To Hell & Back
Chapter Eight

“Bitch is finally up, I think,” a voice murmured as I roused myself. “Hey, you alive? Hey, bitch, wake up!”

For the first time in days — or weeks for all I knew — and after a few agonizing seconds of blinding light, I could see. Opening my eyes to something besides darkness was a surprise. There were bright fluorescent lights on, illuminating the man that was sitting outside of the giant, metal cage I was in. He was looking right at me. His black business suit seemed out of place in the stone-floored dungeon, but his cold eyes and expressionless face fit right in.

I’m not dreaming anymore, I realized numbly. My head pounded, one pain among many, but I was definitely conscious. I’m awake! Hurray— No, changed me mind. I want to be unconscious again… Why’s this guy staring at me? Oh, he asked me something, didn’t he?

“Hi,” I whispered, my voice raspy.

“Drink,” he said, offering a bottle of water. I took it but hesitated. When he noticed me pause, he said, “I gave it to you still sealed…”

“Thanks,” I murmured, before I opened it and downed the entire bottle.

The cool water did wonders for my headache and my general sense of wellbeing, but I still felt like complete crap. I had more aches and pains than I could count.

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When I tried to hand the now empty bottle back, he shook his head and said, “Keep it.”

Charmed bottle, probably, I thought to myself. Probably shouldn’t have taken it.

“No,” I told him as I moved over to the side of the cage and tossed it out.

“Are you going to be a problem?” the man asked, raising an eyebrow. I felt around the top of my head, found the deep cut that had bled all over my face, and showed it to him. “That… that was regrettable, but you are up now, so let us forget about the past and—”

“You hit me over the head, tossed me into a cage, and then you left me to die,” I replied, before coughing and spitting phlegm outside the cage.

“As I said, regrettable. You were supposed to be treated respectfully. It has been a rather stressful time for everyone,” he told me. “Are you hungry?”

“Fuck you,” I replied.

“Josh, you bring the food? Something still in the wrapper for our particularly suspicious friend,” the man said, not looking away from me. Another man came up and handed him several protein bars, which he then handed over to me. “Seal still good, untampered, etc.”

I took them, weighing the pros and cons of eating them. While I was sure they had been tampered with in some way, I was literally starving. In the end, I ate them slowly, handing back the wrappers when I was finished. He didn’t try to get me to keep them. I wasn’t sure if the civil treatment was a good thing or not, but I was glad to have something to eat.

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“So, feeling any better?” he asked cheerfully.

“What do you want?” I whispered.

“World peace, an end to starvation, and—” he began before I cut him off by slamming my fist into the cage and growling. “I represent a new initiative. I’ve been charged with the security of—”

“What do you want from me?” I whispered harshly, contempt thick in my voice. A sudden burst of anger hit me. I really wanted to kill this man.

“How would you like to serve your country?” he asked. “We need…”

I watched his mouth open, but I heard nothing. My eyelids slowly closed on their own volition. I found my mind falling into a familiar nightmare as my body fell to the floor. Unlike before, I didn’t retain any sense of self, the nightmare swallowed me whole:

The Very Strange Man that I had first met as a small child, now hidden away in a big, black coat, and my father were talking. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear them clear enough to make out the words. I strained and strained, but it was all for naught. They were arguing, I think. I could feel the conflict in the air.

It wasn’t much longer until my father came over to me to tell me that I didn’t have much time. I was in trouble, but he was going to save me, he would always save me. He brought me to a table and had me get onto it. I didn’t struggle when he bound me to it. He said soothing words as he secured me tightly to the table, but I still got scared when I could no longer move my limbs due to the bonds.

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When he put a gag between my teeth, he said that what we were going to do would hurt a little bit, but the gag would stop me from biting my tongue.

“It’s for your own good,” he said. “This is for your own good.”

My father stood beside the table and looked down at me. He gave me a smile to reassure me, but I still knew something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. He felt different. He felt oddly cold. He was also harder to read; I couldn’t feel any emotion from him. My eyes widened and my fear became worse when I realized I was cut off from his emotions.

“Be strong,” he said. “You must be strong.”

I nodded as best as I could, restricted by the bonds as I was, and I tried to bury my fear, but it was hard. This was just so strange. Father had never tied me to a table before. What could he be thinking?

My father pulled a pendant out of his pocket and held it up for me to see. It was very pretty, so pretty that it transfixed me almost instantly. It was made out of a black crystal, that was held to a golden chain, by a silver clasp. When a black, wispy shadow began oozing out of the pendant, I didn’t think it was quite so pretty anymore.

My father called my name, taking my attention off of the pendant. He told me that there was something inside of me, and that it was corrupting me, but the pendant would help me hold it back. I could only nod slightly. My father unbuttoned my shirt and pushed it aside, exposing me to the cold air. The wispy shadow from the crystal oozed down towards me. Another shadow drifted out from my stomach, as if to meet it.

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The moment the shadows touched, a jolt of pain arced through my entire body. It started from my stomach, went out to my fingers and toes, then came roaring back to my stomach. I screamed into the gag for a moment, before biting down and choking it back. My father had said to be strong. Now I knew why he had warned me.

When the pain had abated some, I looked down again to see what was going on. I wished I hadn’t. I wished I had just closed my eyes, grit my teeth, and gone through the pain. The wispy shadow had formed into a swirling, semi-solid, shadowy tunnel. My fear deepened immensely when I realized something must be going into me, or out of me, if it really had become a tunnel.

