Accepted Without Offer

Disclaimer: This fic has no affiliation with anyone or any company involved in 'Hellraiser'.

Accepted Without Offer

The boy stood almost too quietly in the darkened back room of the antique shop. His mother was in the front somewhere cooing over a mug with a pair of doe-eyed children on it.
He wasn't interested. Not by that.
It sat there, not exactly innocently. It wasn't a malevolent thing, but it hid something that was still very terrifying.
His head titled to the side when someone shifted behind him. Whoever he was a shelf of odds and ends hid him. He didn't show himself.
The boy, David, felt his hands go cold as he reached up for the cube that rested quietly by itself almost unnaturally in a store of clutter. He brushed the surface with a fingertip and the figure behind him shifted backwards.
He picked up the cube, accepting it for what it and and what it could be to his young mind.
His mother called him impatiently. He hid the cube under his jacket and left that small back room.
The figure turned and ambled back into the shadows from whence it came. It was very rare that the cube was taken without offer and seemingly never by one so young.
Not that it mattered, once accepted that's all there was.

The car stopped and David gazed at the house.
His mother looked at him just as she undid her seatbelt. "What are you doing now?" She asked jerking the clip out of the lock. When he didn't respond she grit her teeth and reached out to undo the lock of his seatbelt roughly. "God damn it David, stop acting like that."
He blinked seeming to come back to life and lifted the retracting belt off of himself. "Sorry." He said quietly opening the door.
Once inside he didn't remove his jacket and pulled himself up the stairs. His mother wouldn't care that he had disappeared into his room. She had a boyfriend to call and make a date with before her husband could get back from work.
He paced quietly past his sisters room. She was older than him by seven or so years making her Sixteen.
She wasn't home or she would have been screaming at him by now.
He closed his door behind him clicking the lock softly. He didn't bother with the lights but he did go to the two windows to let down the shades blocking more light, it simply felt appropriate.
His room was unusually clean for such a young boy. Nothing was out of place. To David Order was as much a driving force as Greed to his father or Lust to his mother or even Hatred to his sister.
With the room darkened and only the dim light of the setting sun to let him see he crouched in the middle of his room and got onto his knees almost in a praying position. He turned the cube in his hands marveling at the intricate design. His legs became cramped, as if he'd been sitting there for an hour. It didn't matter, this puzzle called to him but it refused to be solved too quickly.
A chill cut its way into the room but hadn't reached him yet. The cube turned over in his hands again. His eyes closed as his thumb slid around a circle on one side.
A piece suddenly slid up from the body. He never looked down to watch the pieces slide around into a pattern before returning to their original position.
The cube flew from his hands landing with a dull thud on the floor a few feet from him. The pieces moved on their own. Sliding down into and almost star like pattern then shifting back into a simple cube.
His hands felt so cold as the shadows of his bedroom deepened and widened. The paint on the walls peeled away and plaster fell shedding dim and cold light into this place, a part of the wall before him fell away completely. Still he did not move, he didn't scream in a child's fear for his mother.
The footsteps were first, followed by the clink of metal. His room had warped into a darker vision, his toys dusty and filthy now, the glass of his mirror spotted and old. His hands were so cold but he couldn't bring himself to warm them.
From the ill-lit shadows came a man. Or was it a man? He looked almost dead, was he dead?
The man, or whatever he was stopped with the puzzle at his feet. The pins on his head glinted slightly as he looked carefully at the boy. "Welcome child." He said softly.
They boys' head tilted up at him. "Hi." He blinked once.
He barely registered the others appearing from the darkness. Two men, a woman, perhaps another hidden deeper. Maybe even more of them.
The man took a few steps forward and held out his hand to the boy.
He took it and stood slowly. The mans hands were much colder than his own. He walked slowly as he was lead through the opening in the wall.
What met him was more than terrifying.
It was a barrage of things, sharp and blunt, short and long, barbed and twisted. A pair of hooks dug into his shoulders. Another set twisted their way in just below them, thin chains pulling them taut.
The first man watched this new creature carefully. A child, so small, so innocent, so deeply wrapped in this exquisite pain. A new sensation indeed.
More screams were ripped from the child but not in fear. Never in fear, no this was pain in its sweetest form. The fear simply did not exist in him, why? There had always been that element in the older ones and even the younger ones.
Blood dripped to the ground. It's smell reached the stoic Cenobite and he approached the boy. "So small." He reached a hand to that thus far un-marked face.
David's eyes couldn't focus. He had expected something but not quite this.
A sudden pounding on the door to the boys' room made him turn. The doorway between the worlds was still very open. A parent had been alerted to the child's screams. Let them come.
A knife at his belt came to hand. The child was still restrained by hooks and chains as so many before him had been. He carved a line over the child's collarbone eliciting a barely stifled call of pain.
"Let me teach you."

