Chapter 4
They pull us in a line, one after the other, until the sound of chains and panicked breathing becomes some sick kind of melody.
Cold metal is heavy around my wrists and ankles, with a rope linking us by the neck like a leash, tugging each time someone hesitates, a silent reminder that none of us belong to ourselves anymore.
The sack traps the air around my face, and in the dark, my mind begins to fold in on itself, searching for walls that aren’t even there.
When we come to an abrupt stop, I jolt forward and bump into the woman ahead.
I can’t see who’s staring, but I can feel their gazes pressing against me, and it sets my nerves alight.
The white dresses they’ve clothed us in, much like the one I wore when I was sold to Law, does nothing to shield the feeling; it only makes the exposure worse, like we’re sex objects to be inspected before we’re worthy of the abuse that’ll undoubtably follow.
Without warning, the rope connecting me to the women in front and behind me is released, and I’m dragged sideways, my legs barely holding beneath the crushing weight of the shackles, metal screeching across the floor with every forced step.
They keep pushing on my back, causing me to stagger, unable to see a thing in front of me. The deeper I’m pushed into wherever I am, the louder the screams and sobs of women and children become around me.
The kind of noise that digs beneath your skin, drilling themselves into your bones until you’re certain you’ll hear them humming in your mind for the rest of your life.
When my upper arm is seized in a brutal grip, I’m pulled to the left so hard I nearly lose my footing.
After a few stumbling steps, my chains are freed, and strong arms suddenly wrap around my waist from behind, lifting me effortlessly.
Before I can even gasp, my back is dropped onto a freezing cold surface, the power rattling through my entire body.
A cry catches in my throat as leather restraints are pulled tight around my ankles. Then my wrists, then across my shoulders, pinning me firmly against the metal beneath me.
Terror surges through me as I struggle against the straps, but they don’t give.
Suddenly, the bag is torn off my head, and all I see is a guy walking away, closing the heavy door behind him.
My eyes dart around the filthy room as the surgical light above me buzz’s and flickers like a dying firefly.
Grime clings to every surface, the cracked, black walls ooze with old moisture and dark stains that have long since soaked into the crumbling plaster.
Rusted cabinets hang crookedly from their hinges, doors gaping open to reveal shelves of filth. On a dented metal tray nearby, instruments, or should I say weapons, lie scattered in a disarray.
“What the fuck is this place?” My voice is only a murmur.
“Hell,” The words come in a weak, wheezing reply from my left.
My head shoots toward the sound so fast it sends a spike of pain down my neck. But what I see stops my heart cold.
A young woman lies strapped to the surgeon’s table beside mine. She can’t be no older than her late teens. Bright, fiery red hair, matted with sweat and greese spills across the surface beneath her like a dying flame.
She’s completely naked, her skin ghostly and translucent, pulled so tight over bones that they look ready to pierce through.
But it’s her legs, or what remains of them, that really hits me like a gut punch.
Where her thighs should be are two brutal, bloodied stumps, the flesh stitched roughly with thick black thread, red and raw while swollen and leaking yellow pus.
My watery eyes crawl up to her face, and her green ones are dulling, only flickering with the last fragile sparks of life.
“What did they do to you?” I murmur, unable to hold back the whimper that leaves me, utterly horrified.
She tries to smile, but it comes out as a grimace, dried blood flecking her lips.
“They… took everything,” she rasps, her head lolling slightly toward me. “You’re next, aren’t you?”
My eyes widen with pure dread, ice freezing my veins.
Please, God, no. I’m not next. I can’t be next.
“They said I didn’t need my legs where I’m going,” she continues through a wheeze, and with what little strength she has left, she tilts her torso toward me.
The movement reveals the full extent of the mutilation, showing her left arm is gone too—severed clean at the shoulder, the stump crudely sealed with the same jagged black thread.
“My buyer… wanted to see me try to get away with only one arm.” A weak laugh escapes her. “Said it would be more fun… watching me crawl away from my nightmares.”
Feeling sick to my stomach and utterly repulsed, I swallow hard, but it does nothing to stop the wave of nausea crashing over me.
This isn’t the same place I was sold from before. That was for the pure and untouched. The ones they could break carefully, savoring every scream.
This… this is something far more evil and demented.
This is a market for broken toys they sell to the most depraved buyers, who get off on watching what’s left of a person, twitching and suffering, in the final stages of death.
My breath comes in short, panicked gasps as the realization sinks deep into my mind, sucking me toward the same shattering void I’d barely got out of last time.
If they’ve already taken her legs and arm… what the fuck are they going to do to me?
But I push my selfish terror aside as I stare into her green eyes, my own filling with fresh tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, voice wavering “I’m so fucking sorry…”
“I’m so scared,” she says, her young gaze swelling red and watery as if she’s finally found something she can hold onto.
Mine softens, my heart crumbling under the weight of her fear. and suddenly, all my problems don’t seem so terrible after all.
My shaky fingers stretch out to reach her, although I can’t touch her.
“You’re going to be okay,” I say with a quiver on my lips. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise, I’m here now.”
Suddenly, the metal door is unbolted and pushed open, the rusted hinges shrieking like something dying.
My gaze darts to the doorway as a man steps through.
No… not a man. Just something with the odd shape of one.
