse and the man in the black suit. As she became too bright to look at, the man reached into a pocket inside his jacket and took out his sunglasses. He grinned as he put them on. The nurse then began to crackle with energy, and the room exploded. Everything was vaporized – including SÁBADO.After he died, Agent SÁBADO experienced a long period of darkness. He then awoke in his hospital bed, still handcuffed, and still sedated. Agent RAPSCALLION still slept in the chair at the foot of the bed, and the clock still said 1:38. He could vaguely remember something from the period of darkness. He could remember … numbers? Yes; a seemingly random series of numbers.Then the door opened, and out of the corner of his eye, Agent SÁBADO could barely make out the silhouette of a man. The previous scene again played itself out, and SÁBADO’s mind was having real difficulty holding itself together. His Catholic faith filtered the horrible semi-reality for him, and he began to regard the nurse as something of a guardian angel.After the period of darkness, he again awoke, and once more, he could remember bits and pieces. This time, the number string broke off, and the voice had “spoken”. It was really more like words forming in his head, but regardless of their nature, he could make out the phrase “subject response sub-optimal”.The scene with the nurse played out once more, and this time SÁBADO decided he was either dreaming, or he was in Hell. Praying silently that it was the former, he tried to wake himself, but it didn’t work. Well, that was a bad sign.This time however, when everything went dark, he could actually hear. It wasn’t like waking and remembering. This seemed to be actually happening. The voice said “Subject status invalid. Sensory error. Correction.” The darkness began to fade, and though he was completely immobilized, be could still make out a stone wall lined with metal racks which held jars, wickedly shaped tools, and metallic cylinders of various sizes. There was also a large vat of some sort of churning grey slime. He had only a brief period to take this in before something humanoid, but definitely not human appeared over him. It was short, grey, impossibly thin with a large head, tiny mouth, and very large, black eyes. It looked very much like what Hollywood and various rural Americans have said for years that aliens looked like.The mouth didn’t move, but Agent SÁBADO could hear the voice all the same. “Remain calm, subject. Adjustments are in progress to restore equilibrium. Fixed state … status error … correction.” There was a shock to his heart, and SÁBADO again awoke in his hospital bed, handcuffed to the rail and still sedated. Agent RAPSCALLION still slept in the chair at the foot of the bed, but this time the clock read 5:43.The door slowly opened, and the man in the black suit entered. SÁBADO’s heart began to beat faster. With every step the man took, the agent’s heart rate increased. The man leaned over the helpless IRS agent, and the whip-like tentacle shot out striking him in the neck. As it did so, Agent SÁBADO’s heart began to beat impossibly fast, and finally it exploded. The heart exploded, SÁBADO exploded, the man in black dropped dead on the floor, and Agent RAPSCALLION was knocked out of his chair.He rubbed his eyes and opened them to see an arm handcuffed to a bed rail and feet poking out from under the blanket, but there was only blood and gore to connect them. He barely held back a scream as he stood and quickly exited the room. He sent Agent RAPUNZEL a quick text; only two words: SÁBADO exploded.</blockquote>

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