Groggily, you opened your eyes to the now-familiar sight of Strade. Unlike other mornings where you awoke to his face centimetres from your own, today he was standing back. His expression was difficult to read. That usual volatile air of obsession was tempered, replaced with something else. There were no tools in his hand. Cogs were turning in his head, and you hadn’t had adequate time to fully figure out the machine that was his mind. You fell limply against the pole, shrinking back from his perceived indifference. It shouldn’t bother you. But it did. You must have looked quizzical – perhaps even a little hurt – because he took it upon himself to give an explanation you were far too proud to ask for.

“Ah, you’re awake, good! Truth be told, it’s time for something different. Well – different for you. It’s something of a hobby of mine.” Stepping aside, he revealed a camera setup. “It's not that I think you're boring...” He continued with a genial smile. "I simply think that what we have should be shared. There are others like me, you see, that enjoy watching people die.” Your blood ran cold. “My audience can even be as excitable as me, at times, though I know that might be hard to believe!" He spoke as though he were expecting you to laugh along, light and jovial, as he discussed filming your undoing for bloodthirsty strangers. Your limbs were leaden with dread.

He had mentioned that there were cameras filming around the basement earlier in the week, but you hadn’t been able to pinpoint any. This new one was far more blatant. A camcorder-style device sat atop a tripod, observing you hungrily. It was connected to a laptop, where you could see the odd string of text pop up. Oh. His audience. Strade fiddled with its settings momentarily, pressing keys here and there before he seemed happy with the video output.

The thought of more people like Strade, gathered at their screens to witness your destruction made your eyes sting with fury, and more than a little despair. You blinked in quick succession, hoping to give them nothing at all to stay for. Unfortunately, you were never what people might call a 'delicate crier'. Even the briefest shed tears were obvious, your distress usually evident even after a hasty swipe of your sleeve. Immobilised this time, hands bound behind your back, your face had already reddened and your eyes were bloodshot and watery. You sniffed, willing your nose not to run while you couldn't wipe it. It ran anyway, all the way down to your lip. Salt stinging chapped skin.

Of course, why would I have control over anything?

Your inner voice argued with itself, despondence versus that part of you that hadn’t quite given up on your previous life.

Why do I care? I'm tied up in some guy's basement and I'm worried about looking gross?

The whites of your eyes were now pale pink, gently swollen, saltwater blurring your vision. It was difficult to listen to the second voice as more and more text began popping up on Strade’s laptop screen. Vultures. Two indistinct Strades cocked their head curiously in unison and you blinked hard, again, willing them both to just disappear. After a couple of seconds, you opened your eyes and he was right up close, a lurid blush creeping across the bridge of his nose. "Ohh... You're so cute when you cry. What a welcome surprise!"

Embarrassed, and knowing this wasn't the case, you motioned to cover your face. The tape around your wrists crackled a warning, keeping your movements completely at bay. He was so close you could feel his breath, hot against your cheek. Your hands fell still. You tried not to make a sound, quelling the rising urge to start struggling like crazy, pulling at the pole, at the tape, until your wrists bled and you'd screamed your throat raw. It seemed like the dishevelled look was what pushed his buttons, as he became visibly less stable the more his eyes raked across your tearstained face.

Pressing closer, he held your head in one hand. His grip was sturdy, methodical, but you felt a slight tremble as you breathed a small ah! of surprise at his touch. His skin was heated, like a well-fed fire burned pitilessly within. Raking his tongue theatrically across his teeth, like a wolf cleaning blood from its canines, he got closer than he’d ever been before. You remained still as he trailed the tip of his tongue along your cheek, right up to the corner of your eye. Tasting your tears, he sighed in contentment for a moment. Bringing his thumb up in a gentle caress along your jawline, he travelled slowly up your face until he held the pad of his finger to your eyelid. You tried to swallow, but were only able to make a small, dry sound. You didn't move a muscle.

As another tear slid along flushed skin, his breath quickened, ragged and wanting. He pulled your eyelid upwards with a finger, exposing your eye to the dry air of the basement. It stung, and you repressed the urge to blink. Without warning his tongue pressed to the wet curve of your eyeball, tears streaming from the inner corner in burning protest. You finally cried out - wriggling against the pole and your bindings - but he merely chuckled, breathy and low, letting it trail off into an unmistakable moan.

