Leandro Barbosa woke up to find himself lying on some sort of table, restrained by straps across his legs, arms, and chest. Trying not to panic, he observed his surroundings in the only way he could, by turning his head first to the left, then to the right, then straight ahead.
He was in some sort of abandoned building. A hospital perhaps, given the medical detritus that littered the floor. Sunlight streamed in unhindered through holes in the ceiling, and a breeze blew in through the shattered window. Paint was peeling off the walls in large flakes.
“Oh, you’re awake. Good,” said an unfamiliar voice from behind him. Leandro tried to roll his eyes back to see, but he didn’t quite roll them back far enough to determine the identity of his presumed captor. That particular mystery was solved when Raul Neto emerged from behind him to stand at his side.
“If this is some kind of joke, it stopped being funny about an hour ago,” Leandro said impudently, not realizing the grave danger he was in.
“It’s not a joke, Leandro,” Raul said in a deadpan, as if he had never heard of the concept before.
Leandro struggled in vain against the restraints. “Let me go, man!”
“Look at me,” Raul said, still with no inflection or emotion in his voice. The effect was so eerie that Leandro stopped his struggling and obeyed. And when Leandro looked into the other man’s eyes, he was unsettled by the absence of any kind of reasoning, or even sanity, behind them. He felt his heart rate rise.
“I’m the Brazilian Blur now,” Raul said once eye contact had been established.
“Sure, man.”
“I’m the Brazilian Blur now,” Raul repeated. Without breaking eye contact, he squatted down and groped blindly about the floor. Eventually, he held up a rusty scalpel, a remnant from the abandoned structure’s previous use. “Let the surgery commence.”
Alone in that desolate place, the only sound was of Leandro’s screams of agony echoing off the dilapidated walls as his knees were surgically excised.