Colourless Skies

40. Apparent Senses

Leah didn't feel the surge of wrath making its way from her body to her mouth, didn't feel the jolts of fear that wrangled her dry at hearing his cruel words, didn't feel the self-pity she felt when she was stuck in an inescapable situation; she didn't feel anything at all.

Numbness had overwhelmed her senses by the time Sebastian has announced the commencement of his time of amusement. She felt sick, she felt as if one more attack and she would dry heave. She thought she has run out of pain to bear.

How she was wrong.

Whilst her mind was in a stupor, she could faintly hear Sebastian's ally say something along the lines of 'Alex won't come to save you this time', and that if he did, he isn't returning alive.

This was the first time she was finally paying attention to him, and she could see he was much more young for a man, almost to the age of the white haired boy he stood by. He was wearing a ragged jacket over a maroon top,  ripped black jeans hugged his legs, and leather boots encased his feet. Despite his chilling demeanour, all Leah could focus on was his cozy outfit, how it provided him the warmth Leah lacked in her body. She was freezing, her tattered hospital gown doing nothing to help. If Sebastian didn't kill her tonight, hypothermia would.

"That's enough Orion, you can go. I will call you when it's your turn."

The assumable Orion gave Leah a skin-crawling look that shook her body with opia, and walked away, leaving her alone with one hell of a nuisance.

"Now Leah." His voice dropped by a few octaves as he effortlessly picked Leah up and ruthlessly threw her in a chair placed right in the midst of the room.

"We can do it the easy way.

You give me your blood willingly and I will let you be on your merry way."

Before speaking again, he sat himself in front of her, his elbows landing on the arm rests of the debilitated chair, as his entire posture tilted towards Leah.

"Or... we could do this the hard way." 

She remained quiet, either out of sheer dread or weariness, Sebastian couldn't figure out.

But he didn't care, in fact her silence only helped his case as he drove the car right into the tree. 

His breath fanned her face as he spoke again, slowly leaning away from her. 

"Okay then, you are officially in for a rough night."

The basement, or infamously, The Chamber Of Torture was collateral;  It spread out in front of her like an escalator, endless and repetitive . But its dimensions were not the only things intimidating.

The walls were tainted with red ichor, blood, everywhere she looked. Some was old and slightly rusted brown, she wasn't the first here. Some was vibrant red, almost irritating her eyes, indicating it was freshly painted onto the wall. Silver tables lined the sides of the walls, leaving the middle bare to walk through, similar to isles in a grocery store. But here, she was the meat.

The tables were all half covered with white cloth, some stained with blood, and some torn, as if someone had pulled at them in agony. They reminded her of the ones used in surgeries in hospitals, except that instead of being lined with surgical instruments, but by tools Leah had never seen before. Knowing him, she knew they could only be so much more pain-inducing than a scalpel.

Each table was accompanied with an image on the wall above it. They looked like a child's drawings, and a closer look left her horrified. Scribbled in markers were hand drawn stick figures being tortured in the most grotesque manners on each painting. The first her eye landed on was of the stick figure with different patterns chiseled around him in shade of lava, almost as if they were ruins. Leah shuddered when she realised what they were. Carvings, in human flesh.

Before she could forcefully avert her eyes and turn her gaze down, she found herself looking at another picture, a stick man on the left bound by limbs to a stretching machine. A line drawn in between, and then the right showed the flesh of his limbs holding on barely by tendons to his body; the limbs having been forcefully stretched to tear away.

Another showed the figure but his head forced inside a tub of water by an outline of a hand. Being drowned.

Next to it, the stick man was tied down to the ground, while a mechanism poured water over its head from a bucket, drop by drop. The Chinese water torture, she had read about it on the internet, and thought its use had died with its inventors, and that it would never possibly be one of her problems as she continued to research her history homework. 

Never again.

And these were only the start, only the ones her eyes could pan out in the entire room.

How could he be so inhumane? After stabbing her, after slapping her on to an extraction machine, and each time facing defeat, he still had the courage to take her on a trip of his torturous basement, and make her his next experiment. How could one be so insane? She searched his emerald eyes for answers, but found nothing but desperation and ardour. 

She gave up.

It was a locked story, and she hadn't levelled up enough yet.

"Let's get started then" 

He finally turned his attention towards Leah, his cold voice impaling her, as he double tied her already caged wrists and legs to the chair, and professed to not having the slightest clue what he should use to torture her blood out of her.

"Let's see."

He stopped moving, and Leah didn't know why.

"I think I found just the right one.", he said as he turned around and smiled agape, brandishing a jagged, sharp knife. It looked like a lethal Christmas tree.

"Carving will not only seep out your blood, but also..." , he emphasised his next words carefully jabbing each one in her heart before the knife could even be used.

"Remind you and others of how you are a slave to me, a source of power and nothing more."

His treacherous voice lured her into looking at him, and the nothingness she saw in his being dealt her a horrifying blow as she realised the boy who threateningly stood in front of her was not a vampire anymore, he was a minacious sociopath.

This took me some time.
I don't think it turned out so great either.😞🙌🏻