The Cage (Book 2)

Break Me

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Mature Content Warning.

Break Me

Schneider's P.O.V

The wretched stench of scorched flesh -putrid and sweet, like leather being tanned over a flame- filled the tiny torture chamber -or my cell, as my captors liked to call it. Little did they know that, while my cell back in prison wasn't exactly a suite at the Four Seasons, it certainly wasn't anything like this damned place. Here, I was served a daily meal of pain, pain and more pain. How long had it been since my captor? A year? Two years? Ten? I'd completely lost track of time. At first, I kept count, but when they started injecting me with psychedelic drugs soon after my arrival, the days blurred into nights and the nights into days, and with no window offering a view of the outside world, I had no way of knowing what time of the day it was. Whatever they gave me dulled my mind but heightened my perceptions, including my perception of pain, which made the torture all the more effective. I was subjected to suffering piled upon suffering of every type and form on a daily basis.

Shackles -actual fucking metal shackles- restrained me to a brick wall by the ankles, limiting my movement. The farthest I could walk was the bucket when I was lucid enough to get up.

A solitary cell.

Like the one I had dumped my Julian in.

Julian.

Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat.

Something like a water tap constantly dripped water into the semi-empty bucket in the background. A psychological torture tactic that broke the Geneva Convention, I was well aware, but it drove me to the brick of madness all the same.

On unbearingly humid hot nights like this one, perspiration gathered on the ceiling. I looked up and waited, watching the droplets grow in size until one just above me was ready to fall. Wetting my dry throat in anticipation, I opened my mouth wide and waited.

It splattered against my forehead.

I cursed but it came out slurred and pathetic.

Alight, let's try this again.

I opened my mouth and anticipated where the next drop would fall.

Luckily, I caught this one in my mouth and savored the taste of dusty, polluted water. I got another few drops and decided that I'd had my fill before I got asbestos poisoning.

I estimated it had been a whole week since I'd been given water, which of course was another tactic to weaken my body, my mind and my resolve. To make me malleable. To break me.

Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat.

I hissed like a wounded animal and drew my hand back when a drop of water landed on my middle finger's exposed and swollen nail bed. I looked down at my shaking hand with bared teeth, dirty and missing all its nails. There was pain, and then there was a cartel manicure kind of pain. Having every one of your nails ripped out of their correct, God-intended places was an experience no man forgot -or easily survived. I once tried ripping out my left pinkie with a plier on the ill-advised recommendation of my brother; to familiarize myself with that pain in a sort of immunity-building exercise, but that didn't help me in any way when the bastards ripped out every single one of my nails. There was simply no getting used to smarting, vision-blackening agony.

But at least I now knew that my nails would grow back in a year or so, so there was that small comfort. Of course, if I lived to see one year from now.

More time passed. Time. That was all I had here. Time between each torture session. Time between each 'feeding'. Time, time and more time, and I could barely even keep it.

The dreaded sound of the dungeon's door being unlocked reached my ears as my torturers fidgeted with the metal key.

Here it comes.

I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply and steeled my resolve for what was to come. It was waning, though. The only thing keeping me from breaking was the thought of Julian.

My sweet, beautiful Julian. My anchor. He centered me. He kept me sane. Well, semi-sane. The things they did to me here drove me to madness. I was losing more of myself every day. How much longer could I last?

"Schneider," he called to me in a sickly singsong voice. My name reverberated off the dank, dirty walls. The way he said it made my skin crawl.

The familiar, dreaded footfalls.

My captor and tormentor came to stand before my cell.

I slowly opened my eyes and glared. I'd grown to resent and despise his face more than I'd despised anything in my life. I had many enemies; too many to count with my drug-addled brain. Usually it was business that dictated the type of relationship I had with a rival. But it was different this time. This time it was personal.

"Woah. Those eyes could set a man on fire." He grinned, amused.

"Oh, what I have planned for you is much worse." I smiled. Luckily, my voice didn't crack and make an ass out of me despite how dry my throat was.

"Then it must kill you to know you'll never see those plans come to fruition."

"Who's to say?"

"I say."

I pushed off the ground with shaking hands and rose to my feet. My knees threatened to give from underneath me, but I used every ounce of strength I had left to stay upright. The shackles clinked and clunked as I moved toward my shit bucket. I unzipped my pants and whipped my cock out. My piss splattered into the bucket.

My eyes brazenly met his over the bucket just in time to see his jaw tick and his nostrils flare.

My smile widened.

"Why prolong your suffering? You know you're not getting out of here. Just give up your brother's location and I'll send you to your maker quickly. He'll come join you soon."

"Tempting as offers go," I zipped up once I was finished, "but fuck you."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

He unfurled the leather belt he seemed to enjoy using so much with that dreadfully familiar wicked glint in his dark eyes.

My spine hardened.

Three of his men stepped from around him and opened the cell door. They came at me from every direction all at once. In the first few days, I could fight them off for much longer than I could now. Now, all it took was a dirty kick to the knees and a sucker punch to the face to bring me down.

Roaring, I fought as hard as I could given what little strength I possessed.

A needle jabbed me in the neck and the drug was injected into my bloodstream.

"Fuck..." My vision instantly blurred. "You... coward."

Only a yellow-bellied coward would resort to such means to overcome their opponent, but we both knew he wouldn't last a minute in one-to-one combat.

Pristine suede loafers appeared in my unfocused vision. The leather belt dangled before me, appearing as two.

"Now, where were we?"

A world of pain followed. 

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

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