4. I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing.

My confusion got worse by the minute. The pain was too much, and it somehow took my mind to a place where I could not get a grip on myself. He carried me to the car, and the car pulled out of the plane. Now, I was still fully drugged, in pain, and desperately trying to conserve my strength in case there was any chance of escape at some point. I tried to think of an escape plan, but I couldn't feel any of my rage, and I wasn't sure if it was a drug or if I was just using up my rage in the gym and the ability of that prick to control me and my rage.

My grip on my rage had dropped off when he had started to unravel my legs and that herbal cream and all of this. I needed to do something, but no, nothing came to my mind and all I felt was ever-increasing pain and helplessness because of my state of being.

When the car finally stopped and Damon carried me straight into the shed and strapped me down to the table, I still hadn't come up with a sensible plan. I was naked on the table, and again now five of those murky bags were draining inside me as He had to get more stuff from his car after he had secured me to that damn table.

Damon was sitting on a chair after he had brought his bag inside and undressed. He had taken his jacket and shoes off, replacing them with plastic shoes and a scrub top. There was again apron, gloves, and other protective gear for him to use. I could smell pain in this place, so there had been other victims here, too. 

This was the concrete-based floor, drainage holes, hoses neatly bundled in walls, shuttles, and bright, unforgiving light in the ceilings. Nothing new, this was just another shed. This was a place that I did not want to be. There had been three steps as he had come in, descending this pit of torture.

He looked at me for a moment and said, " Feeling a little helpless, out of it, are we?Aren't they great drugs? We had that cocktail I poured in you on the plane that was such a rage blocker; then there were neuroleptics, antipsychotics, and a couple of new ones that take your concentration and logical thinking pretty much out of the game. As you can see, baby, there's not an escape plan forming, is there?"

He stroked my forehead, and I flinched. His voice was an emotionless whisper.

"And I shall give you the same sort of cocktail the whole time we are here so when this is all over, your mind will be paralyzed and even if you could act, you will be pretty unable to come to a decent plan to get yourself into order and that will be part of my lesson of humility to you, to make you dependent on others not able to damn thing for yourself."

He stood up and went to turn on the satanic devices. I was all bruised up already, helpless. My head was all messed up with drugs. And Damon was enjoying himself. He was enjoying himself so fucking much and so fucking uninhibited. He really let it show. He was using our bond, a true soulmate bond, to feel my confusion. He was using his telepathy, too, and his clinical skills as a doctor, as well as his ability to know what was harmful to me and what was not.

Then he came and carried me into the first shuttle, and it was another one where I went inside the machine completely.

Damon said, " This device is new. You've never had one before. It's going to medicate you, so I've programmed in certain parameters of what you should be, body temperature, breathing, and so on, and now this device is going to start adjusting you with different drugs. Those drugs can come anywhere: the brain, the spinal cord, muscles, bones, and internal organs. We'll see how long it takes before the drugs have done their job. I won't tell you what condition I want you to be in, baby. I won't tell you much more, but enough to let the machine play with you. You won't even have to think about fear and terror, you'll just concentrate on what the machine wants your body to do. Give in to the power of the drugs, and you might not suffer quite so long."

Oh fuck, this individual can talk. I tried to find some sort of part of me that was not paralyzed by this damn drug cocktail but not, my mind stayed unfocused as ever.

The machine started working, and I was injected and injected with various drugs, and I felt my pulse quicken and my breathing quicken. My metabolism was supposed to be elevated. I also felt that I was getting cold, so my body temperature was being raised. Fine, let's just say that this was an interesting experience, not in a good way, but an experience, anyway. Then I didn't know where I was or even who I was when the machine injected enough psychiatric drugs into me. My mind was even more unfocused and messed up, not able to function really at all. I had no initiative at all. When the lid finally opened, I was exhausted beyond belief.

The drugs were starting to wear off, but they had put my body on such a high level of consumption that I felt like I couldn't move at all. Damon looked at me for a while, grunted, satisfied, and lifted me into his arms.

Damon carried me to the table and said. "That machine, I think I'll call it the exhaustor because it exhausted you. But now, baby, let's try some new things again."

Damon reached up to the ceiling and pulled down some kind of plate. This was one of four tables in this shed and first, he put five bags of those murky things to drain into me. The plate he had pulled down, was full of quite small sharp hooks, and he took one hook and stuck it into the skin of my ankle. He hooked them only through my skin, not in my muscles. He kept sticking the hook through the skin, and there were lots of hooks. Thousands or hundreds of them. 

