Just Like Life Chapter 7: Nightmare Alley, an uc: undercover fanfic

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Aja looked up at the bright light over her head. She'd lost feeling in her fingertips hours ago with the blood drain. How long had she been in this position, her arms held in antique shackles over her head by a chain? Jesus it felt like her shoulders were beginning to pull out of the joints. She groaned softly and rolled her head forward, her eyes closing against the nuisance of it all. So far they hadn't started torturing her… yet. All they'd succeeded in doing was beating the shit out of her.

Softly she chuckled to herself. Instantly she hissed and shut up as a lance of pain shot through her ribs… they felt broken. It wouldn't surprise her a bit if they were. The bastards did a good enough job kicking her while she was down on the ground. How long had they beaten her after she was unconscious? Aja kept her head rolled back and facing up into the bright light over her head. She couldn't see out of one eye and exhaustion kept the other closed. If only she could sleep for a few minutes without being interrupted…

Vaguely she heard a door opening and closing and footsteps leading up to where she was hanging. A pair of hands prodded her in the stomach and began to roam over her body. Aja felt the bile rising in her throat at the very thought of Vadim's dogs touching her that way. One by one her thigh high boots were removed and she heard them tossed aside. Again the hands roamed her legs, inside her thighs. If she reacted or tried to shy away from their touches, this person would then take great pleasure in touching her again and again. What she only opened her eyes for was the cold press of a knife against her hip, then the ripping sound that split her tight mini dress. She watched blandly as the little man in front of her turned towards Vadim. Behind them both on the floor, her dress lay next to her boots.

'Get it over with damn you. Just do what you will and then kill me.' She groaned silently. But this was part of the torture, to annoy her endlessly with minute little irritations. Deny her of sleep or rest, food and water… smack her around just enough to keep the pain of her more serious injuries fresh and irritating, keep the lacerations open and the breaks from beginning to heal. So far they'd kept her in a cold room. She hated the cold. Involuntarily she shivered now and again without the meager warmth of the dress or the warm leather of her boots.

Vadim and his associate left her bikini panties on. So sexual violation was out. Aja shook her head, rape wasn't his style and he gave the strictest orders under the strictest punishments that his men were not to rape the women. Through a slitted eye, she could see that the other man now stood up on a stepstool in front of her to reach something. He was… Korean? Vietnamese? She could smell the body odor on him and recoiled from it.

The light above her was so bright she couldn't see anything except dim shadows in front of her. She heard a squeaky twist and then felt an icy drop hit her fingers. 'Oh Jesus….' she thought. 'Electrocution… Mother fucker…' Her eye opened wider as she felt the water drizzle down over her fingers, drip down her arms and chest, then trickle down her waist and thighs. Instinctively she drew her legs together, crossing her ankles demurely. That brought a laugh from the two men in front of her.

"Tell me what I need to know." Vadim said.

"Water and electricity very painful." The little Oriental man said

Aja just smiled icily at him and closed her eyes. "Best get on with it then. I haven't got all day."

Vadim laughed and said something to the man. Almost immediately she heard a generator cranking to life even as she felt the water coursing down over her body even more, drenching her to the bone. In combination with her near nakedness of only her panties, the icy cold water and the cold air in the room were enough to torture her. She hated being cold.

"Something small for first time, you'll talk then. We'll stop if you tell us something we want to hear.."

She opened her eyes and sighed. As if giving them the signal to start, she rolled her head back and looked into the brightness of the light overhead. It seemed to multiply tenfold with the first touch of the soaked sponges gripped in the jumper cables to her stomach. Aja's body jerked, the muscles of her back and legs contracting with a dull throbbing. The electricity wasn't enough to damage her seriously. It essentially felt like an all over dull throbbing, but all of her muscles contracting at once were near excruciating. Ten times worse were her neck and jaw muscles contracting too. Her teeth ground together with the strain.

She felt the sponges removed and heard the chattering again. Was that her teeth chattering from the cold? She couldn't tell, it was all hazy now…

"Tell me what I want to know, Aja. Or the next time will be more painful with more electricity."

Aja pulled her head forward slowly, feeling the throb still in her neck, back and legs. Her mouth had filled with water, which she spit at the two men. "OK… you're ugly. No? Well, is that all you've got boy?" she tossed into Vadim's face.