The pressure on your eye was intense, halting the breath in your lungs as his tongue tip probed insistently at the side, pushing, demanding entry. You screeched in discomfort and fear, writhing against him as you tried - without success - to pull your head from his grasp.
"Nngh... Stop! Stop!"

He gave no indication that he could hear you, much less acted on your commands. Pressing his lips fully over your socket, he moved as though pleasuring a lover. His tongue flickered across the salty surface, precise and assertive. A kiss was planted on your eye, the scratch of his stubble ruthless against the delicate skin underneath. You couldn't breathe. Again. Some delusional part of you hoped that if you sat absolutely still, he might get bored and stop. The feeling was awful, alien, like a fattening leech attaching and gorging itself on your lifeblood.

From nowhere, your subconscious whispered that it was the most intimate thing you could imagine.

The most tender thing you could ever hope to experience.

Tears flowed freely, lubricating his throat as he growled incoherent praise. The tender flesh of your eye blotted harshly on the roughness of his tastebuds and you were whining in horror now, a constant fearful hum underlying his every movement. The meagre contents of your stomach were curdling and you wanted to clutch at him, to hold him, to seek comfort. You pulled at the tape again, futile and desperate. Curling his tongue around the side of your eyeball, he suddenly sucked hard, probing forcefully with his pointed tongue until he prised it free with a sickening squelch. For a dizzying second you felt the tip of his tongue graze your empty socket, tasting you in a way that nobody else ever would.

There was no way to process that information.

At first not much had changed. All was dark on one side, your eyeball held fast between his lips until he let it fall, slick with saliva, with a wet plop!. As it fell, the room spun, and you were so goddamn sure that you were going to vomit that you angled your neck down instinctively as you heaved vocally at the cement. He would deserve every drop of bile.

"No...n-no..." There were no words. He had taken them. He had taken everything. You gasped shallowly, hyperventilating. He breathed heavily over you, delirious with delight. Panting hard, he leered down with wild eyes. Drool dripped from his tongue to your heated face, twisted in pain and distress. His sweaty forehead pressed to your own, one floppy strand of hair tickling your nose in a ludicrous sensory addition to the incomprehensible horror that had just unfolded. For a full minute, you both breathed in sync. He absorbed your terror, mimicking it, sharing your oxygen. Your ruined eye nestled against your face, warm and wet, as though it could crawl back inside.

“Mm, now wasn’t that fun? I enjoyed it, although perhaps I’ve been self-indulgent.”

Having had his moment, making some effort to pull away, Strade turned back to his virtual audience. He seemed amused by your stunned reaction, looking down at your bowed form as he adjusted the camera focus. For some absurd reason, once your mind returned to any semblance of processing, it tried to defend you from the present situation by concerning itself with the cleanliness of Strade's mouth. The human mouth was so dirty and he sucked out your fucking eyeball.

"But..." Your voice wasn’t yours, shallow and brittle.

"Hm?" Strade had already turned away from you, devising the next step.

"It's going to get…infected..." you whispered, barely able to force out the words.

He barked a laugh, hearty and full. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, delighted in the unpicking of the 'why's and 'how's of your response. Finally he spoke, affectionate. "You are strange." Turning to his wall of tools and shaking his head, he selected something. “I know it looks sloppy now, but I’ll fix you right up!”

Vision lopsided, a high-pitched empty ringing in your ears, you watched Strade approach, beaming, drill in hand. He moved in stop-motion, your depth perception no longer functioning reliably. You tried to think about anything, anything but the damp warmth pulsing against your cheek, about the perspective change that made you nauseated to the core. It's all just a dream. You blinked, trying to clench your eyelids tightly, but one lid just wouldn’t close. Though distorted and blurry, you could still see. You could still see! You began to kick your feet in panic, clumsily lashing out and missing each time.

"Now - I know you and I have had a little fun with this one already, but the viewers were disappointed to hear that they missed out!" His thumb found the trigger. “Let’s even you up, shall we?” Ice splintered down your spine at the implication as blood drained from your face, leaving you shivering and faint. You felt what it was like to cry without an eye in the socket.

