52
March 14th, 2023
Floor 19, Highland Caves
Israel's tortured screams faded away slowly as Drefan took a step back and lowered the bloody thumb screw in his hand.
"Oh man," the orange player said cheerily as he wiped sweat from his brow. "What a workout. I'm already getting tired."
Israel couldn't answer even if he had wanted to. Hot tears poured down his sweaty face. Strands of his hair clung to the sides of his cheeks or his ears as he lay there on the rack, the pain coursing through him, threatening to destroy what was left of his sanity. He focused all the meager energy he could muster into trying not to move his ruined, broken hands. The pain would only increase if he so much as twitched one of his twisted, gnarled fingers.
The thumb screw was one of Drefan's favored tools. Working in much the same way as a nutcracker would, the thumb screw applied a twisting pressure on thumbs, fingers, and toes, as well as other extremities if one was so inclined. With every twist of the handle end, the pressure on the clamps would increase, forcing the fingers to twist on themselves until the bones and muscle connecting them to the rest of the hand were broken and severed. At the same time, the clamps would also squeeze, slowly but surely flattening the same fingers. The most pain was inflicted, however, when the instrument was applied to thumbs, giving it it's name.
From somewhere in the back of Israel's mind, in his past, he almost thought he remembered reading about the device back when he had been in high school and learned of the people who had first invented, or at least implemented, such a horrid creation. Yet now, he couldn't be sure, nor did he care. The pain had begun seeping into his mind, erasing bits of his memory. The life he had known in the real world, and even the brief, tortured one he had had within SAO, seemed more and more distant with each passing day he spent with the madman who owned his soul.
Drefan bent down to peer into Israel's distant, tortured gaze.
"Apologize for what you did to my friends."
Israel licked his cracked lips and, ignoring the pain, opened his mouth.
"I'm sorry...please. Forgive me for what I did. I beg you...kill me."
Drefan leaned back in sarcastic shock. "Kill you? How could you ask me to do such an awful thing?" He smiled warmly, baring his immaculate, white teeth. Israel was sure that such a grin could only belong to the devil himself. "Besides, killing you would be such a waste."
Setting the thumb screw down onto the rack where Israel lay, Drefan gestured around.
"This is the ultimate torture house. Tormentors the world over, since the beginning of time, have been trying to solve the problem of how to keep their victims alive long enough to really get into it. Ever since human beings first applied the basics of torture, it's boundaries have been limited to how much our physical bodies can take before bleeding out, or dying of shock, or starving, or a host of other factors." He rubbed the stone wall beside them affectionately. "Who would have thought that the inside of a digital game would be the place to solve all of those problems? To really perfect the art of torture?"
He smiled down at Israel, patting his head in much the same way a parent would when indulging a child. "Here, you can't bleed out. You can't die of shock. You can't even starve. The hunger we feel here is artificial, and means nothing to our real, comatose bodies on the outside. No, you can't even slowly die of your wounds, succumbing to infection, because the system, in all it's appreciation for my art, bestows you with fresh organs, limbs, and whatever else you lose in the course of the game. The only thing is does not give back is life. And even that is easily kept going with a few health crystals!" He laughed in a merry, deep throated way that reminded Israel of how people had reenacted Santa Claus when he was a little boy. Somehow, the thought only deepened his terror.
Drefan took a moment to wipe more sweat from his brow and stretch out his back. He had been hunched over Israel's body on the makeshift rack for hours at least. After cracking out his back muscles and sighing in relief, Drefan walked happily over to the small table in the corner of the room where the lamp swung. The table had two small cabinets, but Israel suspected they were empty and Drefan was merely using the tabletop to hold his arsenal of torture devices.
Humming to himself as he searched through the dozens of instruments to find whatever it was he was looking for, Drefan paused and looked over his shoulder.
"Do you know where I got all these, my dear boy?"
Israel shook his head slowly, forcing down a whimper from the dull, throbbing pain that continued to burn through him. "No."
Drefan arched an eyebrow. "Guess."
Israel closed his eyes tight as he tried racking his weary, numb brain. Sometimes Drefan would ask him certain, random questions with that curious glint in his eye, and when he failed to answer correctly, the big man would smile gleefully and bear down on him with redoubled energy and sometimes multiple tools at once.
Stifling back tears of panic as he trembled where he lay, his hands, legs, and midsection chained to the flat surface of the rack to prevent much movement, Israel tried with all his might to come up with the right answer, or better yet, one that Drefan might like. He had just begun to start whimpering in earnest when the memory of when he had first been brought to the small, stone room with only a single door carved into the rock, came back to him. He remembered asking Drefan where they were, and the man's happy answer.
