I have raised the rating of this story to M.

Please be warned!

This and some subsequent chapters will contain violence, profanity and descriptions of torture.

Chapter Eight

Arthur gradually regained awareness. He lay still, as his senses came back on stream, one by one. First came touch. He was laid on his back, covered with something – a sheet, maybe a duvet, possibly a blanket. Next came sight. Ambient light was filtering through his eye lids, tinted pink by the capillaries in his skin. He tried to open his eyes but could not. He tried to move his hand but, again he could not. His body felt weak and flaccid, muscle tone low. Either the remnants of sleep paralysis or, possibly, the after-effect of some sort of anaesthetic, he decided. His mental faculties were clearly recovering more rapidly than his physical ones.

He made a point of relaxing, not trying to fight the lack of physical control. Whatever the cause, it would wear off eventually. Since his brain seemed to be working quite well, he focused his attention on deducing his situation. He had no idea where he was or how he got there but, since he assumed he was in a bed, perhaps he'd had an accident and was in hospital

He listened. Could he be in hospital? If he had been unconscious, in hospital, he would be attached to a heart monitor, at the very least, and would be able to hear the steady beep. There was no beep. He couldn't hear any of the familiar sounds he would associate with a hospital. In fact, he couldn't hear anything familiar at all. No birdsong, no traffic, no voices, no machinery.

He tried to open his eyes and, this time, it worked. They cracked open, just a sliver, and he was assaulted by bright light from a nearby source. He turned his head away and moved his hand to shield his eyes. He could move now.

'You're awake!' said a voice he did not recognise.

A large mass moved into his field of vision but his sight was still blurred so he could not distinguish any features. He tried to speak but his mouth was dry and his tongue felt thick. He couldn't articulate words but he could vocalise, so he did, giving a guttural groan which he hoped would convey that he needed water.

Whether by good luck or good management, the dark shape moved to his side and pressed the spout of a drinking bottle between his lips and squeezed a squirt of water into his mouth. It tasted like nectar. He swallowed most of it, dribbled out some, and the person squeezed another squirt, which he drank gratefully. Reaching up his hand, he took hold of the bottle and tipped it himself, taking several deep draughts. When his hand dropped, the person took the bottle back.

'Is that better?' the voice enquired.

'Yes, thank you,' Arthur breathed.

'Good, because we want you to feel better. That is our dearest wish.'

Arthur raised his hand again and rubbed his eyes and then blinked, slowly. As his vision cleared, he could see the other person in the room.

The man was quite tall, well-built, late thirties maybe early forties, dark, wavy hair, clean-shaven, dressed in a polo shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He looked like he could be a personal trainer, perhaps.

'Who are you?' Arthur asked.

'A friend,' the man replied, with a smile.

Arthur thought about that then shook his head.

'I don't know you. You're not my friend.'

The man looked down and smiled again.

'Perhaps not now but soon you will know me and you will see that I am your friend - a good friend.'

Arthur stared at the man for a moment, then turned away and visually scanned his environment. He was in a smallish room – maybe three metres square – with a high ceiling. It had one long, slim window, positioned up near the ceiling and this was the source of the bright light.

The furniture was clinical – a metal hospital bed, a treatment couch, a stainless steel sink, a long counter on one wall and a thick fire door, with a self-closing hinge at the top. The floor was blue vinyl, non-slip, by the look of it, like most modern hospitals.

But it didn't sound like a hospital and it didn't smell like a hospital. And he should know, having spent a lot of his adult life in one hospital or another.

He lifted the blanket that covered him and looked down at his body. He was wearing hospital scrubs and his feet were bare. He wondered where his clothes were. He wondered where he was.

'Where am I?' Arthur asked, looking back at the man, who still stood there, smiling.

'You are somewhere safe,' he replied.

Arthur snorted with ironic mirth.

'I was perfectly safe where I was,' he said. 'Why am I here?'

'You're here to be saved,' his new friend replied.

