It was a slice of toast, to be more specific. It was golden-brown and buttered on one side, with a thin layer of raspberry jam over the top. The crusts were dark and crispy, the centre softer and slightly cooled. It was the most delicious thing he had ever laid eyes on, and it was being hovered an inch under his nose, almost touching his top lip. His neck was strained forward as far as it would go, painfully, and the smell of warm gluten and grains almost stung his nostrils, and when it was pulled back he could have sworn he would die.
It was the closest he had been to solid food in two weeks.
He was starving.
And he broke.
“Forty-eight Alison Terrace,” he said. The words could never be taken back. “Forty-eight Alison Terrace. Please—”
The bread returned, and he sobbed as he took his first bite. It tasted like ash, and for a horrible moment he thought he would throw up, but then his dry mouth registered the sweet tang of the jam and his body collapsed in relief. His head tilted back to let the tears run from the corners of his eyes and chewed until the rest of the flavour came to him, the salt of the butter and the whole-wheat support of the bread underneath.
The rest vanished in bites as large as he could take them, until the last corner was fed between his lips by the gloved hand of his captor.
It was followed by a sip of water from the glass that was always on the table by his side, though never within reach with his wrists tied to the arms of the chair. He could see it in glimpses in the corner of his eye, maddeningly close.
His cheeks dried slowly of tears as Bennett’s breathing settled.
“Where do the minders live?”
The next question caught him off guard. Ever since he woke up here, on this chair, in the almost-dark with only masked figures standing over him, there had only been one question. Where are the Mannington family?
Bennett didn’t even work in witness protection. He’d just been helping out. Just for an afternoon, because Kamran Heydari was sick.
Maybe that was why they picked him.
“Across the road,” he said, because the damage had already been done and the Mannington family were as good as dead. “Fifty-one.”
“Good.”
“Will – please, are you—?”
“See to it that Mr Kennedy gets his injuries tended to,” the voice cut him off, and Bennett flinched at the realisation. He flinched again at the feeling of hands, still gloved, touching the area where the knife had been hours ago. His reward.
The door to his cell clicked shut. The interrogator was gone, but not far. Outside, he heard her, and another voice.
Good work.
Thank you, sir.
She was calm, professional, as she always was. There was barely a trace of emotion in her voice.
You’re just the right kind of monster, as always.
I try my best.
The other voice, warm and approving with a hint of humour, was one Bennett could only guess at identifying. But if he was pressed to, he knew who it was likely to be. Only one player in this godforsaken city would have the guts to take a police officer captive from his own home.
Join us for a week of organized crime whump from March 14-20, 2022. Bring your crime syndicates, families, gangs, and let’s have some whumpy fun!
Important Event Notes: the prompts are not assigned to a specific day. You can use any prompt or combination of prompts on any day during the week of March 14-20. You can choose one for each day in an order that best fits the story you want to tell, or combine two or more in any fashion that suits your creative spark.
As always, any form of creation is accepted, whether it be writing, art, moodboards, cosplays, and more. Show us what you’ve got, whump community!
He sat at the desk in his little room, a white-walled, thin-carpeted square broken only by the locked door and the small, thickly-barred window. He was below ground, as best he could tell through the clouded glass, in a converted basement. He was delivered a tray of food each day good enough for three meals, and there was even an en suite with drinkable water in the tap. It was obvious that he wasn’t the first to live here. The bathroom had scratches in the doorframe from someone keeping count of the days. The mattress had a dip in the centre. In the middle of a sleepless night, it was like he could feel the ghosts of previous abductees breathing in the same air.
Most of his nights were sleepless now.
The desk was had recently been sanded down. It was obvious by the fresh, unblemished grain of the wood. Perhaps the person in here before him had left a message he wasn’t allowed to read.
On the desk was a stack of plain paper, and two wax crayons. It would have been funny, if it wasn’t obviously done to make sure he had nothing sharp to use as a weapon. Not that Bennett was stupid enough to try and stab Alfonse Dechart’s guards with a ballpoint pen, but there was no accounting for desperation.
Each day, he sat at the desk with the Crayola Black Stars in his hand and wrote as much as he could think of about work. They weren’t selective. On the first day he wrote about the layout of the headquarters. By the sixth day he was writing about what everyone ate for lunch and where they went if they wanted coffee.
All of it was treated the same. The more he wrote, the better things got.
Armani returns the next morning. He still hasn’t changed, though he’s discarded his jacket, and under the edge of his rolled-up sleeves, hidden so hospital workers won’t question, Cyril spots flecks of blood. Fresh.
“I brought one of the boys to sit outside your room,” he announces, folding into the chair by Cyril’s bed with a stifled sigh. “He’ll stay until you’re well enough to go home.”
