But then it happened: He wasn't hunting anymore. He walked behind me and talked. I smelled wet dog, and Damien had come out onto the surface. He talked about sheds. About rib presses. About stabbers. He'd changed his tune. Now, he wasn't teaching. He was tuning in. And I acted. I'd already figured out a strategy. I wouldn't be taken to the shed if this went this way. I was carefree, as if the speeches didn't matter, and then I slipped away.
I took all the keys to the cage that I had collected in one place, slipped into the cage, and locked the door. There was a huge cage in the cellar, and I moved as fast as I could. I was not so sure if some of the symptoms had eased up or if I had just gotten too used to them. But what helped was that there was no more that psychic pressure or sudden attacks; he just walked close by, talking to me in my mind, trying to upset me.
I had all the keys.
"Oh, baby." Damon's voice was reproachful. " Now give me those keys right now..."
I'm not that easy, I thought to myself. Damon walked around the cage. I sat tightly in the middle of the cage with all the keys under me. Nope, not so easy... I was not saying a word. Just observing him. Seeing so much of a big difference in him, it was obvious that this was Damien, not Damon.
Damon said, " Fine, you want it. "
He took a tranquilizer gun and one empty dart from his pocket, put the syringe he had loaded earlier into the arrow, and loaded the gun.
"Eeny, meany, miny, mo...Baby. Wherever you want. In the heart, in the arm. On the back. " We walked around the cage, looking at me like a piece of meat.
Oh shit, now I have to be quick. I stood up, watching intently for when. Damon's finger crooked, and I ducked. The dart hit the floor with a clatter. But by the time I had jumped to the side, so had Damon, and I had time not just to congratulate myself when a grip on my hair told me of my mistake. A sharp sting in my arm told me that the son of a bitch had had another syringe. Wet dog stank and badly. It made me almost gag.
Damon pushed the plunger down and said, " That'll do it. That was strong. You know what this is, right, baby? Some stuff than in my jelly—the one that makes you feel oh, so helpless."
He held me by my hair until my legs started to go out from under me. Then he let go, and I watched as Damon grabbed the keys from the middle of the cage with a long metal rod, opened the cage door, and lifted me into his arms. Then it went black.
I woke up in the shed, my hands on the spikes tied to the table. Shadows danced in the walls as fluorescent lamps from the ceiling made this shed or whatever felt like a morgue, almost. A tight squeeze around my chest told me I already had a rib crusher on me. I was naked. A bright light shone in my eyes, and I tried to move my head to the side.
I managed to utter, "Damien, right?"
He chuckled, nodded, and then spoke; his voice was again rough, uneducated: "Baby, you don't learn then. But fine, let's get started. How many strokes? You still have symptoms on you. I can see how they've affected your healing ability. We'll soon see. This is another knife. This one has alloy coming out of the tip every time I strike. Now, I know I've had knives with only one metal, but this, baby, this is a blend, and I'm not going to tell you what all the goodies are. Now it's time for my pleasure again."
His voice and manner of speaking were so freakishly different from Damon's, so he truly was a different being.
"Damon did a good job of weakening you for a week or so, so I get to enjoy it. Don't worry; my experiment goes on. Damon won't remember again everything, only what I will let him remember, and it might be that you are in no state to tell him about me. Let me tell you, baby, this is so much fun. I am in two minds: whether I let Damon really feel that I am my own being only put inside him, or then I might make him feel that I am only part of him, twisted part but part of him, so I get him to regret and loath himself, granting more power over me. And separate you, too. Or then I can also do it like that when you try to convince him that I am separate, I will manipulate him all the time, not believing in you, and seeing what he will do to you to make you stop trying to convince my existence."
He talked, and then he started jabbing the knife into my stomach. Again and again and again. I could feel the metal from each stroke burning deep in my stomach.
He said, "By the way, baby, I use several new metals that you might not yet have had, so let's see how they work on you; I can tell you to pass the word to Sark, too. And baby, I called Sark and told him you know about that facility, so he can make it safer, too."
Oh my god, I hated this guy, and a lot of it,
He had put the rib clamp on before he had started, and the feeling of a metal ball going along my ribs, pressing harder and harder until it gave way—crunch, crack, ruts. The ribs started cracking and splitting. I could feel the magnet pulling the rollers together, and my chest was in between. The squeezing force was incredibly painful. After Damien had stabbed a knife into my stomach 345 times, I was no longer healing.
He said, "This is just a little weakening, baby; this is not really what I like to do; too much work. Thus, I like to make my little inventions and see what they will do to your body."