Empty, it felt empty, you felt empty -

The scream of the drill cut the air.

"Scream for me, now-" he teased, imperative through smiling teeth. So many teeth. Lightheaded and disoriented, you didn't register the command for what it was at first. Staring in silent horror, time seemed to stretch boundlessly into the void as you gazed straight ahead. All of a sudden, you felt the drill disturb the air at your chin, mere millimetres from flesh. You looked up sharply, cringing away from the whirring bit. “I said…” He took aim at your good eye and winked.

Frozen with dread, your remaining mobile eye followed the trajectory of the drill as it swooped downwards. Inches from your pupil, he prompted again. "Lost your tongue?" He paused, seeing that you were frightened into total paralysis, and amended his approach. Not out of mercy - you knew better than that – but for entertainment value. Whether for him or for his audience, you couldn’t be sure. All you knew was that it wasn’t for you. "I'll tell you what, I'll be nice..." He directed the spinning point at your dangling eyeball. "I'll only play with the one you already gave me."

No longer able to fully close your eyes, to shut any of it out, you had no choice but to watch as the pointed metal spun loudly towards your eye, hanging defiantly by your optic nerve. "Please..." Your voice was so hoarse, it sounded like you were already dead. You trembled frantically in time with the shuddering of the drill against his palm.

Closer.

“Don’t!”

You weren’t sure whether you even said it out loud.

Closer.

“PLEASE, STRADE, DON’T -”

“Here we go!”

In the single worst nanosecond of your life, the gory thread connecting your eye to its socket was wrapped violently around the spinning bit of the drill. It tore from your head at such high velocity that you were abruptly yanked forward, face wrenched from his grasp. The pain was blinding but you couldn’t scream, your mouth was open and you tried - you tried - but nothing came out. The world was changed, here in this godforsaken basement, in the hands of this stranger whose callous mirth was ringing like a death toll in your ears.

You passed out near-immediately, head swimming as your vision plunged into darkness. For a moment, you were suspended in your agony, held in place against the pole like a wilted flower as your head and shoulders sagged heavily against your bindings.

The roaring of blood in your ears dulled to a low fluid gurgle. Water swirled against your fingers as you dipped your hand into a flowing river. Enjoying the way it held your hand, inevitable in its pull, you stayed a while.

When you awoke, you weren’t sure how much time had passed. Someone was holding you, warm and soft. You sank into their touch. A lukewarm flannel was applied to your forehead, gently massaging away the sheen of sweat and flecks of blood. There was muted murmuring above. You were transported back to being a child, drifting off to sleep while others conversed in the next room about things you couldn’t conceive of yet. Slowly, your consciousness returned fully, rousing you to reality with a jolt.

Strade was bandaging your head.

For a moment, you couldn’t bring yourself to recoil. You wanted this tender moment to be preserved, to elongate this minute in time falsely – continually – to remain in a place where your body would feel only tenderness and compassionate touch forevermore. You would be the perfect doll, moved only by his hand. You thought you could do it, probably. If he would allow it, if he would just be content with –

Your eyelid must have twitched, infinitesimal. Some indicator that you were back in the room. Soon, too soon, the fabric was withdrawn from your face and the warmth retracted from your side.

“Hm. You’re cute when you’re out, too, but it’s time to wake up. We’ve been waiting!”

The second you moved your head, the pain was debilitating. You stayed still, deathly still, willing yourself back to unconsciousness. As though to wake you, Strade’s hand was back, brushing across your abdomen. He explored, testing your reaction. Your eyes widened in surprise. A foolish blush dusted your face as you lay against the pole, unsure how to respond. The pain had left you overly sensitive, nerve endings burning at the slightest touch. He brushed lower, caressing the area just beneath your navel. Unconsciously, your body sought something other than hurting and your legs fell open. He raised an eyebrow and caught his lower lip between his teeth in a wolfish grin.

Staring at the bloodied bandage rather than your remaining eye, he exhaled shakily. “You’re getting me too excited…” Bringing his fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear, he began rubbing in earnest. Little by little, pleasure forced its way in amongst the pain. Arching against his touch, you made a small keening sound that should have brought you back to your senses from the embarrassment alone, but instead amplified whatever feelings were currently sparking in the crossed wires of your brain. He breathed in your scent, mingled with iron and sweat, and groaned deeply.