I clenched my jaws through the gag as I felt another jolt of pain tear through my body. I would be strong, just as my father had asked, but it still hurt. I forced my body to relax and ride out the pain. Pain was nothing I hadn’t overcome before, and I would overcome it now. I tried to think of it as just another test, or perhaps more training. I liked training, especially when it was hard.

A voice startled me by calling out to me as the pain abated. I heard the voice whisper, “You can’t hold me anymore…”

I opened my eyes and looked down to see the pendant standing up just above my navel, pressing gently into my skin. I could feel the presence that had spoken. It was coming from the pendant. Cold malevolence drifted from the pendant to me; it was looking at me. Somehow I knew it was looking at me.

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My father stepped up to me, causing the being inside the pendant to shift its attention to him. This gave me a moment of relief. Seconds later, the sense of malevolence slammed back to me, fogging up my senses. A feminine scream sounded from the pendant. It was both from the pendant and in my head.

I felt my eyes open, but something was wrong. I was staring at myself from my navel. My point of view drifted up then plunged down, straight into my stomach. My vision snapped back to my eyes as I saw the crystal partially embedded into me. I saw blood spurt out as pain roared into existence from my stomach, causing me to scream.

“You have to be strong. You have to stay in control!” I heard my father shout. “Be strong! Don’t let it win!”

It suddenly felt as if my body was filling up. Pressure built up, getting higher and higher, and I realized my body was becoming a vessel for the entity in the pendant. As I filled up, I began to lose sense of myself. My muscles were spasming all over, I could feel it on the edge of my senses, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

My father was shouting, I could vaguely hear him, but I couldn’t make out the words. I felt his hands on my shoulders; he was shaking me. He was panicking. I wondered why he would be panicking and shouting at me. I smiled up at him. I tried to say everything was okay, that I was being strong like he wanted, but my mouth wasn’t mine anymore. That same malevolent feeling from before took over. I felt my lips curl into a cruel snarl.

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“You’ll not be rid of me, Jeza,” I heard my voice say.

I tried to move, but I couldn’t. I tried to take back control, determined. I felt my fingers move ever so slightly. I growled inwardly, stubborn determination rising. This was my body, and I wasn’t giving it up. An ancient, terrible rage slammed against my determination, trying to take over, but I forced it away.

“That’s it, Staysa, keep going!” came from my father. I shut his voice out, not wanting to hear him anymore. This was his fault. Why would he do this to me? Everything was fine until he messed it up.

You don’t know what— the voice rasped out in my head before I cut it off too.

No, I told it as I slammed the mental door shut on it. This is my body, not yours.

The entity stopped trying to talk. Instead, it just fought. We fought for control of my body. The pendant slipped fully into my stomach, and I felt the entity push up through my stomach and into my chest, to the center of my being. Pain exploded wherever it went. It felt like the center of my chest was a solid block of pain.

I jerked and screamed, but the pain didn’t go away no matter how hard I pushed at it. My determination started breaking down. I tried to plead with my father to stop this, but I couldn’t talk through the gag. I don’t think I could have worked my mouth for anything besides screaming, anyway.

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I managed to open my eyes to look for a moment. The sight scared me. In the middle of my chest was a black stain. It was as if darkness had lodged itself in me, in my chest, and it was branching out. My veins ran black. My panic rose, but at least the pain seemed to be less, or maybe I was just getting used to it. It was slightly easier to think. I had just enough in me to concentrate on concentrating.

What have you done to me, Father? I wondered, angry at him.

My father called my name. I looked at him. His expression was unreadable. I glanced down to see a knife in his hand. His free hand clamped down on my wrist just before he put the knife to my palm. It bit deep as he cut my palm open. The pain was immense. After several agonizing moments, he stopped and held up a small object. He took the object and pushed it into the cut in my palm. I tried to look, but I couldn’t. It was hard to even think through the pain.

What are you doing now, Father? I tried to say, but my mouth wouldn’t work; I could only think it.

He wrapped my hand with cloth, doused it in a liquid, then proceeded to my other hand.

“This is for your own good,” he said just before he opened up my other palm. When he finished with that, again inserting something into the deep cut he made, he moved to my feet. I started squirming and pleading into the gag as he put the knife to my skin once more.

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The pieces he inserted into my feet were longer. I was able to resist better, but he still put them in. The object he was inserting looked like a long sliver of silvery metal. I kicked and bucked, but he managed to put his weight on my leg to hold it still long enough to insert the sliver in.

After he’d finished with my legs, and poured a second dousing of liquid over the four wounds, he cut all the bonds, freeing me. I would have rejoiced at the freedom, had I the strength to move.

Dimly, I realized I had been forgetting something. The being had been quiet. Had Father done something to it? I felt its fogginess, like when I banged my head on something, but it was clearing up, and it was very angry. There was a brief, angry, confused pause, before white hot pain shot down all four limbs. The pain raced down and slammed into barriers at my ankles and wrists. It was like four tidal waves hit solid walls in my body. Blinding pain shot up my limbs. It was trapped in me, and I with it. I screamed into my gag one last time, giving it all I had. It was all I could do. All I could do was scream and writhe. It didn’t take long for me to black out.