Then he brought the stabber. Same thing with the stabber. It was like an X-ray machine, something like a box he put in, sealed over my stomach. And put it on. It started to hit me. The machine had different sizes of knives, some longer, duller, sharper, and more tearing. Some of them had serrated edges, and I could feel my insides ripping apart.
At the same time, Damien brought some kind of device next to my leg. He adjusted the height again and carefully positioned all the little pointed hammers in the device in a row so that they were along my leg, especially my bones. The device had a long metal arm from which these hammers came out perpendicularly. The hammers were at the end of the levers, and the levers were attached to this main arm.
Damon placed similar devices on both sides of my legs. He had raised my head just enough to see over the stabber. Then he put the devices on. The hammers beat mercilessly on my legs, from my ankles to my thighs. They hit the bone, and it started giving way quickly. As the resistance disappeared from the hammer, the lever moved a little sideway, and the hammer started hammering the next part of my bone.
Of course, like in the thigh, there is a lot of muscle on top of the bone, so they beat that pulp first before getting to my femur. Machines mechanic whirring, my own pained cries, stabber's sounds, and the smell of my blood and other bodily fluids were way too much to handle in the first place. But Damien injected adrenaline into me so I would stay awake and in pain.
The tibia, as was the knee, was chewed up pretty quickly, with the femur providing much more resistance. He took the stabber off while my legs were still being worked on. My chest had narrowed considerably as the rib crusher had shredded my rib and was still squeezing tighter around me. I tried to breathe shallowly, puffing to avoid puncturing my lungs. He cannulated my neck once again and dripped into me those damn bags; I had no idea what was in those bags, none at all.
When my legs were suitably crushed, he fitted the hammers to my arms and then watched coldly, emotionlessly, as they began to beat my arms to pieces. He talked almost to himself, and then again, he dictated and wrote something on his laptop while waiting for my bones to be crushed.
He came at me and said, " Well, baby, you see, and you feel that those metals have been doing their work on you; your healing has taken quite knocked down, so we get some actual damage done to you. You must be in pain, and since my little concoction ensures that you won't get to your rage anytime soon, we have time to work on you a little more or quite a lot more. It seems you are getting stronger, so I am doing you a favor here. What it is to take a little pain and suffering here and there when you know that it gets you stronger, so take the right attitude and continue to be this lovely, weak victim of mine? "
Eventually, he turned me over onto my stomach and put the hammers to work on my spine, but at no point did he let my spinal cord die off. He waited until the bone fragments were crushed into mush but not really ossified yet and turned me back on my back. It was painful, so much so that I blacked out from sheer pain. Until I woke up, my heart beating a mile a minute after getting adrenaline again.
Then he took the little table closer. He had put some gloves on and some sort of apron on himself, opened my bruised and mangled stomach and spread it open with a platinum spreader, so I screamed in pain.
"Now, come on, baby, do I have to silence you? Your screaming hurts my ears. Now what I will do, I have here this molten metal and some herbs. I will pour this into your abdominal cavity, not jellying you, but metalizing you. This will absorb and react in your guts, inside you, and it will be painful. It will weaken you, and I have my own little plans for Damon, so he is not getting to take care of you. He might actually hurt you if I get my little manipulation right. There are lots of metals, and I melted some scrap metals here, too. There is also some acid and other niceties, but I guess you will scream, and your throat will be sore soon. I will pour a lot of this inside you."
He picked up the jug. He began pouring the thick, sticky metal liquid from the jug all over the contents of my stomach. He moved the intestines so that the metal poured under and over them and moved the organs until he had poured ten jugs of molten pain into my stomach. I screamed until he got fed up and paralyzed my voice box.
Then he let my stomach close up. But he left a thick cannula in my belly. The metal mixture kept burning and hurting all the time. He continued to pour the same mixture over my crushed limbs. He kept talking about what he was doing, but I was too pained to understand a word. His words he kept telling me how this would weaken me. He made observations about how metals in my gut were already affecting me.
After my limbs were fully metalized, he massaged metal deep into my mangled limbs and also into my spine. He put several bags of that same metal draining in that cannula so much that my belly distended a lot. Then he turned me on my belly, and put some sort of heavy press on my spine so that it felt like my belly would burst open, the pain was just too much but he kept injecting adrenaline into me so I wouldn't pass out. Press in my back moved, rubbing my spine, metals into it, making pain explode over and over again.
