Chaos Night - Heart Stopper and Hand Saw (U12)

When Anita Garland woke up, she promptly realized she couldn't move. To her horror, she was tied down to her kitchen table by ropes, her husband and two children bound and gagged on the couch beside her. Try as she might, she couldn't break herself loose.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" she screamed to the figure in surgical scrubs and a reflective mask looming over her. "WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING! PLEASE, LET US GO!"

"Oh, don't worry, I will," said the Anarch, terrifyingly calm. "But first, I think I deserve a trophy for beating your security system." He raised a hand-crank chainsaw, and his captives screamed and thrashed even harder. "Tell me: which of your limbs can I keep? I want at least one."

Anita was an incoherent screaming mess, as was her family.

The torturer sighed. "If you don't tell me, I'm just gonna go for the head. That okay? Or maybe I'll take something from one of them instead." He gestured toward Anita's kids.

"NO! NO! PLEASE! NOT THEM! YOU CAN-- YOU CAN TAKE MY LEFT ARM, JUST DON'T TOUCH THEM!"

"See? That was easy," said the torturer, experimentally cranking his saw. "I promise I'll make it quick."

Before he could bring the blade down, though, the door exploded. Miraculously, a second Anarch had broken into the same apartment, dressed in neon techwear and brandishing an entire stop sign that had been fashioned into a menacing spear.

"How dare you steal my kills?!" The new Anarch lunged at the torturer, slicing through his side. Screaming and dropping his saw, the torturer grabbed a knife from his belt and threw himself at the spearman with reckless abandon.

Anita was safe for the moment... and the saw was on the table right next to her. Inching her hand through the ropes, she grabbed the blade and started sawing at her bonds. It was cheap rope-- the blade cut through it in no time at all, and soon she was able to cut all four of her limbs loose. Neither the torturer nor the spearmen seemed to notice her freeing her captive family as the Anarchs tore each other bloody with their blades.

By the time the spearman knocked the torturer to the ground, skewered him straight through the heart with his spear, and turned around, Anita and her family were long gone, out the fire escape and down to the garage.

Anita's kids were still crying inconsolably, her husband trying in vain to comfort them, as she drove away into the night. The torturer's saw, a trophy of her courage, lay beside her in the seat-- god willing, it would never be used on an innocent soul again.