Arthur frowned, and pondered and pondered some more, then he shook his head, as realisation dawned,

'Oh, for fuck's sake!' he groaned. 'You're a fucking Reparation Therapist, aren't you!'

'Well done, Arthur. Your dad said you were smart. He wasn't wrong. And that fills me with joy because a smart man like you will soon learn the error of his ways.'

Arthur pushed the blanket away and tried to sit up but, immediately, he felt dizzy and sick, and flopped back onto the pillow.

'What the fuck did you give me?' he asked, weakly, rubbing his forehead and swallowing down the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him.

'We just gave you something to keep you quiet, so we could bring you here without anyone getting hurt. You're a big man, Arthur, and a trained soldier so we couldn't risk any injuries. And we didn't want a fuss, either.'

'I bet you didn't, you mad bastard,' Arthur muttered, mostly to himself.

He was still trying to piece together some sort of timeline, trying to recall his last cogent memory before he woke up in this place. He couldn't get a firm handle on anything – probably a side effect of the drug they had given him. That narrowed the options down a bit. He could think of a few possibilities.

Now that he had regained more tactile sensation, more proprioceptive awareness, he could feel a sore spot on the back of his neck, just behind his right ear. He reached up to rub the spot and his hand came away with a few flakes of dried blood on it.

'You stuck me with a needle,' he declared.

'It was a sterile needle,' the man replied.

'Well, thank fuck for that! But, how fucking irresponsible! You know nothing about me, nothing about my medical history! I could have been allergic to that crap you pumped into me, you fucking dick head!' If he hadn't felt so weak, he would have been shouting but the best he could manage was an irascible hiss.

His new best friend looked perturbed.

'Arthur, I must ask you to control your language. I find your use of expletives quite offensive,' he warned.

Arthur rolled onto his side so he could look at the man without having to sit up, since that was really out of the question at the moment.

'Y'know what? I couldn't give a flying fuck about your sensibilities, you tosser. You just need to let me go.'

New Best Friend shook his head, sadly.

'That's not you talking, Arthur. That's the Devil. You have the Devil in you and you don't even know it. But I can drive the Devil out of you, Arthur. I can save you.'

'Oh, my fucking Christ!' Arthur groaned, closing his eyes and covering his face with his hands.

Without warning, he felt a crushing blow on his back and ribcage. It was so sudden, so powerful and so unexpected that it shocked him to the core and took his breath away. He gasped and curled into a ball, shielding his side with his hand and coughing, violently.

'That was very bad, Arthur,' the man said, a little sadly. 'That was the Devil talking, again. Taking the name of Christ in vain? Very bad.'

Arthur opened his eyes, looked at his assailant and saw the sjambok in the man's hand. Arthur recognised the heavy leather whip. He'd seen them being used by the herdsmen in South Africa, when he went on safari there, with a bunch of fellow soldiers, several years ago. He had also seen them, in news reels, being used by the South African Police for riot control, during the time of apartheid and he knew that some people in South Africa still carried them for self-defence. He had never thought he would ever learn what it felt like to be hit by one.

As the coughing eased and the pain began to fade, just a little, he glared at the face of his captor, loathing the chagrined expression he saw there.

'You have no idea how much you are going to regret doing that,' he hissed.

'No, Arthur, I won't regret it. I am sad I had to do it but it was necessary and for your own good and, ultimately, you will thank me for it.'

'You don't know who you are up against,' the prisoner growled. 'When my fiancé gets his hands on you, oh, you will pray to that god of yours, how you will pray.'

'Your fiancé? Do you mean this man who has corrupted your mind and infected your body with evil? I don't fear that man.'

'You should,' Arthur breathed and closed his eyes, shutting out the image of the leering man and his wicked weapon. In spite of everything, the pain, the trauma and the stress – or perhaps because of these – he felt dog tired, utterly exhausted. He breathed out, slowly, and took refuge in sleep.

ooOoo

Well, now you know who took Arthur. This story is going to be very dark from here on, dealing with some very serious issues. But everything I describe in this story is practiced (illegally, of course) by Reparation or Conversion Therapists. I'm not making it up.