Sharp teeth grazed your neck and you murmured, pleading nonsensically. He was speaking too, but you were distracted by the startling increasing pressure at your jugular. As he curled strong fingers where you needed them, he abruptly began biting into delicate skin, marking, ruining. As a particularly pathetic mewl of pain escaped you, he bit down, hard, until you cried out. Panic signals were blaring in your brain. Stop him, stop him, stop him. Any movement to pull away seemed to trigger his predatory instincts, and you envisioned being shaken to death, throat held fast in his jaws. You heard a small crunch and wailed, but he merely snickered into your ear, pressing a bloodied kiss over the new bruising.

As he picked up the pace of his hand you leant into him, torn, somewhere between acceptance and denial. Just as you began to get used to the rhythm below, leaning up and into his dominant motions, teetering on the edge of the most shameful orgasm of your life, he suddenly withdrew. “Ha! Sorry… I got carried away, there… Nearly forgot myself.”

You ached, sore and lost. Without the distraction, your head throbbed anew. He took his knife, brandished it at the camera, and slashed a shallow wound into your gut. You bled quietly, in silent astonishment. He paused to admire his handiwork. “Then again, I could…” The tip of his knife played at the edges of the laceration, teasing but not quite slipping inside. He looked positively giddy.

Scarlet rivulets trickled from the long thin cut. Seconds passed where you thought he might take you there and then. Taking a look at his laptop instead, a forebodingly satisfied look crept across Strade’s features. “Ahh, the viewers want something more interesting!” A small sigh escaped him, entertained by the impatient following he had cultivated. “I can’t say that I blame them, you are looking quite lovely in red… And you did keep them waiting earlier, after all.” He paused as if lost in thought. “Well… We’ll get back to this” – his broad hand brushed along your stomach, digging nails in along the edges of the incision until you gave a small yelp – “later!”

Your insides were still inside. You were okay.

You were okay.

"I actually gave myself an idea earlier!" You wracked your brain to recall what he could mean by that but came up empty handed. ‘Earlier’ was a black hole. It was an abyss, filled with pain of a depth that had been yet unplumbed prior to this week. You were terrified of what could possibly follow that up. Dried tears had stiffened your face, making your skin feel dry and itchy under your bandages. Blood had begun to coagulate, forming a sticky crust around your abused socket. Your stomach roiled at the feeling of it pulling, stuck against the dressing.

After gesturing dramatically to the camera, he moved behind you, pressing your jaw open harshly with one hand. He pulled your tongue taut with the other, pinching it painfully between thumb and forefinger as he held his knife to its root. From the way he leaned against your back, you could feel how hard he was already. You began making a noise of protest, but words were impossible. “Uh – uh uh!” you pleaded, trying to turn your head to face him, to beg with your remaining eye. To pray that he had any semblance of decency left inside. He pinched harder, enjoying how it heightened your sounds and the way you unwittingly ground against him as you writhed in discomfort.

In defiance and sheer desperation, you wrenched your tongue – still moist and slippery – from his grasp and slammed your mouth shut, teeth gritted as hard as you could. Darkness flashed across his face and the usual ghost of laughter that played about his mouth was gone. He slapped you, hard. Your head rebounded against the metal pole with the force of impact, stars exploding at the back of your eyes. Forming a hook with his index finger and pulling your cheek back so fast your lip split, he brought the knife to your teeth and wedged the blade right between your molars. Twisting it gradually, he forced your jaw back open. Gums bleeding, you relinquished your unwitting hold on the sharp edge.

He grabbed the flannel from earlier, wiping your tongue dry so vigorously it made you gag before tossing it aside. Pinching your tongue once more, as hard as possible, he looked pointedly into the camera lens. “You obviously want to make this last. Alright then. Just for you, I’ll make it nice and slow...”

He began to saw from side to side, cold metal biting slowly into your wriggling tongue. Hot blood spilled into your throat and you gagged again, coughing desperately to clear your airway. Your noises were more urgent, begging and insistent, growing more shrill with each pass of the blade against flesh.

