No Pain: Book 1

Chapter 45: Star

          The screams sound bad to my own ears, pain is worse than I imagined as he peels my fingernail away. My shrieks fill the small room, the pain especially prominent after the double dose.

"You can stop this." Adler is getting frustrated with me, since he got back he hasn't let up. My nail finally breaks away from my finger. It burns somehow but there's also a strange kind of relief, at least the pulling is gone.

"I don't want it to stop." I spit at him "show me everything I've been missing, show me every pain I can experience." I'm screaming without meaning to. My throat is dry and scratchy and it doesn't feel good either. I never knew how many pains that existed. Simple things that hurt. The cuffs digging into my wrists and ankles. The ache in my joints from the cold air. Somehow the table is cold but it burns against my skin.

"You've always been stubborn." He sighs and walks around to the head of the table. I glare at him.

"Fine, you will experience everything." He drops a cloth over my face. I know what he's doing. I've gone through it before but that was when I couldn't feel pain. I am going to feel this. I can't help the small smile that crawls over my lips. What I could never say out loud before, not to my team, not even to myself because it could never happen. It's happening now.

I never understood why there were so many things compared to burning. I understand it now. I think it's because we can only process so many pains, many things cause pain but our brains are simply not that creative. Things burn, or they throb, they sting or they're sharp.

My lungs scream for air as the water slips down, the cloth on my face keeping me from the hope of getting a breath of dry air. Coughing hurts too. Hacking up the water hurts more. Every inch of me hurts and nothing has ever made me feel more alive. The cloth disappears from my face, even the light hurts as my pupils adjust to it.

"What else, what else..." he muses walking in circles around me.

"Getting bored already?" I wince, just talking hurts, breathing hurts.

"You're trying to distract me." he accuses. "You're going to break soon, you're going to be thankful for your defect."

I watch him as he circles, he meets my eyes.

I smirk "good luck." I know my body has a limit, I don't know what it is yet but I know he's looking to find out.

"Star... Star... Star..." he tsks "Why did you let them change you?" He sounds sad. "You had such a pretty name, too...Annalise." He breathes my name as if it had some meaning to him. For me it just brings a familiar ache in my heart. Annalise, the girl who killed her family. I close my eyes, I don't want to think of that name.

"What's wrong, Annalise?" His fingers graze over my unburnt wrist. "Are you thinking about them?" He almost sounds sympathetic "how your mother used to sing while she made dinner, how your father tried anything to make you smile. How Emil-"

"Stop!" I scream at him "don't you dare talk about her."

He leans over me, he brushes a kiss onto my forehead the same way my dad used to. "Do you try to imagine her screaming?" He asks

"Stop it." I say with less force.

"How she begged you not to..." He lowers his mouth to my ear.

"I said stop it!" I thrash against my cuffs, the drug already wearing off again.

"Or do you think she just waited?" He muses "she just accepted her fate, she probably told you that she loved you, that it was okay. But, it's not okay, Annalise, is it?"