Israel's eyes popped open, his jaw working feverishly as he tried to say everything as quickly as possible without garbling his words. "You found them here, where the questline had sent you and your guild to save the NPC being tortured."
Israel's muscles locked as he watched Drefan chuckle. His head throbbed as he waited to see if he had answered appropriately.
"Some of them I did find here, yes," Drefan conceded with another snigger. "So you're not wrong."
Israel sagged in relief. His joy at avoiding at least some of the pain threatened to sweep out the supports of his consciousness. He struggled to stay awake. Drefan had done things to wake him up the first time his body had shut down to gain much needed sleep, things Israel never wanted to experience again. Expected torture was one thing. The shock and surprise of waking up to it was quite another.
Drefan gestured at the host of tools arrayed before him on the tabletop. "Most of them, however, were made by me."
Israel froze, unsure how to react. He couldn't help but frown in confusion for a moment. How was such a thing possible? Drefan wasn't a developer. He was a mere player, like everyone else. Inventing items and adding them to the game was impossible unless he were Kayaba himself.
Drefan laughed at Israel's obvious surprise. "I'll tell you a secret. There's a skill in this game called Crafting. It comes in various forms, some more prevalent than others. One form is the ability to mix and shape tools and primitive weapons from materials such as liquid iron, tin, or clay. Not many people know about Crafting in general, or maybe they just don't care. After all, it has no real value for combat or convenience." He smiled proudly. "But I'm already level four hundred in the skill. I can craft any number of tools I can dream up, shape them to be whatever I desire. It's everything I ever wanted.
"You see, most of these," He waved a hand over the table, "I had already conceived in my mind long ago, before SAO was even a thought. I made the blueprints for countless pieces. Some were variants of older, already used tools applied back in the Middle Ages or during the Inquisition, but many were of my own concoction, my own thought. I had pages upon pages of notes on the making, the application, and even the full descriptions of what each piece could be used for and how they were to be made. But I could never go public with my inventions, oh no." Drefan's eyes glinted with rage as he seemed to look out, beyond the stone walls, to a time long ago. "I spent years living a normal, boring, unproductive life in a bland, intolerant world that would not only frown upon my talents, but no doubt arrest me as well and throw me into a psych ward." He gritted his teeth, his hands forming into a fist as he explained. "No one in the world we live in now could have ever possibly understood the genius, the art, behind my talents and innovation. I had to keep my designs, my inventions, hidden from the public as if they were something to be ashamed of. I ask you, have not all the great governments in history, even the government we are run by now in this so called enlightened age, applied the art of torture to further their own ends? How many cases of prisoner abuse or illegal experiments have been reported and quickly swept under the societal rug? The FBI, to name just one branch in our federal overseers' vast body, has hundreds of leaked documents of the torture they have authorized to be inflicted on prisoners of war or terrorists captured by our forces overseas. You're telling me it's alright when they use such art for their own greed, their own corruption, without even appreciation of that art, but when I seek only to follow my life's calling, my destiny, I deserve to be locked away? My brilliant, special brain drugged until I can't even speak? Where's the sense in that? Where?"
Israel saw Drefan pause when he realized his hand was clutching the edge of the table so hard his knuckles had gone white. In an instant, he reverted back to his usual gleeful demeanor as his all encompassing smile again etched it's way across his jolly face.
"Anyway," he waved a hand as if to brush away the subject. "I hid my blueprints and whatever tools I had managed to create out of makeshift materials. I worked a normal, boring job as an accountant to some firm, and pretended to fit in and behave like all the other ignorant, simple fools of that grey, purposeless world. Believe me though when I say that it was hard. So hard. I could almost see my coworkers writhing in agony as I imagined plying my knowledge, my tools, into them.
Sometimes, I would sit on benches in public areas and daydream about capturing the people that walked by, fantasize over the pain I could cause them if I but had the courage to take them. But I never did. I was always worried, always wondering if there would be someone around to stop me, a police officer maybe, or simply a normal man or woman armed and ready to stomp out those with minds brighter and more creative than their own. I could never get over my fear of being discovered, of my mind being drugged and crippled, permanently damaged and unable to continue it's special thoughts. So I remained silent, remained 'normal.'"
Finally making up his mind, Drefan picked up a small, spoon like instrument. Turning, he began making his way back to the rack. Israel had no idea what this no device was used for, but his mind began swiftly imagining multiple uses. He cried helplessly as the thing came closer, wielded by the devil.