No, no, no, no, NO!

Strade’s idea of slow was not yours – or perhaps you’d simply lost all concept of time. In a horrendously short matter of seconds, your lower jaw was a bloody waterfall, crimson spilling from the gulf of your open mouth to hit the ground beneath. It spattered like rainfall, audible and sick. Somehow, you were still awake.

So. Much. Blood.

"Ah ha... I didn't think this one through! It would've been a lot sweeter to hear you beg. Oh, well!" You couldn't stand how lightly he took everything. You longed to make him pay for how he'd altered you, how he’d broken you, but ideas weren’t forthcoming. Only pain. Iron filled every one of your senses. You were swathed in red.

WHY WERE YOU STILL AWAKE?

“Makes it easier for you, at least.” He smirked. “Your only job now is to scream, mein liebchen.” Daring to take a glance at him, you saw him toss something small, mangled and red next to the drain with a tiny splat.

You gurgled on your own blood as you began to give him exactly what he wanted. The scream that tore from your throat was primal, pure fear made audio. You screamed so loudly you hoped Ren would break the door down and rush to your rescue. You screamed for your life, for your death, and for the non-existent time remaining in between.

Strade flipped his knife, holding it primed for action. He could wait no longer. Without hesitation, without even a glance to the viewers, he swiped a deep gash in your abdomen. Slick pink flesh bubbled underneath, threatening to spill. The harsh depth of your scream pressed viscera to the surface, to bursting point. They bulged and his hand moved instinctively towards them, fingers twitching with excitement.

“Aah…” He breathed, eyes unfocused momentarily, blush creeping along his neck. You coughed and great globs of blood spattered on the ground beside you. His breath hitched, as though he’d been caressed. He knelt beside you to croon against your neck. “That’s it, oh, you’re being so perfect now…” You almost didn’t notice as he unzipped his trousers, taking himself in hand and lining up with the bleeding slit. The head of his length pressed against you, eager and feral. Drinking in your abject terror, your open mouth nothing but a squalling, bubbling blood-hole, he proceeded to push into you with a gleeful laugh to the ceiling.

He pushed in, to the hilt, and your flesh yielded to embrace him without any real resistance. He was over you, atop you, inside you. The pain was immense as he got situated, moving without the slightest care. All you could feel was him, a thick intrusion in your guts that made you retch until a thin trickle of bile spilled from the corner of your mouth. The contraction of your stomach was appalling, sending another wave of dizzying pain threading directly through your synapses.

“Stay with me now…” You could barely see, barely think. Your cells were not your own. Your tongue was on the floor. Butchered. Grasping your hair, he hissed in your ear as he tilted his hips for another punishing thrust. “Don’t you dare die, not yet!” Picking up pace, he slammed into you and the world was black static. The buzzing in your ears reached fever pitch and the visceral howl of an animal in its death throes was wrought from your throat over and over as he screamed with you in a twisting crescendo.

Impulsively, he swiped the knife across your bandages, letting them fall to the floor. You guessed he cut you. You could no longer feel the pain, but sticky redness trickled into your eye, staining the scene claret. The hand in your hair moved to your face instead, and he scrabbled for purchase. His thumb found your empty eye socket and he hooked it right in, pulling you closer - there was no closer - gaining in tempo as he punished your insides, rearranging you to fit him.

His eyes rolled to the ceiling as he came, screaming, crashing into you with one final battering thrust and spattering your intestines with cum. The acrid taste in your mouth where blood and stomach acid were mingling made it feel as though he’d torn right through you, tainting your flesh from head to toe, inside and out.

He had.

Pulling out in one swift ruthless motion, your insides followed, chasing him, spilling eagerly from the gaping hole he had given you. They piled into your lap, hot, steaming, and heavy. The scent of carnage permeated your nostrils as you fell in on yourself. Your body had collapsed. Your mind was already gone.

Red. It’s all red.

“Ahhh – ha, I think that’s it for today-” You heard someone distant, out of breath, a thousand miles away. They were whispering to someone behind your deafened ears, your blinded eyes, and then they were tuned out.

At first, there was nothing. You welcomed it.

Then, a lapping of temperate waves at your ankles.

Then, nothing again.