After my belly had flattened out, I had no idea had the metals had absorbed or just spread more; he turned me over, drained different things into my abdominal cavity, turned me over and, poured metal and stuff into my back, put that goddamn press back on my back so my agony would not stop.
I could feel my strength waning, my health getting way worse, my mind muddled by pain and whatever was in the stuff that Damien stuffed me with. He crouched down. Looked at me as I lay on my belly, tears streaming from my eyes, pain racking my soul, and he let his enjoyment show. How much he loved to torture me!
I had no sense of time; once again, I was lying on a hard surface, not really even breathing, shuddering from pain. I was once again feeling very finished, not really getting any sense of my surroundings other than the pungent smell of wet dogs that assaulted my senses. Tremendous pain that racked my body. I don't know if it was malaria because I was so cold I was shivering.
Damien crouched next to me. "Oh, baby, do we have an infection? Hmm, let me try..."
Then he started to press and squeeze me again. The pain became so intense that I almost fainted.
"Yep, we have some infection. You are hot as hell, but then again, those metals have been inside you for three weeks, so there is that."
He wouldn't let me faint. Damon watched me carefully, ensuring I felt every touch and squeeze. He lifted me to yet another table on my back and said, "This I called dancer, or ripper, whatever."
He pressed a button, and thousands of blades sank into my back and my legs." you see, baby, this makes this dancer."
He pressed another button, and now the table started to move, but the blades didn't mean blades tore through my tissues, and the table moved up and down, side to side, making the wounds bigger and deeper. I fainted quite many times, only to wake up with adrenaline, but even that could not keep me awake for long. I was just too weak.
Then he took some sort of a large jar of something greasy and began to brush the metal against my skin. He brushed a thick layer, and the metal always solidified as it cooled. The pain was so bad, and some medicine or substance wouldn't let me pass out. He turned me over so he could really sink that metal into those deep wounds on my back. Then he brushed me over and over again until I was encased right about to that metal. He put my arms across my chest and waited for the metal to harden, making me immobile.
He said, "Well, you soon see, this metal alloy reacts when it is warm and you are sick, with a very high fever. Keep that metal nice and reactive until you enter sepsis, but I have ways to ensure that you stay nice and warm."
"Baby, I think it's time to go back to the pack. It has been once again a glorious nine weeks. What do you say? Well, since you were so eager to go to the cage, I'll return you to the cage. But Baby, don't worry. There are a lot of people in the house and a party is going on. Damon might even join in. It feels good to get fucked up really good. Don't you think? Maybe when you get better, they'll give you a good fuck, heat too. You could get a big, hard cock in both holes at the same time. You see, baby, I will do some manipulation on my part, and let's just see what Damon does to you. I can guarantee that Doctor Damon will not take care of you now. One more thing, baby, I will give you a long-acting rage blocker, so you have no access to your rage for months; same stuff that Bran used, slightly modified, suiting you even better."
I wanted to get out of here and get that fucking wet dog smell out of here again. For some reason, I didn't want to put up with it at all. I swore to myself that one day I would get my revenge on this goddamn Damien, whether it is the side of Damon or his own creature, but someday he will be at my mercy. But the rage blocker prevented me from getting my rage, making me feel even more powerless and letting Damien enjoy this.
Then Damon wrapped my bruised, metal-encrusted body in sheets tightly so that the metal burned and hurt so hard I almost threw up. He hit me with a strong sedative as he carried me to the car. The sedative didn't take away the pain. It just paralyzed me from physically functioning.
The fever was no longer malaria because Damon had dipped me in salt water so many times it no longer boiled. He had broken the curses that caused the symptoms. I had screamed my throat raw because the salt in my wounds really hurt. Those symptoms had been partially on after eight weeks or so. Damon had told me originally when he had preyed upon me that symptoms would last two weeks at most and that he gave small doses. Like I said, I am a freak.
He wrapped me tightly in a thin blanket to ensure that it stuck on the metal; he moved it slightly and was happy when I screamed because the metal peeled off, and so did my skin. He wrapped me up in another moldy blanket on top of that and put another strong tranquilizer directly into my heart. He cannulated it. My hand was clasped to my body, and I was like a mummy as Damon carried me down to the basement cage, feeling the metals already in my bloodstream, my skin, and my insides.
He hid the drip bag in the shadows of the cage and covered me with a thick dark blanket, ensuring I was warm so that those metals keep on seeping into my system and pain would not get any better, and that if anyone wandered into the basement, they wouldn't find me right away, at least not if they were as drunk as the noise coming from upstairs suggested.