D-Class

A serial killer has been sentenced to death for his crimes. He spends a quarter of time a typical convict spends in death row - it's a quiet and lonely time. A living hell. At least, he thinks, it'll be over when they've pumped him full of deadly chemicals. The hatred. The humiliation. He won't be able to hear it anymore. It comforts him as they strap him down to the gurney and insert syringes into his veins. Everything goes dark. And then he wakes up in neither Heaven nor Hell. He wakes up in a crowded secure bunk wearing an orange jumpsuit, surrounded by so many others like him. Other haunted, broken men, confused and huddled. Occasionally armed men would enter the bunk and remove one or two of the orange jumpsuited men. Sometimes they would come back. Most of the time, they wouldn't. The convict notices one man coming in and out. Every time, he seems a little more... shaken. Driven by his curiosity, the convict approaches the veteran prisoner and asks him what's out there. Who are their captors? What's going to happen to them out there? The answer he hears fills him with terrible dread.

They're in some kind of laboratory. When they're extracted from the bunk and taken out into the testing areas, they're exposed to cursed objects. Monsters. Entities beyond comprehension. The veteran tells him about a giant reptile, perpetually submerged in a tank of acid. A plague doctor forever working on Frankenstein-esque zombies, cobbled out of the corpses of their kind. That terrible rotten man in the dark room, who can go through walls and feeds on pain. Eventually, every single one of them will be called out to face judgement. To be the subject of some terrible experiment. Perhaps it's worse than hell: The eventual fate, and the seemingly eternal wait for it.

When the time comes, the convict's number is called. He feels a cold sweat congregating on his brow. Is this it? Is he going to be fed to monsters or shoved into some nightmarish pocket dimension? Used for live target practice or in some twisted experiment? After having his head filled with horror stories by all of his fellow prisoners, he feels fear. True and pure and paralyzing. Is this how all of his victims felt before the knife slashed or the axe came down?