"But now," Drefan continued with a smile as he reached the rack and peered down at him. "In this wonderful world, I'm finally free to use everything I've ever wanted to. You don't know how many dozens of people I tortured back when my guild and I were still in service to Laughing Coffin." He cocked his head. "But then again, maybe you do know. Maybe that's why you hunted us down and murdered my friends in their beds." He shrugged. "No matter. The past is the past. Truth be told, I'm having far more fun now that I don't have quotas to meet or time to share with the others in torturing our captives. I get to do whatever I want, without taking orders from anyone now, including Laughing Coffin. I have you all to myself, forever. In a way, you've freed me to finally pursue my dreams full time. I thank you for that."
Israel sobbed at the smiling face, the terrible eyes. He wanted nothing more than to be a thousand miles away from that smile, from those eyes. But he knew there was no escape. He had doomed himself into being the plaything of a nightmare.
Drefan held the spoon like instrument in his hand above Israel's face so he could see it clearly.
"This is my optic tool. With it, I'm going to gouge out your eyes."
Israel broke into a violent fit of trembling as he shook his head.
"Please, please no. I'll do anything. Please."
Drefan seemed to consider it for a moment.
"Apologize to me again. I quite like hearing it. Who knows, if you do it well enough, I might just take pity on you for a few hours."
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please, please, forgive me. Forgive me for what I did. Please. I'm sorry…"
Drefan nodded. "That's really good, my boy. You've gotten quite talented at that. And to think, you told me not so long ago to go fuck myself." He grinned menacingly. "Now then, which eye do you favor most?"
Seizing hold of Israel's face with his left hand to prevent him from squirming, Drefan brought the optic tool closer until it cupped the outside of his right eye.
"The pain of having your eye, a living organ, severed from its moorings," Drefan explained in an envious voice, "Is supposed to be quite excruciating, from what I've been told. I designed to the optic tool to work slowly to increase the pain. Now, obviously you'll be blind for a few minutes after I do this. In the window of time we have before your eyes are returned to you, we get to experience torture without sight to accompany it. I can't wait to see how you react."
Israel tried to wriggle away from the device as it's spoon like curvature slid up underneath his eyelids, but he couldn't escape Drefan's grasp. When the spoon angled back behind his eyes, Israel's brain nearly imploded. His face went numb for a brief millisecond, as if trying to get its bearings and figure out what was happening, but in the next instant, the pain lit up every inch of his soul. He felt every nerve being severed as the sharp spoon cut away at what held his eyes in his head.
His screams had already reached pitches he never before thought himself capable of hitting in the two weeks since his capture, but he was once again surprised as his voice was brought to new octaves. He felt his vision flicker, as if the lights were faltering, and then everything went dark as he felt his eyes pop out of his skull.
"Amazing!" Drefan yelled, his voice almost drowned out by the screams. "I never imagined the back of an eye would be this color!"
The pain only doubled when Drefan moved to his other eye, but went even slower in an effort to prolong the pain until it too popped out. Israel found himself plunged into a universe of dark. There was no trace of light, nothing he could glance at to see anything around him. It was disorienting, knowing that he was blind, that he could no longer see anything. His brain almost couldn't comprehend it. He strained a muscle in an effort to narrow his gaze as he had so often done throughout his life, only to feel some strand of loose muscle hanging out of his eye socket flinch as the nerve responded. There was nothing but black.
"Now that you can't see." Came Drefan's voice from above him. "I'm not going to say anything anymore. Instead, I'm simply going to grab another tool and set to work. I want you to guess what part of your body I might work on next, but say nothing aloud. Just wallow in it a moment."
Israel heard footsteps, and then Drefan's familiar humming as the man shuffled towards the table to retrieve another tool. It was then that Israel realized he was still screaming, but he couldn't bring himself to stop. His throat burned with the intensity of them, but there was simply no way to keep them down. His head felt like it would burst from the information it was being forced to process, the pain it had no choice but to comprehend. It was unfathomable. Israel could say nothing, do nothing. Only scream.
A minute or so later, he felt Drefan force his mouth open before bringing what felt like a tweezer clamp onto his tongue. The metal had short, sharp prongs all along it that stabbed deeply into either side of his tongue, and then Israel felt the pressure tighten. There was a sharp yank as Drefan directed the pull, and Israel felt his tongue inching up from deep within his throat. By this point, the pain had paralyzed his body. He lay there, completely still, as his tongue was ripped up from within him, pulled outwards like a rope by the prong covered tweezers. This process, however, last far longer than his blinding, and after a time, even his screams failed him.
Several times he thought he might have blacked out, but there was now no way to tell. He was alone in a universe of inky blackness, and his only companion was terrible, agonizing pain.
