#whumpblr

Eilene's home; May 21st, 2002: 7:49am

026 Woke up zip-tied to a chair. It wasn't a nice chair either; it was one of those nasty old metal folding chairs, and it was rusty, too. He could tell because the bruises on his knuckles were pressed into the coarse bar of metal beneath the seat. The whole room smelled of lavender febreze and wet pennies.

On top of it all, he was blindfolded, and a musty old rag had been stuffed so far into his mouth that he had to suppress his gag reflex every time he went to inhale. He would have panicked—should have panicked, actually. Maybe he was getting used to being bound and gagged, or maybe it was just the febreze.

Honestly, he wasn't too sure.

026 tried the zip-ties, but the more he yanked, the more the plastic sunk into his flesh. Whoever invented these things should be shot. Unfortunately for him, neither the man who'd invented zip-ties, nor his guns were present. The torturous silence only stretched on as he came to his dreaded conclusion. Only one person he knew went this far with the theatrics of kidnapping, and she was the only one he knew who would even consider using lavender febreze. The audacity was the thing that made it familiar. That also told him they weren't in any of her facility buildings or unusual rented chateaus-or-whatever. This was a location he knew well, and the only one that smelled like this.

It was also the place he'd lost his fingers.

026 gave up the idea of escape even before he heard her footsteps: perfect and delicate as snowflakes. Her pull, however, was rougher than diamonds as she ripped the blindfold off his eyes. He let the scowl ripple over his face at the sight of her, his locs loose and messy in his face making an easy comparison to the perfectly sleek bun collected at the back of her head. Aw. She'd even worn a hairnet for him.

How flattering.

He tried not to flinch when she slipped her fingers under his chin—they were so cold.

“Good morning, my little puppet,” she said, “How are you feeling?” Her voice was gentler than he expected, a strange warmth hidden in it. 026 could almost have mistook her tone for affection.

The basement itself was colder than her hands. It was a large stone box, really, with a concrete floor and foundation bricks hidden behind all that deceptive plaster. The drywall had been painted a particularly boring shade of beige, but the ceiling itself was pretty much nonexistent. A few vintage-looking lightbulbs hung from the rafters, both activated by a pull switch. It looked like a torture dungeon, and that was exactly what she used it for—except, of course, for the little laundry room in the corner to his left.

“Well! Let's get started then, shall we, love?” Her smile was as sharp and venomous as a rattlesnake as she set her armful of materials on a little cart alongside her favorite pair of black leather gloves and a deep red washcloth. 026 made an attempt to curse her out, but the gag brushed against the back of his throat like a demented finger and he tried to cough. He struggled against the zip-ties, defiantly pushing up the one middle finger he still had, despite the fact it was trapped behind his back.

Her gentle hands made him shudder as she pulled the rag from his mouth, letting him gag on nothing for a few moments. He knew her well enough to read the mild air of amusement about her.

“Fuck you!” were the first words out of his mouth before he choked on his own saliva and spent the next two minutes coughing.

“Is that all?”

“HA! You wish, bitch. How about you get out of my goddamn sight and fuck yourself in the backyard with that blowtorch!”

“Oh,” she said mildly, “It's not for me, darling. But we can experiment if that's what you're asking.”

“Damn, at least—” he struggled against the zip-ties, grinning at her as he ineffectively threw himself forward, “—buy me a drink first… if you're going there!”

“You know, I think I like you a little better when you can't speak, 026,” she soothed, a tight smile decorating her face as she pulled on a surgical mask with her dancing fingers. “You're so much easier to talk to when you listen, after all.”

He inhaled, stared her defiantly in the eyes, and screamed as loud as he could possibly manage.

She frowned. It was followed by those clammy fingers of hers closing around his throat and siphoning off the noise at the source. “Now, now. I understand I've been too lenient as of late, but that doesn't give you any excuse to fight me. What have I done? Hurt you? I'm doing what I must, darling. You kill people. Am I really all that bad for making certain you do your job right?” She leaned in close, tapping a single finger delicately against his nose. “I'm certain the electric chair is much worse.”

That shut him up.

026 eyed her cart of instruments, particularly what looked to be a fire poker beside the blowtorch.

“I'm keeping you out of it, after all. Aren't I? I think a little bit of gratitude is in order.”

He glared at her in response, making a subdued snarling as her only consolation.

“No? Well, I did try my best. It seems you're really begging me to do this the hard way. It could be so simple if you only listened to me, dear. I don't understand why you must make me hurt you.” She released his throat to write something on her little notepad.

“I HAVEN'T MADE YOU DO ANYTHING!” He thrashed in his bonds as she fired the blowtorch into the end of what was now revealed to be some sort of metal stamp. He could gather nothing from those deep wells that were her eyes, for there was nothing in them besides solemn determination. She was a woman of her city, and Ethynoé was a monster.

“Yes you have. It's not my fault you're uncontrollable and rebellious. I'm trying to help you. You've only been arrested because you didn't follow my orders.”

He knew there was no way out. She was right. He didn't want to be okay with that, but somehow, he was. Resistance had become a performance because even he didn't know what he believed anymore.

She twirled the long metal rod around her fingers as easily as if it were no more than a pen. It ended pointed to the ceiling, the burnt end of her soldier's bayonet to the sky. Her grey eyes probed his muddy black ones, scraping the dirt out of him with a thousand tainted needles.

Eilene's advance stilled his struggling as he stared at her in wide-eyed terror, like a deer in headlights. He barely heard the click of the blowtorch shutting off as she placed it neatly back in its spot and returned to the iron hell in her hand. All he could do was close his eyes.

She was gentle when she bore the brand into his ribcage. Fire licked at his bones like white-hot metal against metal; it was roaring sparks and lungs full of water. A wave of hot nausea screamed through his nerves as they cried a plea for mercy and then died. A hiss of air escaped from his mouth as pain like teeth growing from his organs made him gag on his own tongue. Skin sizzled.