He put them all around my body and said, "Let's see, baby, how tough your skin is. This is a stress test of sorts, but first, I need to put a couple of things in place. See, in a minute, this plate will start to come up, and you'll be suspended in the air by all those hooks, but then how much your skin can take before it starts to break down and the solution to that baby is jelly, that plate won't lift you very much, I'm just going to move this table a little bit to the side so you're on the hooks and in the air and if it looks like your skin is holding up okay, then I'll start jellying your feet, your arms, as long as you're heavy enough that your skin starts to tear away from the hooks, I'll also put a cannula in your abdomen, and then I'll drain in there as well, and I'll do it very slowly."

He put the tube in my abdomen and made sure it was in place. Then he put several drip tubes ready and also some green medicine to drip into my cannula. He pressed the button, and I felt the plate start to rise, and the hooks tightened around my skin, and then I rose in the air on them. It was not too painful yet but I was still, too drugged and confused too, not wanting to rip out my skin at all.

My legs and arms were separated so that Damon could gel every limb as he pleased. He moved the table out from under me and brought in some kind of tub or basin with some kind of gel in it. For some reason, I suspected that gel wouldn't feel too good if I fell into it. He started experimenting, pulling on my leg and testing what kind of strain my skin was under, and then he started gelling. Hooks was lasting at least in this time. He brought a lot of jelly tanks, of course, sedative jelly, and probably with that orange one and I guess there were more drugs in it too.

He started on my left leg and jellied my whole leg. I felt the hooks start to feel more as my leg got heavier, and then he moved to my other leg.

He said, "Not yet, baby, but soon, see, then when one hook breaks, then the balance of the whole will change. You will see and experience them, but as you can see, you have a jelly reserved for where you drop. Then, when you drop in there, you'll be there for a while, and then we'll repeat this interesting experiment where I'll hang you from your back." His voice was expectant. He wanted to see this. I did not want to experience this at all. 

He was now gelling my arms, and the drugs that had been poured into me were mostly muscle relaxants, so I didn't tense up at all but hung on the hooks. I could feel the sedative jelly slowly coming on. My state of mind was very confused, paralyzed even, not able to work at all. Tank after tank, he jellied me, filling me with that damn nasty cocktail of his.

After he had gelled my arm, it was getting pretty fucking hard pressure, and I felt my skin wasn't going to last much longer. He got to pour the jelly into my abdomen, and first, I felt my leg move as my skin started to break. Damon saw it and let the jelly drain into me as he went to see where I started to give in. He took another tank and started jelling some more on that limb, and a sharp pain informed me as hook after hook started to tear through my skin, and I felt my leg start to drop down. The tank was almost under me, so soon my leg was hitting the jelly on that tank. 

The gel that was in the tank burned like acid, and even so, the jelly kept dripping into my stomach, and hook after hook started to tear all over so that I was dripping in the burning gel all the time. My skin did not heal immediately. It was shredded, and eventually, every hook had torn through my skin. I was full of soothing jelly and lay helpless in the gel, which hurt like swimming in acid. Some jellies seeped out from under my skin, as I did not heal at all. I was unable to move, pain tore through my whole body. I felt like I was on fire.

Damon said, "Now that baby, that was great to watch. Then, none of the hooks held anymore. Now you can lie there for a while and let the jelly soak in really nicely, and then we can do the same to the backside."

He rubbed the jelly in my stomach and enjoyed the pain so much, but I didn't care as I tried and just took my time lying in the jelly. I don't know; it burned and stung; it hurt so damn much all the time. My mind was confused. He dripped more of his murky bags on me and dictated his finding at some point, but my mind had no sense of time, only pain, confusion, sedation, helplessness, and powerlessness. 

Then Damon carried me to a shredding machine with lots of different blades that started to shred me from all sides. Pain and agony made me almost blacking out fully. I was feeling so damn weak and spent and I knew that I would be in terrible shape after this. 

Damon came up next to me and said, " Scream for me. Come on, be a good girl scream!" His voice was hissing in my ear.

But I was silent. I was not going to give him any more twisted pleasure that he was already gotten from this; He was using me on the machines, hanging me on the fucking hooks as soon as my skin healed up, and I was really drugged, helpless all the time, and yet I remembered almost everything I'd been through. Because he wanted me to remember. He had hooks of different sizes to test me with, but then the game would get boring now and then, and I'd be put back inside some device that would shred or tear or gouge, twist, turn, bruise.

At this moment, I remember every single shed session Damien ever did to me. Even though Damon put me in a deep, deep coma several times over the years and tried with all his might to dig them out for good so they wouldn't be in my nightmares, I just remember. He even did shed session for me, and a long one to get them out of mind where Damien had shoved them. But I have in my mind, somewhere deep in one place where they all are, and no session or anything will even take them away there. And I don't want to remember, but something inside me wants me to know, to remember, to experience them repeatedly every time I have a nightmare. But I have my ways to stop nightmares, at least for a while.

