Down the Rabbit Hole - Book Four

4. Wrote the Book on Pain

VYNDREN

Despite being nearly too drugged to stand, the guards chain me to a giant cross staked in the middle of the courtyard outside and finish ripping my straitjacket off to expose my back. This cross is definitely new, I think distractedly. This must've been what Bones was not so subtly hinting about.

This is all just part of the routine, I remind myself as I tightly hug the cross while the tongues of the whips begin lashing my back. This ain't nothin' we ain't been through a hundred times before...

Yeah, I'm used to being beaten, but somehow the pain still always finds a way to feel new.

I hiss as a lucky strike hits my ear. I feel dizzy from the torture and the drugs. Blood is slung through the air as strips of flesh and clothing are peeled off my body.

The other inmates in the courtyard begin wildly bleating with excitement at the sight of my plight and they quickly start hurling rocks at me.

Getting stoned while being stoned, that's a new one at least.

I shakily smooth my head against the coarse grains of the cross, struggling to mentally space out as more pain scorches through my body's every system. C'mon, Vyndren, don't break! Don't start screamin'. Don't cry. I manage to snarl a few curses through my tribulation. The whips and the rocks leave my skin looking like a patchwork of bloody bruises, the gripping agony is really beginning to take its toll. Don't let 'em break you. Silent tears mix with the blood and sweat that rolls down my face.

The guards back off to watch the inmates swarm me. They claw at my wounds, rip and tear my hair and clothes, I feel their nails scratching at my face, my eyes. My emotions are boiling over frantically. I can't focus on anything other than the torture, can't separate myself from the situation like I usually do.

The inmates' crazed laughter, the heated crush of their bodies wildly dancing around me striking me, beating me, spitting on me, cutting me, it all merges sickeningly with the memories of my first human life. An ancient hatred awakens in this brand-new soul of mine and it burns like a fire through my bloodstream.

I'm gonna lose my mind, I realize. I'm losing control of my emotions. They're the only things in my bleak situation I have a say in, I have a command over, but now I can't even keep them in check. I'm caving. I'm weakening, I can't keep my cries of anguish silent anymore. With my self-control gone I really am powerless now, aren't I? I mean hell, I'm giving in to the pain. I'm losing. They're winning. No...no, no!

It's like a switch is flipped on my fragile sanity.

Savage, inhuman sounds of pain and panic escape me as I wildly strain against my bondage, animalistically desperate to escape. The irons dig into my skin mercilessly, my flesh splits under the tension. I don't even realize it though. I keep violently thrashing and straining against the cross, not even noticing the chain links burying themselves into my skin. Splinters are starting to pop out of the cross.

Desperation, fury and agony morph into their own elements and suddenly they become literal elements.

The earth around me abruptly explodes, hurling the other inmates flying through the air the same time as a hurricane-worthy wind rips through the courtyard, flinging the keepers into barbed fences.

The courtyard I'm trapped within spontaneously erupts into a ring of flames, catching everyone on fire instantly.

The cross I'm chained to shatters into splinters and my chains wildly fall apart. I wearily collapse as all the elements vanish as abruptly as they appeared.