The Way to His Heart Ch. 01

Most stories start at the beginning, they tell you what happened, and then they move on, until they reach an end. But my story has no end, how then can it have a beginning? Who decides where this story starts? You, Me? Perhaps there is no beginning. And if that is the case, why not just start this story where we are now? Why not start with my life today, right this minute?...

I don't know for sure whether the cold or the pain wakes me up. Maybe the pain makes the cold worse somehow. Sitting up slowly I wince. The fire that crawls up my back does nothing to alleviate the icy air that slides across my naked skin. Shivering in the dark I try to cling to what little warmth I have. A small cot made of stuffing and other things I can't name rests on the floor, a small sheet of protection between me and the ground. What seems an even smaller blanket that can't be thicker than a sheet, and a small hard pillow.

I can't see my surroundings; there is no light at all to be had in this place. But I know them anyway. Down to each brick and crack I know this place. The room is a cellar, or perhaps even a basement, but it holds only me. One forgotten girl and the objects of my life. The room is a square, thirty feet long and just as wide, with a concrete floor and cold grey brick walls. In the center a small drain of stainless steel sits beneath a pulley, and on that pulley is a large hook with leather cuffs attached.

No windows break the fortress of the walls, but along one side is a table. It is sturdy and bolted into the floor at all four legs. It has seven-point restraints on it made of thick brown leather. There are...tools on a small rolling table next to it. The opposite wall has a staircase, visible to me sometimes, where He comes and goes. I never leave. And on the left side of the room is a bolt set into the wall with a large steel chain attached. The chain is thick and cold. Impossible to break. And it leads right to me, where an equally cold steel manacle closes snugly around my left ankle.

There is no way of telling what time it is. Exhaustion, pain, and fatigue have long since made my ability to estimate time useless. My only way of keeping track of such things is through Him. I don't even know if He comes every day.

A sound so small as to be inaudible freezes me down to my roots. Him. Instinctively I try to cower, my body curling into a ball, as if somehow that might protect me. The instant agony that rips through me from my mutilated back stops the air to my lungs and a pathetic whimper crawls from my mouth no louder than muffled cry.

Blinding, searing light fills my dungeon. It bores into my brain,stars swim before me and pinpricks of pain to shoot into my skull like knives. But the light is not the most dangerous thing in the room, even the tears that fall down my cheeks can't make me close my eyes. Not with Him here.

The first thing my terrified brain takes in is his attire. Always the same. A white button up shirt, sleeves rolled oh so precisely to his elbows, as if the shirt came that way. Pressed slacks of a dark khaki, pleated and wrinkle free cover his legs, and dark shiny black shoes that click as they cross the cold concrete. Soft clicks that herald another day of torture as he gets closer to me step by step. And those icy cold and empty blue eyes. Always so empty.

The second thing is a large bucket that sloshes lightly as he walks.

Fear freezes me solid, holds me that one last second as the scent of brine meets my nose. My mouth opens, to beg for mercy, for pity, anything, but the water is faster. He is faster. And as I open my mouth to scream for just a little chance, I end up just screaming.

The fire in my back is an inferno, eating my mind and my sanity with it. Somewhere in my pain a little voice of reason tells me that I should hold still, that I should try not to move, but nothing can stop my body from trying to escape itself. As the pain eats its way across my body inhuman cries tear themselves from my throat, and my body rolls and twists as if possessed by some demon.

I can no more fight Him as He moves me to the hook than I can stop the cries of agony that leave my lips. Tears slide down my cheeks in rivers; I can feel them as they warm my face then leave it colder than before.

My Brian, fuzzy with pain and cold doesn't notice the warmth at first. Then, as the water slides down my body, warming my skin and washing away the brine, I stop jerking and hang limply in the cuffs. Crying silently, just tears and hitching breaths I let the water comfort me, a small one, but a comfort nonetheless. As good as it feels right now, in a few moments I'll just be that much colder.

He never speaks. If only He would tell me what He wants from me I would do it. Anything. I'm so tired of being cold and hungry and in pain. Just that thought breaks something inside of me. I feel it shatter. Some inner reserve of strength and will. Like a marionette with my strings cut I let the last little bit of weight go and hang completely in the cuffs. My arms and shoulders scream in protest, sore and overused from so many times before. I don't care. I think I'll die in here. Some nameless human girl whom He tortured to death. Even that thought can't seem to bring back an ounce of care for myself. Hanging limp I wait. I wait for more pain, more torture, more abuse. I cry silently and accept it the way one might accept the rain. Inevitable.

But it doesn't come. Long moments pass and the only thing that changes is the cold returning with a vengeance. I'll die of pneumonia if this keeps up. Gooseflesh forms on my body and I shiver lightly. The deep tears in my back from the whip still hurt, but in a distant way, as if seared beyond feeling by the brine. At least for now. The water beneath me runs into the drain.

For the first time since the water hit my back I open my eyes and see Him standing there, watching me. The water that runs to the drain is shot through with red. Blood and water. My blood. His cold blue eyes roam over my nude body, taking in each little cut and bruise and scar. Like a painter with a blank canvas he has covered me in them, as if this were artwork, the art of torture.

Then His expression changes. Emotions leak onto His face slowly, like filling up a cup with an eyedropper. The sound of His voice hits me like a freight train. It's been so long since I heard aught but my own cries of pain and hopelessness that the sound of another voice is foreign.

"That's a good girl. I'm so proud of you. It's almost time." It takes a moment for the words to make sense, for anything to. "Now. I want you to say,'Please Master have mercy on me'". Dizzy, hurt and nearly unable to speak at all from the cold, I force the words past lips that are numb and chattering teeth. The last thing I remember before darkness eats my world is a small smile cross his lips and a soft warmth in his eyes.