He was torn in half and put back together again, strings snapping like the prey of a hungry parasite. Pressure built in his head, a thousand knives twisting in a delicate dance along the brand. She sank into his flesh. Acid flowed through his tear ducts, and in all his thrashing for freedom: he was only rewarded with rotten meat—his meat. He awoke to hot coals filling his windpipe.

Chemicals carved deep gouges into every inch of his soul in a vain attempt to extinguish her flames. Her knuckles brushing tenderly across his cheek drowned out all his willpower and killed the plea for mercy budding in his throat. Steel sliced through tendon, charring at the edges like a well-done steak. He couldn't tell the metal from his bones when his vision turned white. It hurt so much he wanted to throw up, but he was a fish on a hook, and she was the lure. When she removed the brand, it peeled layers and layers of sticky, broken skin away with it. Blood filled his lungs, and agonized sweat carved rivulets of salt into his open wound. It bubbled like a witch's cauldron, stinging enough to produce another strangled shriek from between his straining teeth.

026 was too busy gasping for breath to realize what she was doing. His head slumped forward, begging for any sort of reprieve. He didn't want to know what Eilene had carved into his body. Her sessions of madness usually lasted longer than a half hour. It felt like a lifetime, but he knew it had been less than ten minutes. If he was lucky, she might consider stopping; but 026 didn't think he'd seen a single four-leaf-clover his whole life. He was still thinking about luck when he smelled the isopropanol.

His muscles tensed. For a moment, he forgot again what she'd done. The burn pulsed violently like an overheated gun or a misshapen blade. It was as if she were reforging him in a gas fire he couldn't put out. Fury burned in him at the same time as sickening curiosity. He wasn't ready for the excruciating eruption of a firework beneath the skin of his open wound—or at least, what little skin was left. Charcoal debris lodged in his flesh.

026 hated tests. He hated her. He'd seen the types of things she put in that fucking notepad. Things like: ‘Still resistant’, ‘Perhaps a tolerance?’, ‘Simulants provide complacency’, or even his least favorite; ‘He remains the optimal outcome. How much further can he stretch?’.

The sting of alcohol came like a stormcloud on a sunny day. A sudden, hot flash of death and searing metal pressed burning liquid into his open wound, almost hotter than the brand. Then it moved, in all of its disgusting, agonizing glory. It swept over the edges of the wound, shredding his muscles into carrion as desperate maggots seeped their way in, laughing at him from the shadow of his involuntary tears.

Acid soaked into his body, and he had to tolerate it through his blurry vision and rapidly fading conscious thought. It was wet. His body was soaked in flames and the desperate pus-like fluid of cells attempting to replace their dead siblings.

Tears accompanied the rubbing alcohol in burning him over and over again. He knew curiosity made her pull the soaked rag away from his wound, warm with sweat, speckles of blood, and whatever else was gushing into his canyon of charred skin. He didn't feel real anymore. All that remained was dizziness and muffled sobs.

“Oh?” Eilene crouched to be eye level with him, her grey eyes as blank as a new chalkboard as she studied him. She made a disappointed note; he wanted to kill himself.

“I'm sorry, Ms.Hallon–”

“I'm certain you are.” Her voice held the faintest hint of malice as she grabbed something smaller from the table and pulled up a stool a few inches away from him.

As he returned from the corners of his mind, she cut the zip-tie around his legs and pulled one of them up to rest on top of her lap.

“What the hell-”

The blade of a potato peeler was a strange sensation against the front side of his knee: scarred and discolored as the skin already was. Her scrape was faster than his train of thought.

“MOTHERFUCKER—!" He tried to pull away as fast as possible, but the blade was already biting his skin before he could. It sunk in, tore, and then peeled as smoothly as a ripe banana. The long ribbon-like strip of flesh hanging from his ankle dripped onto the floor: rhymically, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. She went slower the next time, the small fold of skin beneath the blade catching on the metal easily.

He thrashed in his bonds to get away from her, but she did nothing to indulge his petty, fearful struggling. Strips of flesh collapsed from his body onto the floor like spaghetti, the color of the concrete sometimes visible through the translucent folds drowning in red.

Her face remained still through it all: gracefully still—almost umovable. She never faltered, even when he tried to kick her. All that remained behind her eyes was her sick fascination with making him feel pain.

And feel it he did—every boiling inch of it, separating his flesh from himself until he couldn't remember what he was. Eilene kept scraping. The humanity peeled off of him next: in rhythmic, pristine, straight lines, her hands carved him. She moved to his other leg. His struggles weakened with every piece she took until his head hung limp, like a dead sock puppet, dark eyes staring vacantly at his own dripping appendages. He didn't even realize when she was done.

Nothing stopped the cold, bitter tears from draining down his face. Eilene made a note. He didn't notice. The strangled sob that came out of his mouth when she poured the alcohol on his new wound came from a dissociative child, not a weapon. He flinched when she zip-tied his legs back to the chair, but he didn't speak.

When 026 woke back up in hell, she was waiting. He opened his mouth to speak, but she emptied the bottle over his head as one last humiliation. He stirred to life when she turned her back on him.

“Is– IS THAT ALL YOU GOT, BITCH?”

When she swivelled around again, her tight grin glued his mouth shut. “Yes, for now. It did a pretty good number on you, I think. You look like a piece of roadkill.”

“You did this to me!”

“No, no. I think it's in the eyes,” She said absently, her fingers easily finding the railing of the stairs.

“Oh, and by the way,” 026 watched her grab the light switch, “Ray is dead.”

The long silence that stretched between them accentuated the sound of the door slamming as she plunged him into darkness.

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