She ignores him, but for a chiding rebuttal of his language and an off-hand 'tsk' that reminds him brutally of harsh, stone cold eyes and a father who never cared. The flash of memory takes him unprepared, forcing a heavy exhale from stuttering lungs as his arm finally gives out and he falls to the side. He grits his teeth and growls, at what he's not really sure; the woman, or the memory, as his eyes clench shut and his hands curl into fists around the fabric of his shirt. He bites his tongue, uses the sharp, centred pain to ground himself amidst the feeling of being simultaneously burned and buried alive.
Oblivion would have been easier, but release does not come so mercifully this time.
He drifts, for how long, he doesn't know. All he's aware of is the pain, pulsing and thriving with every laboured beat of his heart. The taste of blood in his mouth becomes almost normal, as much so as the loss of feeling in his hands as they cramp and throb with stress. He's lying on his side, face pressed into the dirt so only one eye opens, but it hardly matters, for every time he peels an incredibly heavy lid open, his world is the same. Hazy, unfocused, the interior of the tent swaying and fading in, out, in, out, in sync with his stuttered breaths. It gets progressively harder to breathe, the effort taking that much more out of him every time he fades back into the world of the living that he doesn't even have the energy to scream anymore.
He tries to tell himself it will end, tries to bolster his own flagging strength with the knowledge that there must be a limit to how long she can do this to him, how long she will be willing too. He recognises the desperation for what it is, and it sickens him in the same moment as he realises how far he's fallen. He can't remember the last time he's felt pain like this, deep and stabbing and burning, driving down through his bones, splintering through his veins like broken glass and tearing him apart from the inside out. He wonders if this is how his victims feel, in the seconds before they turn to ash and dust, blown apart in a soft wind and forgotten as easily as him.
He drifts, and when next he wakes he chokes on air. His body convulses, jaw working around a tongue swollen from dehydration, and the grating coughs that rip from him tear embers through his throat, until they settle in the bottom of his lungs and
burn. When he can breath again, wheezing in crippled gasps that whistle in his ears and rattle somewhere near the sharp pit of hunger in his stomach, there are tears in his eyes. He can feel the warmth of them on his cheeks, mingling with the dirt no doubt smeared there as he writhed against the ground, salty and bitter. He pries open the eye not blotted with wet, cloying dust and almost chokes again as the world shifts sickeningly around him.
Somewhere amidst the shifting colours and light that stabs pins through his eye, a dark shape that vaguely resembles a human takes form. He blinks at it dazedly, searching for white wings he has ironically come to associate with pain and finding only empty air. A voice pounds against his ears, muted and hazy, but somehow recognisable through it all. Something cold and icy curls around his chest and freezes his breath in his throat in the same moment the figure's face comes into view and the only thing stopping him from physically recoiling is the complete lack of control over his body.
"
Are you sorry yet, boy? Have you learned anything?" He flinches, unable to stop himself, and bites his teeth down on his lower lip to stop the trembling shake he can feel starting in his jaw.
It's not real, he tells himself, thoughts scattered and panicked,
He's dead. Long dead. I watched him die! "
Speak up, boy! Are you sorry for what you did?" He's frozen, breath trembling through his teeth as he spirals, desperately screaming into his own mind that the spectre before him is just that. A hallucination, a creation of his own tortured mind, the pain, anything but reality. He can feel his eyes burning with traitorous tears, his chest hitching in an unsteady breath that threatens a sob. The spectre's hand lifts, something sharp and wicked glinting over its knuckles, and a strangled sound escapes him as he
breaks."I'm sorry!" He cries, the words riding on a sob, not quite a scream, not quite a whisper. He's shaking, hands digging holes into the soft earth beneath him as his eyes clench shut and hot, shaming tears roll down his cheeks. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry." It becomes a mantra, spoken over and over and over as he curls into himself and trembles, awaiting the strike of steel on flesh and the added, blossoming pain in a body that has almost become numb from the constant, invisible flaying of his flesh and bones, the blow from the only being who can strip away his pride, his confidence, and lay him bare and helpless as a naked babe.
"P-please," He gasps, voice hitching into a whimper as his chest aches for air, "make it
stop."
@SanctifiedSavage