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” Esme cranes his head to peer out of the door. “Oh, hey Dan.”
Dan waves before turning back to watch nurses and doctors hurry by.
“I mean, they’re all dead but one. Right? And this is a hospital.”
Cyril exchanges a glance with Armani, surprised– and not, at the same time– at the way his expression mirrors their own thoughts. Esme was always the sunshine prince of his father’s shadowed kingdom. Even before their impromptu absence, Cyril often found they knew the darker underbelly of humanity better than the crime lord’s son.
“We should sack the whole fucking mansion. Kennedy is in there. We know he’s in there.”
“We do not. We have only speculated.”
“Bullshit. We can come up with something, can’t we? One of his fucking shipments?”
Alfonse paused the recording and smiled to himself. Across the table, Twitchy Val sat with their spectacled eyes fixed on their screen.
“Don’t fret,” he told them kindly. “The man they’re looking for is not, in fact, in my home. Nor is he in any of my properties.”
Val shuddered. But they weren’t used to that side of things. They didn’t need to trouble their conscience over the details, so Alfonse didn’t give them.
“Has there been any noise since this meeting? Anyone taking the bait?”
“No, no-no-nobody.”
“Fabulous. Thank you for bringing this to my attention directly.”
Val’s head bobbed in a quick nod, their curls falling again over their forehead. Alfonse had watched them smooth their hair back a dozen times already. He was going to buy them a clip for their next birthday.
Or he’d ask Sinclair to find something, anyway.
Maybe even make something, if Val kept up the brilliant work.
“I’ll let you go. Keep your ear to the ground.” Alfonse smiled at his own joke, knowing Val’s work did not involve ears, but microphones hidden in ingenious ways. “Anything else on Kennedy, come to me.”
“Yes, yes sir.”
He motioned for them to leave, and they did, gathering their computer, headphones and portable drive in their arms. The door swung shut behind them without a sound, slinking into place through against the soundproofing.
Alone in his office, Alfonse took some time to think.
The Kennedy situation was handled in the main, but there were ripples still. The cops got nervous when one of their own vanished, and the worst of them got vindictive. He was obviously implicated, given the deaths of the entire Mannington family, who had been put into witness protection to protect them from Alfonse himself. Some of them, as they always did, wanted to skip due process and start firing.
The chief was in his pocket. Alfonse was the only reason he was chief at all, and he knew that. Alfonse helped him with his other problems, and he turned a blind eye to the smuggling. He didn’t so much turn a blind eye to the forgeries as make use of them. There were high-profile criminals in jail because of evidence Alfonse’s lab had fabricated, and so they couldn’t well turn him in now, could they? He’d pull the whole house of cards down.
The remaining issue, though, was the tension. Heightened in the force, taut on the streets, and Alfonse wanted to deescalate before he moved forward. It didn’t do to leave everyone on edge. Time would do most of the work, but there were reparations he could make in the meantime.
A sizeable donation to the charity ball. Maybe a new bandstand at the park. Things that would send the message, it’s alright. We’re still your friendly neighbourhood crime ring. We’re not savages.
Ah, there was a thought. He typed out a quick message. May I have a handbag?
Sinclair was always quick to respond, when he’d earned their attention. For what?
Public relations. There’s a charity auction for the youth opera.
Agreeable.
Fabulous. The presence of a Sinclair design would repair the goodwill of anyone harbouring a vendetta. And for those who held onto their grudges… What was it his mother had said? Resentment is poison, and it’ll kill you if you don’t let go.
Yes, something like that. He picked up his phone and dialled.
“H-Hello?”
“Val,” he said with a smile. “Next time you go in, slip a couple of nightpills into Detective Kim’s coffee.”
“Um. Yes sir.”
Lovely. He hung up and got up, and got in the car for a drive. It was time to check in with his new recruit.
It started at a party. Glass and beads and jewels sparkle under the brightly lit chandelier hanging over the long dining room table. The light casts a sheen on the many different colored silk ties pressed over white shirts covered with dark Armani suit coats. Silverware tinkles and quietly clatters almost drowned out by the chatter of boisterous men and laughter of gossipy women.
The only survivor of the Mannington family was the eldest son. He had long, well-moulded features, a smooth and elegant gait, and heavy brows that struck handsome severity into a look that would have been clean and inoffensive otherwise.
He was dressed almost entirely in black, like the evil prince of a Disney flick, though Sinclair would be pressed to name a specific film. Most of the costume design in those things was uninspired and designed only to sell toys that wouldn’t have too many removable parts for six-year-olds to choke on.
The shirt was silk and the trousers loose and long, not a traditional suit but something more distinct and casual. It was tailored carefully to show off his muscular shoulders, but obscure the lower arms and do similarly from thigh to shin. At ankle and wrist, the hem pulled close, hinting to a medieval style.
