"Are you number one?"

"What? Currant bun? Speak up."
 Max sat back down in his comfy chair. He'd been held in the village for 3 days now, without rights or reason. He didn't know what this place was, or why he was here, but he felt sure that someone wanted information from him - every day, he would receive both the carrot and stick treatment; rigorous tortures to break his willpower, and sexual thrills from young women to lower his resolve. Awoken early and dressed in a thin robe that exposed his flesh degrading, he would be forced to swallow pill after pill and strip down. Then, he was lured into a bath and bathed by attractive girls dressed in skimpy whites. Afterwords, he was submitted to hours of mind-numbing boredness, forced to watch endless loops of countdown, or make one incomplete jigsaw with the other inmates. All this time, his captors would call him "Mr. Wright", insisting everything was "Mr. Wright's" - "Mr. Wright's pills," "A visit for Mr. Wright," "Mr. Wright's grandchildren" - all part of some diabolical scheme to confuse him, Max was sure.
 But for now, there seemed no escape - the door, heavily guarded by the receptionist, was locked at nights, and a large, burly nurse with fire in her eyes patrolled the floors looking for trouble. Only last week, old Mr. Johnson had passed away in his sleep. Or so they said. Besides, it was Bingo on a Sunday, and Roast beef for dinner.

I've spent two days looking for Max.

Two days! All I can say with certainty is that he's not being held captive down the back of the sofa, or on the front lawn. With any luck, he's being imprisoned in a camp like the one used in The Prisoner. He won't take that well - Max is, of course, afraid of number designations. As for me, I have a far bigger problem. This morning, I awoke to find myself on a strange medical table set up in my living room. A discarded bottle of chlorine and a handkerchief doused in the stuff confirmed my suspicions I'd been knocked out. Struggling up, I tried to search my body, to see what had happened to me. I confirmed everything was where it should be, but noticed a pain spreading across my shoulder blades and back. Dragging myself to a mirror, I turned this way and that to make out what had happened to me.
 Reading slowly, I read a short paragraph crudely tattooed across my back. Of course, I quickly recognised the description of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment scrawled across my flesh. On the mirror, there was a note. On the note, a message:
 this is a warning. If you continue you search for the prisoner Max, we will tattoo more than just blurbs to your body.