I am what I am; it is the irony of my life because of my rough life. I sometimes wonder, what I would have become if instead of training to killer, and leader of my organization, if I had just been one werewolf, living in a pack, a little different but nothing too special. I would not be me, untamed, the force of nature who is sometimes very bored with my not-so-easy life. Damien, sometimes, I think what if there had been someone like Mariela for him too? Would he have been saved? Maybe it tells my love for Damon, and my need to help him as Damien was his twin brother, identical originally. 

Then I was finished. I didn't react to anything anymore. I was thin, helpless, powerless, and feverish for several days. My mind was still paralyzed. There was not much of anything for me to hold on to. I just wanted to sleep. I had several infections; I was a skeleton with skin on, drugged out of my mind, and most of my bones were more or less broken.

Damon came up to me and said, "It's been a wonderful 12 weeks. Baby, you're doing great. And then, if one day I don't wear out your rage and I'm a little more patient, maybe I'll get that six months. That's one of my goals. But for now, your lesson in humility will continue for a bit longer once we get to the house. You see, you are not the only one who will have a lesson on humility. Bran will get his lesson too. Then, when I've deemed that lesson complete, baby, I'm outta here. But for now. Now we're going to the house to do one last thing, and then ..."

He lifted me into his arms, carried me into the trunk of his car, and tucked me in. I was torn apart everywhere, with wounds, and this position hurt every second. I didn't even know what country we were in, if we were in America, and I didn't care. I was medicated up to my eyes with so many different sedatives or anesthetics that it was a job to stay conscious.

He had been pouring these drug dreams into me every day: blue dreams, red dreams, orange dreams, black dreams. Sark had given him to those and some of the drugs he had looted from my warehouses, too. My system was in a mess, and I wasn't even sure what was keeping me conscious. I was very much in pain, knowing that I was in terrible shape, and I would get only worse, not sure what I could do, or how to fix myself.

We didn't get on a plane now, and the car was driving; I had no idea what time it was, but then it stopped, and Damon carried me into the house. I was wrapped up, so I couldn't even see where I was in the house right away. He carried me into the basement, into a silver cage, and took the blanket off me.

He said."Now for the last part of your lesson. Humility. Now you must ask Bran for help, no one else. You know you need help. Adam and Charles are in God knows where with the switches still off. Samuel and Colin are dealing with world crises elsewhere, and here's, baby, a phone with only one number, Bran's personal cell phone. You can make that one call, and I'll wait here and ensure you finish your lesson. This is also a pretty good punch in the nose for Bran. His brief lesson. We're at the New Mexico house. Well, call and ask Bran personally to help you. "

I thought fine, let's call him. We'll get raped on top of this. I did not trust Bran at all that he could help me or wanted to help me. I picked up the phone or tried to pick up the phone, but my fingers did not work at all.

Damon said, "Fine, let me put it on speakerphone so you can talk. "

He put the phone on. It rang, "Bran Cornick, who the hell is this, and how did you get my number?"

I concentrated on talking and said, "Mimi here. Is there any way you can get to New Mexico, my house, to help me? Damon just put me in a 12-week shed session, and I'm in terrible shape. He took Adam and Charles off their switch before this, so they beat me up three weeks before this started. I don't know how much longer I can take being conscious. I'm in the basement naked in a silver cage and weigh less than 25 kilos. Please, Bran. "

Bran was quiet and said, "I'm coming, little girl, and you're going to be conscious, you understand? I am coming. I will be there in one hour, and you will endure the hour. I'll see what I can do then, but I need to call Dresden about Adam and Charles. One hour, Mimi. I am so sorry this was not meant to happen, not at all."

I said, "Thank you. I'll try to hold on."

Then Damon hung up the phone, put it in his pocket, and said, " Good girl, now you have learned your lesson. Now I'm going to Europe and enjoying myself there, and I'm leaving my phone and wallet in the hallway over there so I don't get caught so easily if I decide to change my mode or, I mean, if my conscience gets the better of me again. We'll see each other, baby, one day again, and I have no way of knowing which part of me will be on display."

He brushed the hair from my forehead and made sure I was properly against the silver. He had taken the blanket off me and thrown it on the floor away from the cage.

Then put the cage shut and the key in his pocket, and said, "I don't know if these cages have spare keys anywhere. "

He walked away.

I lay on the silver, and I could only concentrate on the pain of staying awake.