A buzzing in her head roused her slowly, until finally she jerked up, eyes wide and darting to and fro as her senses screamed on alert. She was used to this by now. Used to the games they played, used to their ideas of experimentation and research.

She was a puzzle to them, she knew that much. She was a tempting secret within a box that they wanted-no, desired to open. Much like Pandora's box.

Which was why they had destroyed her life. Ravaged her home. Murdered the people she loved for their own petty desires. What puzzled them most was that she didn't, wouldn't and couldn't talk. Never had she screamed, begged, or cried for mercy when they tortured her mind and body. Never.

And this is what drove them most to break her. To hear her cries and pleas, to hear her scream in agony. Oh, it wasn't that she didn't want to, it was that she couldn't.

"Finally awake I see." The voice was cool; the gentle tone belying the steel that she knew existed beneath it. She didn't flinch; instead she closed her eyes and waited for them to begin. It was the same…always…it was only when looking back to this day that she realized she had been wrong.

But she didn't realize this…yet.

She waited. Sweat trickled down her neck, leaving an itchy sticky feeling as it slid beneath the tattered shirt. In the silence she could hear the raspy shallow sounds of her own breathing, and as always, without warning, the mental assaults came.

The scream that welled up within her chest was held at bay by the same barrier that always held it back. It was what kept her from screaming, from talking, for doing anything.

Her eyes snapped open against their own accord and suddenly knew that this was different. They had always used her memories against her, used cruel ways to try and see if she broke under the strain, but never…never had they done this…

She watched on in growing horror as they barraged her mind again and again, relentless in their mental assault against her mind. Tears trickled down her unblinking eyes, as blood was shed, bodies and screams filling the scope that was her mind. She wanted to scream, to rage, to rant and tear her attackers limb from limb. Memories of her family, friends, and strangers just being killed all because of her filled her to the brim. Filled her beyond what she could contain.

Stop…stop it! Stop this! STOP!!! STOOOP!!!

Unseeing hands clawed at her body, tearing into her flesh as she resisted. They were trying to keep her back, trying to hold her from her rage. NO! Let go…let go…LET GO!!! She screamed in a wordless rage and her world was eclipsed, tilted and stained a bloody red. Familiar faces blurred until she didn't know, didn't care whom they were. The hands that held her back were suddenly burned away from into ash as a blinding glow enveloped her entirely.

A grim smile flickered across her lips; drawing back into a snarl to reveal pristine white teeth despite the condition they were in. Hands balled up into fists, ragged nails bit deep into her flesh and blood welled up to run down her hands and drip unnoticed by its owner onto the ground.

They wanted to hear her scream? They would. They wanted to see her cry in pain and anger? They would. They wanted to see her break? They would. They were going to come face to face with what her family had always told her to keep hidden, a side of her that her mother tearfully begged for her to never show.

They wanted her so badly before, well, now they were about to get her. All of her. Whether they liked it, or not.

And for the first time in years beyond she could count she laughed. It wasn't a happy, joyful laugh, or a sad and bitter one. No, this laughter went beyond words, beyond anyone could comprehend or imagine. It was the laughter of pure release, rapture, pain, anger and so much more that the words and descriptions were all caught up within one another, a tangled weaving that even the most skilled spider could never create into a web.

Those who were present, even those who were not but were within the same vicinity heard that laughter. Heard the words and endless torment that was laced in it and they shivered, trembled, and paled at the emotions that were welled up in the person who laughed. Many cried, for their lives because they knew that this was their end, and others because they could feel, could imagine and live the memories that the laughter carried.

The glow that began in the middle of the bloody grounds was small, but it slowly expanded until it seemed to be cast enough to swallow everything in sight. And along with it, a strange looking little man appeared, eyes that saw everything yet nothing, age and wisdom that only one could imagine what they had seen burned with a life of its own in their sunken depths. And for one moment, for one brief instant an emotion stirred to life within them. Sadness.

He came to halt when he reached the quivering, bloody form of the only thing that held life in this place. Fresh and dried blood matted the hair to a thin stretched scalp, and as if somehow sensing his presence, the bowed head rose and haunted, fathomless eyes confronted his own. Wet streaks left blurred trails in the blots of blood on her face and she closed her eyes, head lurching forward as she slumped downwards onto the ground and into the embrace of unconsciousness.

The wizened little man and the bloody girl disappeared, leaving the strewn bodies and blood behind them where the silence was defeaning.