By the time Drefan had finished removing Israel's entire tongue, his eyes reappeared. Israel blinked several times and had to look away from the dim lamp on the other side of the room. He felt like a newborn as he swiveled his eyes around, testing them, waiting to see if they'd fall out or flicker. They did neither. For a moment, he was overjoyed to be free of that terrifying darkness, that everlasting void, but as soon as he saw Drefan smiling at him, he regretted the feeling.
Drefan spent the next several hours using a similar, but even more refined, pair of tweezers to tear out each and every one of Israel's teeth. Until that day, Israel had never known just how big teeth were, how deep their roots extended within the gums. Several times as he cried and screamed, Israel tried to feel at the holes now present throughout his mouth, only to remember that his tongue was still gone.
Once he grew bored of waiting for the teeth to regrow, Drefan switched to a small hammer and energetically went about the task of shattering the bones throughout Israel's legs, groin, and chest. Each precise blow of the hammer brought with it another endless torrent of mind numbing pain that remained long after Drefan had moved on to other parts. From time to time throughout the day's endless ordeal, Drefan would ask Israel for another apology. Each time, Israel put his all into the begging, into the desperate, tortured pleas for death. Each time, Drefan would merely smile and reach for another tool. Every now and then Drefan would move Israel to a different form of chains; either the chair, the rack, or the metal bands hanging from the ceiling that held him above the ground by his wrists. Each location meant a particular type of tool would be used, but Israel found no comfort in the anticipation.
The day drew on, bringing with it dozens of new types of excruciating torment, each of which Drefan was more than eager to inflict. Though it was no different a day than the other fifteen had been- Israel had kept count, as it was one of the only ways in which he could keep his mind focused on something- It seemed to bring with it new and unimaginable heights of agony. But then again, Israel felt that way each time a new tool was used on his broken, battered body.
When the day finally ended and only small, dim shafts of moonlight managed to leak in through the small wooden door on the far wall, Drefan finally halted in his tireless work and moved to return the tools back to his table.
"What a great day this has been, wouldn't you say?"
Israel could only wheeze out a small, gasping croak. Forming words was usually beyond him by this point in the night.
"Yes," Drefan agreed as he made for the door. "Another productive day."
He was about to turn out the lamp and leave Israel in complete darkness when the big man paused and scratched his beard.
"What was I going to...oh yes!"
Excitedly moving over to one of the cabinets under the table, Drefan opened the left hand one and withdrew a thin, iron collar. Attached to it at the front was a metal rod, sharpened to a fine point on either end. Moving Israel's dead weight to the chair, Drefan had barely chained his hands behind the back of it before his enthusiasm overcame him and he slipped the collar around Israel's neck. The bar stood vertically, one end pressing painfully against Israel's upper chest, while the other dug in under his chin. If he allowed his chin to dip, both ends would quickly pierce into him.
"I fashioned this little piece just yesterday, when I had come in and caught you slightly dozing off in the chair. Remember that?"
Israel whimpered quietly.
"Yes, well, I thought it might be fun to try something of an endurance test. It won't hurt you much unless you start to fall asleep. The moment your head drops, it will impale both your jaw and your upper chest. But don't worry," Drefan said as he watched Israel's eyes. "It's far too small to kill you, even if you let it stab you and drain your health all night. It won't be more than a two inch stab in non vital areas, and your health bar is quite impressive. I predict you'll have only just entered red when I come back tomorrow morning. Even so, I will return in a few hours, and once more before dawn, just to make sure it doesn't do more damage than expected and take you from this world. We wouldn't want that."
That was all Israel craved.
"Have a good night now, my boy."
With that, Drefan exited the room as he hummed to himself, allowing the moonlight to shine in for only a moment before the door closed behind him.
Israel sat there in the darkness, unable to relax his jaw and neck muscles as he kept himself up straight. He had intended to allow the bar to stab him the moment Drefan left, but he knew the man wasn't bluffing. Drefan was very careful about what might kill him. If the pain wouldn't end his suffering, there was no reason to allow it to fill his nights as well as his days.
Still feeling the lingering pain from the day's exertions as well as that of the previous ones, Israel allowed himself to sob as best he could. At this point, though, most of his tears were spent. After weeping for quite some time, he finally felt a single tear roll down his cheek.
He thought hard of Naomi. Visions of her special smile, her laughter, the memories of her kisses, all were beginning to slowly slip away from him along with the rest of his mind. Israel forced himself to dig deeper into his shattered core, searching for the image of her so that he could keep it with him. The only thing he wanted more than death was to again see her, to hold her in his arms. To tell her what he never could.
"I...love...you...Naomi…" He whispered into the darkness between choked gasps and racks of throbbing pain. He ignored the effort it took and said the words again, determined not to forget how much he cared. Determined not to forget her. He felt so alone. "I love you."
