Guro Challenge #5: Mask/Covered Eyes/Covered Mouth
#12 of 33 Day Guro Challenge
They'd bound a rag over his eyes before they dragged him away, and when he cried out they bound his mouth shut too. As he was forced to walk he tried to memorise the route, but the taunts and shouting and the crack of a willow switch on his back drowned out the forming memories of his footpaws' movements.
They never took the blindfold off, and only pulled the gag aside to force water and food down his throat, even as he tried to spit out the wilting vegetables and sticky fishbones or, worse, the meat of beasts he'd heard screaming seconds before. Sometimes he hoped to choke on it. He fainted when they sawed his tail off, and he realised where it went when they fed him the next morning.
He broke the ropes on his paws, and kept it hidden until nightfall. A filthy cloak, stolen from a sleeping fox, blended him in with the dark and dirt, and the few vermin awake saw nothing as he slid from one to the next and slipped a blade into their necks.
It took him days to get home. By the last day he had to crawl. He was taken inside and fed and bathed and bandaged, and when he was asked, he put on the invisible mask of his old self and said "I'm fine."