Electric Iron Maiden

I hear my teeth crack from clenching my jaw, the foot finally, mercifully comes off, the blood comes out in a long stream and I feel suddenly light headed. The frightnening sensation of losing something important clutches my heart and I shake my head against the constraints. All I can hear is the grinding of machines and the screams of the others, or maybe it's just me in the warehouse and those horrid wails are my own.

 

Hot filaments wrap around the mess that used to be my foot and as they sizzle my brain wearily cries out in protest, my brain hiccups and I nearly go into shock, I reach for the blissfull darkness because I know death is not far behind. But the machines know what they are doing and the syringes in my neck hiss and I feel the adrenaline course through my body. Everything comes into startling clarity and the pain comes alive like an electrical snake wrapping around my body. I wonder just how much damage has been done but the metal plates that cover my eyes prevent me from seeing the injuries, all I can do is smell the burnt flesh, hear the tearing of skin and scream into the dark as my bones creak and snap.

 

I can't even recall who I am anymore, nothing exists outside of the pain and injury that has become my world, I don't think anyone is even watching this, no sick torturer sitting there feeling himself while I squirm and scream in this monstrous iron maiden.

 

This is some private hell where even the masters don't care, just zeroes and ones, blood and screams, flashing diodes and whirring gears.

 

The clamps around my left hand begin to tighten and I feel my pinkie finger give out under the stress, bone turns to dust and skin to jelly, I don't know how much it hurts compared to losing the foot or when I lost my left arm sometime yesterday I just know it hurts. I can feel myself harden inside, the pain is just a fire and my soul is in the forge.

 

Maybe thats what all this is, just a test, a baptismal designed to make me a better creature. Forget the flesh and move on to greatness, live beyond the pain and die a little so I can live again.

 

Another finger shatters and then flattens as the clamp tightens and the screws spin, I howl into the abyss that has become my world, no more pleas or fevered words, no bargaining or threats I've become a simpler creature, one of screams and whimpers, a coyote in a trap, a fly in a jar. To live is to be in pain, death will never come for me, I am not worthy.

 

But I will be soon.