Crippled, Beaten and Broken.

He lay in the darkness, letting the pain in his guts and nether regions settle.

All around him he could hear the anguished groans of the other prisoners echoing through the cavernous darkness. The sheer amount of pain and suffering in their voices made him wish that he had something in his stomach to throw up.

The mud was cold under his bare flesh, it oozed into the flayed portions of his skin and numbed some of the pain.

Ryan just wished that the mud could do the same for the shame.

The Master had used him again, painfully, sadistically, in a way that would make sleep impossible.

He had cried until his eyes were raw every night since the shrouded ponies had captured him. It had taken all of three hours of the Master’s “Fun Time” for him to break, begging and pleading to his tormentor, trying to make her let him go and trying to cut a deal with her.

He found out very quickly that the Master only tortured him with more ferocity when he begged.

And so the days and nights became a blur of pain and misery, with the sound of his sobbing and screaming filling his ears and the foul taste of his blood and filth filling his mouth, choking him, drowning him.

He wished for death and then, when his wish wasn’t granted, he took the only other option available to him.

Madness.

Ryan awoke with a piercing scream that sent the earth pony nurse that had been by his bedside running in terror.

Through the haze of tears the human was able to recognize his surroundings as a hospital room, with its sharp antiseptic smell and pure white coloration.

The first thing he thought was: What happened? But that question was soon answered, along with the questions of where he had been living and what he had been doing ever since his escape from the Master, when his memory, intact and seemingly in High Definition, returned.

Oh no. he thought, realizing the cause behind his sudden mental clarity.

He was having a lucid period.

Oh how he hated those. When the swirling hurricane of his madness cleared up just long enough to allow the shame and horror of what had happened to him and what he’d done came back to him, leaving him a sobbing wreck.

The time that he was sane varied, but it was never, ever short, and it left him craving his madness.

With a moan of sadness he closed his eyes and allowed his cleared senses to fully envelop him.

He was, for the first time in a long time, acutely aware of how utterly frail he felt. He could feel the tautness of his scarred skin across his brittle bones, most of which had been violently twisted and snapped, then rehealed.

He could feel the pain in his gums from the many gum infections that were a result of his lack of dental hygiene, and the dull throb of several cavities. His feet ached dreadfully and, when he looked at them under the covers, he saw that they were bound by stained bandages.

It was like this with every limb and every organ: stinging pains, dull pain, throbbing pain, burning pain-this was especially true of his eyes and stomach- and acidic pain.

He moaned and tried desperately to dive back into his ebbing madness, but the swirling, black tide was too far gone, and he was stranded on the muddy, slimy isle of his sanity; alone with his thoughts and the memories of his torment.

He shuddered and clenched every atrophied muscle, sending pain shooting through his body. Why couldn’t his madness be permanent? He knew that he had done wrong, he knew that he had hurt the ponies, who were innocent and kind, but why did his torment have to continue as it did? He had already been beaten, abused and….and…

Tears welled up in his eyes once more.

It was so shameful, what the Master had done to him. So perverse and sadistic that it made him want to vomit every time he remembered those vile sessions.

Why couldn’t it all end?

Then the sound of a door opening, slowly and cautiously, pierced his revere and he turned to see a very familiar pony enter.

Fluttershy.

She looked so much better without her shroud of shadows, though he could still faintly see her shadow twitch and grow larger behind her; he shuddered and placed his aching hands over his face.

“Uhmmm...hello?” came the soft voice, “Zap?”

Zap? Was that the name I chose for myself? What was wrong with me?

“Isn’t my name.” he said, his voice creaking and whistling through his jagged teeth.

“Oh. Then...what is it?” asked the yellow pegasus.

“R-Ryan.” answered the human, “But that won’t matter.”

“Why is that?” asked Fluttershy.

“Because I’ll be insane again, soon. I can feel it coming back.” said Ryan with a small smile, “I’m so glad it’s coming back.”

Fluttershy hid behind her pink hair and backed out the door silently.

She’s afraid of me. he thought with a rasping snicker, But, in a few minutes, I’m going to be terrified of her.

And around him the shadows began to slither forwards, harkening him back into madness’s comforting embrace.