I want to apologize to those of you who have been faithful readers. I moved (a whole other horror story in itself) and began graduate school.
This story has been eating at me for many months now and I have gotten a couple of flames (used to heat water for a bath while my water heater was broken for 2 weeks).
The good news is…even though there has been this ungodly gap between chapters, I have other material already written…25 pages in fact. Between here and chapter 17 I have some gaps to fill in, then I have lots and lots of stuff…so do not despair. Now…on to the good stuff…
Chapter 9: Brand Name
Starfire hurt all over. Her meager clothing was covered with dirt and blood stains. Slade had come back several times in the last few… hours, days, weeks? and given her a fresh set of cuts and bruises each time. At one point, he had twisted her arm behind her back until her shoulder dislocated from the strain. She had had to bite her lip to keep from shrieking then, but when he later forced her to the floor and held her down with one foot and while he jerked her arm back into its socket, her screams of agony could not be contained.
Food had come twice. Once it had been a ham sandwich and juice. The second time had been some sort of nutrition bar and water. Both times the food had disappeared within minutes.
Now she lay on the floor, listening to her tummy rumble and taking stock of her injuries. Truthfully, her nose bothered her the most. Slade had punched her there during his first attack and had repeatedly hit her there since. It was terribly swollen and tender and it was hard to breathe through her nostrils. Her sinuses had become clogged as well, making her whole face ache from more than just Slade's fists.
Starfire was healing relatively well so far; one of the perks about being Tamaranian was her strong immune system. Still, she knew her body could not keep up for long. She was not getting enough to eat nor was she well-rested in the least. It would not be too much longer before she really began to hurt.
Humming songs, playing puzzle games in her head (if two trains leave the station at the same time…), and meditating were her only means of distraction. Anything else required precious energy that she could not spare.
In the distance, she heard the now familiar sound of a door creaking open and closed. She tried to shoo away the morbid thoughts that had begun to fill her head at that sound. "Will this be the time he kills me?" was a non-favorite. Rather, she steeled herself for whatever might come.
The second creaking door, that belonging to her cell, did not sound. Instead came searing pain. Slade was using the device he had attached to the back of her neck to shock her. These were not the short zaps that she had gotten when she had tried to remove the device; these were long, drawn-out shocks. The kind that took her breath away and made her eyes bulge in their sockets.
It would not stop; the shocks kept coming. He would give her the slightest of breaks…almost as if his finger had gotten tired…and then it would begin again. She had seen the control device on his gauntlet before; she knew he was doing this to her and it made her want to strangle him.
"This must be what it is like to have 'the seizure'," she thought as her body spasmed again. Her skin and muscles felt like they were on fire. She could feel her body being sapped of its energy; could feel the darkness creep up on her. Even though she tried to fight it, she lost in the end.
She woke up slowly. Gravity felt out of sorts. After a few moments she realized that it was because she was hanging from the ceiling rather than lying on the floor. Her feet weren't completely off the ground so she wasn't just hanging by her wrists; at least not once she stood and put her weight on the balls of her feet. Her shoulders ached from the weight they had been forced to hold and she tried to move the stiff muscles. As she shifted her weight from her wrists to her feet, there was a clinking sound. Her ankles were also bound.
She looked up and down to examine the restraints. Pretty simple set-up. Metal cuffs with key locks, metal chains, each linked through a single metal 'O' which was welded to another piece of metal, this one a flat rectangle with a bolt in each corner, mounting it to the ceiling or floor. A few tugs let her know that she wasn't going anywhere until someone unlocked her.
"Now what?" she thought irritably. This entire starvation/abuse/prisoner ordeal was getting on her nerves. It was then that she noticed Slade in the corner, standing over some kind of grill or stove. There were three instruments on the heating device. Starfire's brain put heat, instruments, and being chained all together and decided that she was now in an even more foul mood.
"I see that you're awake…good. I was starting to think that perhaps I was a little too excessive with the neural punishment." Slade said.
'Neural punishment?' Starfire almost laughed at the label he had created.
