If you asked Carla what she thought of her surroundings, the crude and foul language she'd use would put a sailor to shame and scandalize her mother.

"You know, I'm doing you a favour. Really!"

Of course, that would preclude that she could answer you. Or, in fact, that she could speak in the first place.

"If you knew, just KNEW! What was out there!

As was the case though, Carla could hardly talk. Or curse. Or even scream. An understandable set of circumstances really.

"YOU. WOULD. GO. MAD!"

It's hard to talk after all with a gag in your mouth.

-\\-\\-

"Though, really." The man, Jack, the sicko, was almost talking to himself. I tried shaking my wrists again, trying to break free, but it was no use. The knot tied me to strongly to the rusty hook hanging from the decrepit ceiling. "It's not like I'm mad you know!"

He was monologuing while sharpening a knife beneath a rusty lamp. I tried screaming, hoping someone would pass near the decrepit warehouse, but the noise was so loud. I kept trying though

"I just know the truth!" He kept ranting like the madman he is. I redoubled my struggles, but it just wouldn't budge. Was this the end?

"HMGGMG!" I tried screaming louder. Only muffles came out.

"And the truth sweetheart!" He stopped sharpening, thrusting the blade upwards to admire it beneath the yellow light. Its edge gleamed with terror to me. "Is that There's a lot of bad shit out there."

GOD, would he shut up! I screamed louder but only seemed to hurt my throat.

He turned around, his fair features illuminated by the dying light. Angular jaw framed a perfectly symmetrical face, with a tight body that showed no sign of fat. Bright blue eyes that had spoken of hidden pleasures now only spoke of madness. The angelic look was completed by the short blond hair. Contrasted all the more by the slight scars all around his face and body.

More and more it seemed like a ruse, a predator in the guise of an angel. And like a fool she bought hook line and sinker.

She tried her best pleading with her eyes and desperate screaming. He seemed to ignore her just as he'd done before, but then something changed. His eye's softened.

"I was once like you, you know?" He was all smooth again, voice a bare whisper. I tried clawing at him, but my arms were firmly tied. He smirked again. "Well, not so much. You have fight in you Carl. I was very much a wet, rich, pretty fart noodle." He laughed then, all cynical like a knife's edge. "Then again you haven't met them yet. They would fuck you up girl"

He started pacing while ranting "That's how he got me really. He came to me at a party, all smooth lines and pretty looks, just like I did to you. God, he was beautiful cher!" Was he sighing? "All pretty hair like moonlight, skin as white as velvet, and so smooth" He was. He seemed lost in a painful ecstasy, his face contorting in strange ways. It was an oddly arousing sight. I felt bile coming up my throat.

"I never felt so much pleasure as then. But then, well, of to Fairy I go, just one more fuck toy for the bastard!" He was gesticulating now, the hand handling the knife bobbing up and down, like a demented pendulum. It was almost enough to distract me from his mad ravings, but then, he wasn't hurting me while monologuing wasn't he?

"It's was almost easy really. 'Just be my toy, pet.' He said, 'just play and dance, and you'll get no harm'. Of course, if I knew what I knew now I'd just tell him to fuck off, but then again, well, I like living" He looked at me, madness taking grip. His smile a bitter thing. "SO I took it. And well, he was right. As long as I pleasured him, and danced, and looked pretty, well, nothing bad would happen" He took a step closer, and grabbed my face, startling me. "But when you're fucked for three days straight, and then have to stand like a statue for another three, and repeat and repeat for weeks, months, years well, what can you do." He shrugged, letting me go. I was horrified but I couldn't really process what he was telling me.

"Now, I had seen what happened to those who failed. So I was very motivated to not do it. But well, you just can't keep at it forever can't you cher?" He asked rhetorically. "So one day I just fall. And fall again when he tells me to get up. And then he just sighs and tells some of the others to pick me up and take me to the table"

"That's when he brings the Knife."

His smile turns a truly fearsome sight. Madness seems to take hold of him, his voice a broken thing, as if he was about to cry. I can't look away.

His body seems to ripple then, like something falling off. And before my eyes, he transforms. His body becomes more angular, the muscles more defined. His hair was not blonde anymore but golden, and his eyes, already so blue, become sapphires. 'All the more to tempt you with', her broken mind reminded her.

But the biggest change was the scars. Where before they were a fading thing, almost unnoticeable, adding a strange bad boy appeal, now they almost gleamed like the moon. They were many so many, crisscrossing through his body and face. But instead of being off-putting, they only seemed to add to his ethereal beauty, like a set of tattoos.

"You see now, Carla. What he made me. An eternal mark of my shame and turbulence. Beautiful isn't it" He said sardonically. She wasn't sure why she felt shame then. His story was almost certainly bull, the ravings of a madman. She was certainly hallucinating, her trauma making her mind break.

He approached her "And that's why I have to do this you know." HE said sorrowfully. "If they saw you cher, all beautiful and pretty and full of life, you'd look like the most appetising thing." The knife came back to her sight, reminding her of her circumstance. "Better that I ruin you now, while you still have a life"

His words cut through her, drawing realization freezing her spine with horror. She doubled her struggles, desperately trying to fight, to get free. The binding held.