Viktor came home exhausted. He spent the whole night staring at the liquid end of a metal rod through his welding hood and his eyes felt bloodshot. As he pulled into his driveway he immediately knew something was off. The lights in the house were still on, which never happened. As he turned off his truck he looked around for a second, seeing if anything else was suspicious. He had seen an empty car on the side of the road about a quarter of a mile away, but he didn't think anything of it. The more he thought about it though, the more suspicious Viktor became.
Everything in his gut was telling him something was wrong, so he rushed towards the house. As he pulled open the brass handle of the door, he suddenly collapsed, pain blindly him like he'd felt many times before. Someone just hit him in the back of the head. He passed out with a primal rage that he felt wasn't even his starting to tear through him before he lost consciousness.
Viktor woke up with a cold splash of water to the face. He was tied to a chair, his wife on one side of him and his kids on the other. There were three men in regular street clothes in front of him that were all staring at him. Viktor was on the very edge of sanity, yet quite clearheaded. He noticed details he never would have otherwise been able to see, and suddenly time slowed. He could see how the faint light of early morning was coming in through the curtains. How the particles of dust slowly drifted through the light. How even though the girls were tied up, they hadn't been tied so tight as to hurt them, just enough to restrain them. He looked at his wife, seeing the exhale of carbon monoxide as it mixed with the surrounding air. What the fuck? How could he see fucking gases mixing in the air? He looked around himself and he could see the heat that his own body was giving off. He could feel every part of his body moving as it functioned. Then he felt it. The primal and indescribable rage that had been building ever since he got knocked out. Victor knew it wasn't his. He was pissed off, terrified, and about to shit himself, but this was something else. Something he had never felt before. As if the entire planet was a roiling pit of magma that was being channeled straight through him and directed that his families attackers. Viktor tried to focus on the sensation, but as soon as he did everything snapped back to normal. Whatever normal in this situation was, but he could still feel that rage, and he so desperately wanted to act on it. All three men kept staring at him and only him, like Viktor was somehow a priceless jewel they had just dug up. Which meant that the these boys were after was him. But why? He thought, he always kept to himself, never bothering anyone else. Who would want to hurt or kill him? The biggest man, seemingly the leader, pulled out a gun from behind his back and pointed it at Viktor's head. "Nothing personal." He said, and Viktor knew he was about to pull the trigger. Adrenaline flooded his system as he tried to break free of the zip ties that bound him. Right before Viktor passed out he felt something breaking in him, like the lock of a box someone had put in there had cracked open.... Then everything went black. Total darkness, like he had his eyes closed or like he was dreaming, but it felt too real to be a dream. Viktor tried looking around to see something, anything, but the darkness persisted. What felt like hours, days maybe, this went on. He thought he was going insane, or maybe he was dead already and clinging to the delusion that he still had his life...