"I think it is time that you understand two things," he continued. "First, you are here for a purpose and that purpose has very little to do with you personally. I could have killed you without ever taking you from Titan's Tower, but that does not serve my ultimate purpose." He fiddled with the instruments, staring into the flames as he spoke.
"My purpose is to make Robin suffer and the more you suffer, the more he will suffer. You will be returned to your teammates…but not for quite some time…and not alive."
Starfire couldn't help but let out a tiny gasp at such a cruel and blunt statement. He was going to keep her here until she died and then let the Titans find her body. She had tried to keep away from such thoughts, but he could not have made his intentions any clearer.
He picked up one of the instruments and approached her. He paused for a moment, watching her as she attempted to wriggle free. Suddenly, a hand shot out and wrapped itself around her neck; at almost the same time, she felt a burning sensation against her belly.
The burning spread as he quickly pressed the instrument against her body again and again in different spots; each contact lasting only two or three seconds. She tried to scream, tried to fight, but he had an iron-grip on her throat and was cutting off her oxygen.
Finally, he let her go and stepped back. She heaved, gasping for air, and attempted to regain her footing. She could feel the stinging of the burns; one near her navel, one below her breastbone, and two on her left thigh.
Slade moved back to the heating device, replaced the instrument, and selected a second one. Whereas the first one had been blunt at the end, this one was sharp. Starfire could see it glowing with red, searing heat and unconsciously tried to back away as he came toward her again.
Gripping her face with his left hand, he held her head still as he menaced her with the spear-like object, bringing it perilously close to her left eye. She could feel the intense heat radiating from it, drying the moisture from her eye and searing her skin. She closed her eyes, grit her teeth, and waiting for the, literally, blinding pain. While the pain did come, it was not where she had expected it to be; rather it was in her abdomen. She was vaguely aware of a tearing sound and the smell of cooking flesh, but mostly she felt the stinging agony of being impaled.
Slade had released his grip on her and watched her horrified expression as she looked down to see the scorching rod still protruding from her gut. Even though she could not see it, she knew it had gone completely through her. Slade gripped the weapon and gave it a little wiggle before finally yanking it loose. Starfire's scream caught in her throat and all she could manage was nauseous groan. She had expected to see blood pour from the wound, but after a moment she realized that the heat had cauterized the blood vessels, effectively staunching any excessive bleeding.
Continuing to stand and watch her, Slade took a deep breath and Starfire realized that he was enjoying the smell of her burnt flesh. He was enjoying her pain. The thought made her want to gag.
Finally, he stepped away, back to the flaming heater. Starfire felt a rising of anger toward him. She abhorred being confined and turned into a victim. Normally, no enemy would be foolish enough to turn away from her after injuring her so, but Slade was not afraid of her; did not even consider her to be a threat. She was a proud warrior turned into a pathetic, helpless punching bag. It was humiliating and she knew that that was the point.
This was not the first time these thoughts had occurred to her, nor was it the first time she had become angry. She very much wanted to escape and make sure that he was justly punished, but being chained and having her powers cut off made that rather difficult. She was feeling particularly snappish.
"What is the second thing I am to know? That you have too much of the free time or that you are mentally unstable?"
X'Hal, had she said that? Such sour words sounded almost foreign coming from her lips, yet she felt slightly better for having said them.
Slade chuckled at her zinger. "My, my," he taunted, "someone is in a foul mood, but I suppose that understandable. When one is completely defenseless and utterly helpless, one tends to rely on more…pathetic means of self-preservation."
Starfire's sense of feeling better evaporated. He was right; her words had affected him less that a gnat attacking a brick wall. He was in control here and her sad attempt to regain an iota of her dignity served only to show him how much of it he had taken.
"People like to mark what is theirs. They label things, personalize them, and go to great lengths to indicate what is in their possession. People who own cattle even go so far and to burn symbols onto the hides of the animals to identify them as their own. This process is called branding."
He removed the third instrument from the flames and headed for her again. As he approached, she could see that the end was the shape of the stylized "S" he wore as his moniker.
"This is the second thing you are to understand…," he went on, "You belong to me now"