Stripes of gold accented one cuff, gleamed in the placard and wound down one leg in a thin, glimmering chain of thread. Further chains hung from golden rings on his fingers and dangled from his ears. His eyes were dark but his lids were edged with liquid gold. He stared out with every attempt at dignity, head perfectly still, hands raised slightly from his sides, back straight and shoulders squared in defiance.
He was perfect. The rebel prince cast out. Atop the close-cropped hair on his head rested a crown of heavy metal, simple and moulded into latticed spikes, exquisitely gold-leafed, and ringed around the base with tiny sharp teeth that held it firmly in place in young master Mannington’s scalp.
If you looked closely, you would see the rest. The faint glimmers of blood in his hair. The imprint of chains against his wrists and ankles, underneath the cuffs. The position of his arms, casual and elegant for his pose, but maintained with sharp prop sticks enforcing a distance between his arm and his body inside each loose sleeve. The slightly bared teeth of a lip-lined mouth were to help him keep his jaw locked, preventing the spring-loaded box inside his mouth from giving out its sharpened contents before someone was ready and waiting to remove it for him.
A journalist is captured by the mafia after she learns too much about their leader. This takes place on the second night of her captivity
-
Sam tiptoed through the darkness of the mansion, daring not to breathe in case it woke her captor.
Her clothes were miserably torn off her, fabric hanging in useless strips. She had no time to worry about that, she could deal with that later. She needed to get out of here.
But where was ‘out’?
It didn’t matter, she would find a back door. She could figure this out. She set her teeth together, bunching her fists to stop them trembling as she moved through the house.
She eyed a coat draped over a door and hastily snatched it up. It was too big for her, but it would keep out the biting cold on her bare skin. She winced as the ache between her legs throbbed.
She refused to think about it. Couldn’t think about it without feeling sick. Her feet touch smooth cold marble and she sees countertops, a stove and an oven loom out of the darkness. Modern and sleek, only the best for these mafia bastards.
She spied a knife block on the bench.
She pressed her teeth even tighter together, an inferno raging inside her as she ran over to it and yanked on the handle of one. A serrated bread knife.
She grimaced. She’d never stabbed anyone before. But after tonight, something had changed in her. Something feral that made her grip the handle tighter and imagine the blade ripping through flesh. Hot blood gushing from a gaping wound-
A journalist is captured by the mafia after she learns too much about their leader. This takes place on the second night of her captivity
-
Sam tiptoed through the darkness of the mansion, daring not to breathe in case it woke her captor.
Her clothes were miserably torn off her, fabric hanging in useless strips. She had no time to worry about that, she could deal with that later. She needed to get out of here.
But where was ‘out’?
It didn’t matter, she would find a back door. She could figure this out. She set her teeth together, bunching her fists to stop them trembling as she moved through the house.
She eyed a coat draped over a door and hastily snatched it up. It was too big for her, but it would keep out the biting cold on her bare skin. She winced as the ache between her legs throbbed.
She refused to think about it. Couldn’t think about it without feeling sick. Her feet touch smooth cold marble and she sees countertops, a stove and an oven loom out of the darkness. Modern and sleek, only the best for these mafia bastards.
She spied a knife block on the bench.
She pressed her teeth even tighter together, an inferno raging inside her as she ran over to it and yanked on the handle of one. A serrated bread knife.
She grimaced. She’d never stabbed anyone before. But after tonight, something had changed in her. Something feral that made her grip the handle tighter and imagine the blade ripping through flesh. Hot blood gushing from a gaping wound-
A journalist is captured by the mafia after she learns too much about their leader. This takes place on the second night of her captivity
-
Sam tiptoed through the darkness of the mansion, daring not to breathe in case it woke her captor.
Her clothes were miserably torn off her, fabric hanging in useless strips. She had no time to worry about that, she could deal with that later. She needed to get out of here.
But where was ‘out’?
It didn’t matter, she would find a back door. She could figure this out. She set her teeth together, bunching her fists to stop them trembling as she moved through the house.
She eyed a coat draped over a door and hastily snatched it up. It was too big for her, but it would keep out the biting cold on her bare skin. She winced as the ache between her legs throbbed.
She refused to think about it. Couldn’t think about it without feeling sick. Her feet touch smooth cold marble and she sees countertops, a stove and an oven loom out of the darkness. Modern and sleek, only the best for these mafia bastards.
She spied a knife block on the bench.
She pressed her teeth even tighter together, an inferno raging inside her as she ran over to it and yanked on the handle of one. A serrated bread knife.
She grimaced. She’d never stabbed anyone before. But after tonight, something had changed in her. Something feral that made her grip the handle tighter and imagine the blade ripping through flesh. Hot blood gushing from a gaping wound-
