Lorren

Her muffled screams reverberated off of the stone walls as her blood pooled on the table beneath her. Their harsh and guttural laughs echoed through her mind as she whimpered for the sweet reprieve that death would surely bring her, if only she could slip away. But they would never let her die. They kept her alive for the pain, in hopes she would break, that she would give in and cooperate. That she would reveal her secrets in exchange for mercy. They harshly told her that she had brought this upon herself, that if she had just cooperated as they had commanded that they wouldn’t have been forced to stoop to such methods. But she wouldn’t. She refused to. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was afraid to. If she gave them their answers, and in return they let her live, He would make sure she wished she had died at the hands of the Imperial men and not his own. She shuddered to think what He would have done to her. She steeled her spine and ground her teeth into the leather gag, as they stripped the flesh from her, burning her with red-hot irons that her melted flesh clung to, all the while keeping her screams to herself, her agony and pain now echoing nowhere but in her own mind as she drew deep and ragged gulps of air into her scorched lungs, her parched lips rubbing against the gag, splitting the dried skin. Sweat poured from her, burning and stinging her mangled flesh, as she fought to get air into her lungs. She whimpered at the sound of the red-hot iron hissing as it hit water, indicating that the method of torture was about to change. What was to come next, another mechanism to crush her bones slowly? Hadn’t they already broken everything? What was left for them to do to her, short of raping her? Surely they would have run out of options by now, since the Imperialist Regime was highly against the raping of women. Torture? Murder? Those were fine, but the raping of a woman, entering the most sacred of places without permission, was a hanging offense. The Imperials had a warped view of what was right and what was wrong. In. Out. In. Out. The air burned like fire in her throat. The tears froze in her eyes like ice. The skin of her palms cracked like the sun-baked mud of a long-dried desert lake. She hoped for death, prayed it would come soon. She was near her breaking point, she knew, but she refused to give in to the monsters torturing her if it killed her. She would break first, and when they realized she was no longer responsive to their tortures, they would kill her. Her mind was breaking, and she silently rejoiced. In. Out. In. Out. Her ragged breathing made her lips tremble like a leaf in the wind. Her heart stuttered in overwhelming fear as her pupils dilated, swallowing her irises, acclimating to the darkness clouding her vision. Sweet release was soon to be hers. She could feel the power inside of her slipping away as her barriers and walls began to climb ever higher inside of her, shutting her off from her physical world. One. Two. Three. Four. She counted the beats of her heart, relishing the sluggish tempo, knowing it only meant one thing: the end. She listened to the staccato foot falls that neared her as the others retreated in haste, a scurrying that reminded her of rats in a refuse pile. She listened to the slight intake of breath as someone new approached the table she was shackled to, listened to the murmurings of a man just outside of her clouded vision. She could smell him; clean and masculine, with the underlying scent of leather and spice, amber and sandalwood, so unlike her captors, who held the stench of unwashed bodies and stale spirits. He spoke aggressively in a rough and foreign tongue to her tormentors while her mind reeled and tried to prepare itself for the next onslaught against her body that was surely to come. But she couldn’t help but beg to wonder… Had they not done enough? Hurt her enough? Made her beg loud enough for death? Was this the man that ordered her capture? Her torture? Her answers? Five. Six. Seven. Eight. She counted the seconds until she would have removed herself from her body. She counted the moments between breaths, afraid to raise suspicions. Suspicions that she could escape the worst of the pain now, if only for a moment. She counted the lazy revolutions of the flies that circled above her. She counted the beats of her heart as it slowed even more, steadied, readying itself for the loss of its spirit. Nine. Ten… She closed her eyes, welcoming the feel of release she only felt when she was in a state of deep meditation or near-death. She watched her body from above, her corporeal form mangled and malnourished, small and pale, beaten and broken, held down as if she had any fight left in her. She was nothing more than an onlooker now. She relished her freedom, even if she was still tethered to her body, but only until it died.