She watched as anger lit his eyes and he instructed the operator to push up the power. The hum increased three-fold and she watched as he reached out to touch her stomach again with the sponge pads. This time the throb shook her entire body, the muscles convulsing and contracting almost violently as a hiss escaped through her teeth. Aja growled and her eyes squeezed shut. Drawing upon what willpower she could summon, she brought her feet up swiftly and kicked the little man under the chin.

The waves of electricity ceased mercifully as she heard a crack of teeth crashing against teeth and a soft thud of a body hitting the floor. For a few moments Aja hung there, wet, freezing, electrocuted and near naked, gasping for breath and nearly giggling at kicking the man hard enough to break his jaw.

"Not too smart bitch." Vadim growled hatefully. "He was on your side actually, didn't like the thought of torturing a woman. Old man, treats women with soft gloves. Now I get to play with you."

"Oh sod off pipsqueak," she ground out softly, a demonic light in her eyes. "Get on with it."

He laughed and slid on the heavy-duty rubber gloves. He never took his eyes off of her as he reached down and turned the dial up. He watched her whiskey eyes follow the dial and narrow slightly as he multiplied it by ten. Still watching her, he reached down and picked up the two sponges still clamped firmly between the copper metal jaws of the red and black jumper cables.

"Do your worst you son of a bitch," she hissed. The hiss turned to a clenched scream as he pushed the sponges up against either side of her ribcage. Electricity poured through her chest and stomach, radiating out and down her legs and arms. She felt her body convulse violently, the chains suspending her rattling noisily. Over and over again he put the sponges to her, giggling like a schoolboy each time she bit down on a scream or growled out a threat of bodily violence against him once she got loose.

It went on and on. Aja swore it was for hours. Each time he put the sponges to her, she felt less and less pain. Contrary to popular misconception, the pain does not increase with more electrocution – it decreases. The victim gets to the point where they can not feel anymore and more is needed to make them feel pain. However, the body still suffered the damage to the muscle and bone from extremely violent muscle contraction, twisting the body out of it's proper form and straining the body all-together. If enough electricity was used, the organs were cooked and eventually the heart burst from extreme muscular contraction. Electrocution was a horrible way to die. But Vadim wasn't using enough electricity to kill her… not in one dose. It'd take a long time to kill her this way and she'd suffer hell on earth while he did it.

The man growled in frustration as he put her to the sponges again and again. He'd been doing this now for 20 minutes and she had yet to talk. She hadn't even screamed. "TELL ME!" he shouted over and over, only to receive a snarl or a hiss through clenched teeth. "TELL ME DAMN YOU!"

Aja opened her eyes, blinking a few times to clear the water out of her eyes that had dripped down her forehead. She saw the red and black blotches on her stomach, ribs, thighs and hips. Her vision was blurring in and out and she couldn't draw a deep breath. If this was hell… she chuckled slowly. Lifting her head slowly with what strength she had left, Aja eyed Vadim as he stood in front of her as his eyes bulged out of their sockets in frustration and anger. Her tongue ran around the insides of her mouth and she felt the cuts where she'd bitten down on the soft flesh of her mouth. Her eyes narrowed and she spit at him, a fine spray of saliva and blood covering his face as she growled out, "Go… to… Hell."

Vadim's eyes squinted in outrage and he reached over to the knob, twisting it around as high as the output would go. With a fierce snarl, he jabbed the soaking wet sponges up against her stomach, pressing them there longer then necessary – even as her body swung and convulsed away from it. "This is what we do to undercover cops!" he screamed. "I loved you Aja." He kept jabbing the sponges at her each time her body swung towards him. "I trusted you and you lied to me!! NEVER FUCKING LIE TO ME!"

An ear-splitting scream rent the air in the room as he shoved them against her ribs and held them there instead of pulling back. It echoed over the maddening drip-drip-drip of the water, the harsh jangling of the chains and the electronic hum of the generator. Aja felt like her blood was going to burst through the top of her skull and her heart pounded in her chest as blackness swept up on her. She would die, she knew it as much as she knew that her secrets would die with her.

Aja sat straight up in the narrow bed she had been sleeping in. Her ears still echoed with the scream from her nightmare as the darkness. As she tried to catch her breath, she began to sob. She hadn't relived that nightmare in years…

out of your mouth

up from your mind

that kind of thinking starts a chain reaction

you are a time bomb ticking away

you need to release what you're feeling inside

let out the beast that you're trying to hide

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