Fear
Everyone has one debilitating fear. The trick is finding it.
Fear
The prisoner came too to find himself naked and chained to a sturdy wooden chair which was bolted to the floor. The room he was in was small, about twelve by twelve he guessed. The floor was cement. The walls were black. A single bright light shone down from above him.
"Ah, I see that you are awake." The amplified voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "Shall we begin?"
"Let's not and say that we did."
"Tsk-tsk, mustn't act like that Mister Smith ... or should I call you Agent Purple? No preference? Purple it is then. You have managed to infiltrate our most secret inner sanctum and we must know what you have discovered to ascertain whether it is safe to proceed with our plan."
"Then you may as well kill me now. I'll never talk."
"Oh, I rather think that you will, Agent Purple."
"I've been trained to resist torture."
"Which is why we don't employ such methods. No, we prefer to attack psychologically. For example, many people are afraid of the dark."
The light went put, leaving the prisoner in total darkness. After a few moments of silence the sound of snoring filled the room. The light came back on.
"Very funny, Agent Purple. Well, if you are not afraid of the dark perhaps you share the general population's fear of spiders."
A panel on the floor in front of Purple opened and three striped tarantulas crawled out and headed for his bare feet.
"Aw, cute! Ha-ha, no, wait ... jeese but those tiny little claws tickle."
A low whistle sounded and the spiders scuttled back into their hole.
"Not afraid of spiders eh? How about small spaces?"
The side walls began to close in on Purple. They stopped just short of touching the chair at which point the panels in front and back of him closed in until he could feel them pressing against his knees and the back of his head.
"Cosy."
The walls flew back to their original positions. They must have been made from flat screen monitors because they were suddenly filled with images of open sky and distant horizons.
"Wide open spaces?"
"Reminds me of growing up in the prairies."
The screens changed to a crowded subway scene and the walls began closing in again.
"Crowds?"
"Just like family reunions in our little cabin. My people were catholic so I had lots of siblings and cousins."
"Lightning!"
The flashes illuminated the agent's amused grin.
"Thunder!"
"Sorry? What did you say? Blunder?"
The screens went black. The floor dropped out from under the prisoner's feet. The chair was teetering over a deep, illuminated pit. Purple spit and listened for the wad of saliva to hit bottom. It took almost a minute.
"Almost as far down as when I climbed El Capitan with no ropes."
Water whelmed up from the pit and began to fill the room. Purple had to raise his muzzle and breath through his nostrils as it rose past his face. He made washing motions with his chained arms under the clear water.
"Refreshing." He commented after the room drained.
"I'm through playing games with you!" The bodiless voice screamed. "Prepare to meet your fate!"
A hidden door opened and a killer clown jumped into the room holding a hypodermic needle roughly the size of a baby's arm. In his other paw the clown was stroking a massive erection, pointing it in the direction of the naked agent.
"Hey, fellah. No need for drugs, if you know what I mean." Purple winked suggestively at the clown and waggled his tongue lewdly. The clown tuned and left with a whimper.
There was a long, drawn out silence before the voice can back sounding resigned.
"I suppose that we will just have to kill you then, Agent Purple."
"Go ahead. I'm not afraid of death. It is an honour to die for my country."
"Hmmm. In that case, I give up. We'll just let you go."
Agent Purple looked surprised for the first time since waking. "What? Let me go? Just like that?"
"Well, not right away of course. First we'll clean you up, put you in a good suit and give you a drug that will allow you to move but force you to obey our orders. Then we'll take you to a hide out that your people think they have under secret surveillance and parade you around with the drapes open while we put on a show of being best chums. Maybe we'll even have a couple of our female associates drop by so they can see how well you get along with your new friends. Then we'll let you go."
"What about your plan? I'll tell them everything I know as soon as your drug wears off."
"We'll make a few minor changes, but even those will probably be unnecessary. You see, I doubt that they will believe you, not after seeing you cavorting with our ladies and then returning unharmed. They will suspect everything you say, everything you have ever said."
"They will know that I was telling the truth when you launch your plot!"
"Not if we change it enough so that they would have been in the wrong place looking for the wrong thing when it occurs. They will think that you were trying to mislead them to save yourself from being tried and executed as a double agent."
"You Bastard! You ... you ... Christ! Don't do this, kill me instead. I can't go back as ... as a ... a ..."
"Failure?"
Purple did not respond, but the sniffles through his tears were answer enough.
"It seems that you are afraid of something after all, Agent Purple, but you'll have to earn your honourable death. Now, back to my original question ..."