He fills the doorway completely, forcing himself through the opening like a beast emerging from an enclosure too small to contain it.
He is impossibly tall, and every step he takes is heavy enough to make the floor tremble beneath him.
His head is shaved smooth, the pale skin gleaming under the flickering fluorescent lights. A vicious scar divides his face from forehead to chin, the skin around it puckered and twisted, warping his features into something grotesque.
His enormous stomach hangs over the waistband of stained jeans, swaying as he moves. The remains of a white tank top cling to his body, soaked with old sweat and blotched with countless blood stains.
Draped over his bulk is a doctor's coat, sleeves rolled back over forearms thick as tree trunks, revealing skin marked with burns, scars, and faded needle tracks.
He doesn’t speak, he barely even looks at us.
Instead, he lumbers straight toward the red-haired woman’s table, dragging his zipper down, and I feel fear smash into me like a sledge hammer.
“No—” I choke out, but it’s already too late.
He grabs her hip with one huge, grubby hand, yanking her further down, the other plunging deep in his pants.
“NO!” I scream, thrashing wildly against my restraints, the leather digging into my wrists. “Don’t touch her! Leave her alone, you fucking piece of shit! NO!”
For a second, he pauses. Then his scarred face turns toward me, his single drooping eye fixing on mine.
Shit.
He moves back and storms toward my table before his huge hand clamps around my skull like a vice, followed by metal that bites into my skin.
He forces a heavy clamp around my head and jaw, the mechanism clicking brutally tight, locking my mouth shut.
Reaching for the tray of instruments, he lifts a large, rusted needle already threaded with thick black surgical thread.
My eyes expand, my body jerking to get away, an internal scream filling me as he leans in close, his breath, hot and rank against my face.
With careful, sadistic slowness, he pierces the flesh of my lip, and begins stitching them shut. The rusted needle punctures the flesh of my lower lip, then the upper, tugging the rough black yarn through.
Each stitch burns like fire, pulling my lips tighter together, thread by agonizing thread while the clamp keeps me tortuously still as he works.
Tears stream down my temples, blood trickling from the fresh puncture wounds.
Once my mouth is completely sealed shut, leaving only a tiny, cruel gap left in the center, he grabs a thick, dirty plastic straw and shoves it roughly between the remaining opening, grinding it deep enough that it presses against my trembling tongue.
Then the doctor returns his focus back to her, and she whimpers weakly as he approaches.
He stands at the end of the table, his massive, veined cock already flopped out, hard and dripping with something dark.
The woman’s remaining arm twitches uselessly against her restraints as he forces her stumped thighs apart, lines his cock with her core, and thrusts into her with one harsh stroke.
She lets out a strangled cry as he buries himself to the hilt, forcing her open instantly.
The doctor fucks her roughly, each fierce drive slamming her mangled body against the table. Her severed body jerks and flails, blood and puss pouring from her stumps as his hands grip her hips hard enough to crack bone.
He leans down, his long, grey tongue slithering over her hardened nipple before he sinks his teeth into her breast.
She lets out a high pitched screech as he pulls away with a vicious growl, taking a chunk of flesh with him, blood jetting in arcs.
Her tortured cries and broken weeps fill the room with unbearable suffering. And all I can do is watch in absolute shock, aggressively fighting against my restraints until the straps bite deep into my wrists.
A single tear slips free from my eye as she shudders beneath him. Yet he never slows his speed, chewing and swallowing her torn flesh as he rams into her.
His thrusts grows more hectic, the wet slapping of skin ringing off the walls.
Until finally, with a deep snarl, he buries himself and floods her insides, pumping until it overflows and mixes with the gore on the table.
He stays inside her for a long moment, his chest panting as thick cum begins to leak around his shaft.
With a satisfied grunt, he pulls out with a wet, vulgar pop, and a heavy gush of foul, yellow-coloured cum pours out of her, spreading onto the rusted table in sticky ropes.
The doctor slowly turns his head toward me, and my back teeth grind together so hard I feel them creak, my jaw locked in fury.
I give him the most nasty, watery death stare I can muster, tears of rage and helplessness streaming down my face.
After tucking himself back in, he picks up thick plastic industrial wrap and starts encasing her disfigured body in layer after crinkling layer of airtight plastic.
Once she’s fully mummified in the glistening plastic shroud, her body reduced to nothing but a sealed, leaking package, he turns toward me.
The plastic touches my skin like the cold kiss of a corpse before it wraps around my ankles. Each layer pulls harsher than the last, a vacuum-sealing me like discarded meat destined for storage.
It crushes my calves together, then climbs to my thighs. Then my torso is next, the plastic compressing my ribs, flattening my breasts, pinning my arms uselessly to my sides.
Finally, my head and face is smothered, the material sticking to my tear-streaked cheeks and bloodied stitched mouth.
Everything disappears beneath the relentless, claustrophobic sheets. Everything except the filthy plastic straw protruding from the tiny gap in my sewn lips—my only lifeline to oxygen.
The world starts to shrink. But then, without warning, a sharp jab pierces the plastic and sinks deep into the side of my neck again.
My body spasms, muscles straining, and everything spins around me.
The edges of my vision bleed inward, black spreading through murky water before, finally, darkness swallows me whole.