The mother beat on her sons' door. True she wasn't the best mother in the entire universe, her husband had to be worse at being a father. "David! Open this door immediately young man!" She screamed through the wood. The boys own screams had been earth shattering. What was he doing in there?
"What the hell's going on?" Her husband demanded from the staircase, his footsteps loud and thundering as he came up.
"How the fuck should I know? Your son locked himself in his room. I think he's killing himself in there."
The man brushed her to the side and turned the knob, or at lest attempted to, the lock held tight under his grip. "David, you open this door now son." He pounded on the door with a heavy hand. "You hear me in there? Open this door now god damn it or so help me I'll." But he never finished. The screams intensified into an animalistic howl only to die away abruptly.
He pulled on the knob frantically. Someone must be in there killing the boy. He left the door and grabbed a chair from farther down the hall about to use it as a battering ram, but never got the chance.
The doorknob turned and clicked seemingly on it's own. The door itself creaking open a fraction.
He put the chair down slowly looking to his wife. She was obviously as mystified and frightened as him. He pushed the door open farther revealing the dark room lit only by the spare light from the hallway.
"David?" Both he and his wife crept into the room. It smelled faintly of vanilla and something more, rancid.
She screamed when the door shut behind them. Her reaction made her grab him in a tight hold.
He ignored her. "David." He said loudly. "Come out here boy and turn on your lights."
At that last word the dim blue lights flooded the room showing the broken walls and gap between worlds before them.
"Oh my god." The mother whispered when the Cenobite with pins appeared.
He looked amused and disgusted at the same time. "God? Of course, why was I surprised?"
The others appeared slowly, eager for their own fun. The one with pins had been the only one to take part in the elation of the boy. They were waiting patiently though, their time would come soon enough.
"What are you?" The man asked trying desperately to sound in charge.
"We are many things." The one with pins over his head said in a hushed tone. "We know many more things. You can be taught, whether you wish to be or not." He held out his hand in a gesture to come closer. "Taught such things beyond the suffering your mind barely knows now. The pleasure of it."
"Where is our son?" The woman asked, her last shreds of maternal instinct showing through.
The Cenobite glanced to his left before settling his large dark eyes back on them. "He is here."
"Where?" She asked barely stopped by her husband.
"The child came to us. He came to us without instruction and without fear, drawn to us by the unspeakable even by us. He was not afraid of the lessons we offered. But you are." He was almost curious at this. "You both are."
"Why are you in our house? Why are you," This time her Husband did quiet her.
"Get out." He said roughly. "Give us back out son, and leave us alone." Even he knew there was no threat in his words. What threat could he give?
The ones hidden in the dark laughed lowly but not for long.
"The boy has made his own decision. His lessons were short I'm afraid. But he will have time to learn more soon enough." His hand extended in a welcoming gesture. "Witness."
It shuffled forward unused to the restraints of the leather bindings on its legs. They were unseen of course, the long black draping hiding many new wounds. The male creatures head was bald and bloodlessly white, with no mark or scar to mar it's surface. Gaps in the wrappings across the arms revealed long nails protruding where the hooks had been buried. The skin over his collarbone had been sliced open and stitched back in a star formation. A thick iron ring drilled and set into the exposed bone and sinew. His hands were tinged in blue from the wires wrapped around the wrists enough to restrict blood flow but not make them useless.
"He is very new, very young." The pinned one said admiringly. "But he will learn more of this path of." There was a breathy pause. "Painful indulgence."
"David?" The word came haltingly from his mother.
Black eyes titled slightly and a child's wicked smile spread across his lips. "Mother." He said in an innocent tone. "He has much to show you." The grin on his face only widened when thin wires sped from the darkness directed by his own will. Their screams were more than anything he'd ever felt beyond his own. "Both of you."
The one with pins in his head watched the display. "We all have so much to show you."