Adler grabbed something from his belt that had been concealed beneath his shirt. It uncoiled onto the floor. He was armed with a whip. I realized right then and there that I was going nowhere.
“You get in there right now. Maybe if you knew just who Salpsan is you’d realize the importance of your position here.”
“Then why don’t you tell me who he is?”
“The Devil’s son.”
Chapter Seven
Captivity and the Demon
There was no real way to mentally prepare myself for what was to happen in my final days in the house of Adler. I had no idea how long it would last and how far he would go to reach his ends.
I dropped my suitcase off in my room before checking in on Salpsan, much to my chagrin. I couldn’t believe that I was still there. My candelabra was no match for a whip, and I wasn’t about to place myself in a situation that would result in my being tortured. There was a way out, had to be. I just had to find it, and it was better I remain free to do so.
There was so much going on in my mind that I worked on autopilot. What was I to do? Salpsan lay there on the bed, helpless, stinking of urine and feces. He was hot to the touch. The room was kept at a temperature that caused immediate perspiration on entrance. He refused to drink water, insisting that he wanted heat. More wood on the fire, though no one was minding the fire. It just burned, a contained inferno. Perhaps he was controlling it with his mind. If his mind was that powerful wouldn’t he use those facilities to get out of this compromised position?
Once I sorted my thoughts about as well as I could, I made a pact with myself that if I treated Salpsan with all the care I would any human patient and I made it out of this place alive, I would return home and dedicate the rest of my life to community service. I would have to trade in my scrubs for maybe an apron in a soup kitchen or a desk at the library bookstore, but it would all be worth it.
Blake came in about an hour after my confrontation with Adler. I shot him a glare and grabbed the first thing I saw, a syringe, holding it defensively. It was clear that he saw my intent, and he seemed to be wary of getting too close. I was thankful for that. He told me that Adler would be checking in on Salpsan in an hour. He also told me that he’d done the liberty of placing a tray with food and water in my room. I gave a deadpan “thank you” and he was gone.
With the knowledge that I was going to be audited, I took a deep breath and pulled away the sheets that covered Salpsan’s body, prepared to clean him up. I don’t know what Adler was thinking chaining him up like this—obviously a decision based on what was very well a plausible and real fear—but how could anyone reach maximum health like this?
The son of the Devil.
Those words played upon my mind as I held my breath while using a wet cloth to wipe the filth off his reddened flesh. Steam rose from the moistened cloth. He tensed at the touch of cold water and nearly had a panic attack, wiggling and shifting. If it hadn’t been for the restraints he would have flopped onto the floor like a fish.
“Heat them up. Heat the towels,” he said. “I. Cannot. Stand cold.”
Son of the Devil indeed.
It was a dreadful ordeal, and I was sweating like a marathon runner doing laps in a sauna, but I managed to clean him up without removing the shackles. The only problem with this method of care was that he needed to move, to stand, or his muscles would soon turn to jelly and the small bed sores that I detected would get worse, potentially becoming infected.
“Do you know Mister Adler?” I asked as I sat in a chair beside Salpsan. I had spent nearly an hour tending to him and finally felt at ease. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, no telekinesis, no visions of eating goat flesh. I was beginning to feel a mild sense of normalcy, all things considered. It was going to take a lot of patience and cunning to get out of here with my dignity and my life. After what I’d gone through in the past decade concerning the murder trial and all the nasty media coverage and death threats, I’d truly thought that I had seen the worst side of humanity. I thought that had been the test of my life, the one that brings me to the precipice of hatred, loneliness, and self-loathing. In time, I realized that I was going to have to live like a pariah, relegated to my flat with my books and television. Sad, yes, but surviving because life is the most precious gift of all.
Kind of a strange way to think about things considering what I had done for that man in the hospital, but was life worth living if in eternal suffering or so doped up you couldn’t function properly?
At the thought, I regarded Salpsan lying there chained to a bed, miserable. He was in a foreign land, suffering for some kind of thrill that Mister Adler was seeking. I couldn’t say that I believed Salpsan was the son of the Devil; however, there was no mistaking that he was something not of this world.
The door opened. A cold rush of air entered, chilling my pasty face. I was reminded that my clothes were sticking to me from the sweat. It was a small misery, but I had no choice. For now, at least.
“What’s the prognosis?” Adler asked. I noted that he carried the whip more brazenly now, probably as a reminder of what I had to look forward to if I were to attempt escape.
“What you have here in Salpsan is something from another world. Everything about him defies human logistics, therefore he is impossible to properly care for. I had been saying that he needs a doctor, but even the best practitioner could do little for him, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, but your life is riding on this, so I trust you’re doing whatever you can to keep him alive. Right?”
I nodded. “He needs exercise. His body chemistry may differ from ours, but that doesn’t mean his muscles aren’t affected by being restrained in such a way, not to mention the presence of bed sores.”
Adler’s demeanor changed at the mention of removing Salpsan’s restraints. He stared at the “Devil’s son,” perhaps looking for the answer to what he was doing here.
“Where did he come from?” I asked. He’d evaded that question several times already.
Without looking away from Salpsan, he said, “I don’t know. I didn’t know until you told me his name.” He looked in my eyes. “I think he came from Hell.”
The room was uncomfortably warm, even more so after hearing that. Could it be?
“Do you believe in Heaven, Mister Adler?”
He wiped sweat from his brow and beneath his eyes with a handkerchief produced from his shirt pocket. “No. I’m not a believer.”
“Yet you can believe Salpsan came from hell?”
“If only you knew what I know. There’s something, maybe a parallel world, maybe heaven and hell, something. Salpsan came from somewhere beyond.”
“How?”
After a pregnant pause through which Salpsan made a string of nauseating noises that sounded akin to agony, Adler turned and walked out of the room without another word.
I had to get out of there. The heat was beginning to make me delirious. Until I was back in my room I hadn’t realized how guarded my mind had been all morning. Even in the very presence of Salpsan I had been doing everything I could to shield my mind from his. At times I could feel him prying, like sneaky fingers dancing through the folds of my brain. Even in the room next to him I had to concentrate on that mental block, and it was exhausting. How long was I supposed to go on like this?
It occurred to me that perhaps Blake had poisoned the food he’d left in my room, but I was starving, and right about then the idea of death wasn’t the worst thought. I ate bread and butter and dried beef washed down with water. Bland food that, at that moment, tasted gourmet.
Salpsan was about as stable as he could be. Pained some, maybe, but stable and comfortably warm; therefore, I decided to have a midday nap. I was beginning to slip into a depression, so it wasn’t difficult for me to fall asleep. That was the only retreat I had from a nightmare that seemed to go on forever. Trying to brainstorm a way out was futile, and I didn’t want to feel the crack of Adler’s whip.
&n
bsp; I just hoped I could keep the mental block up as I slept.
Chapter Eight
A Rude Awakening
I woke to Blake crouched over me, my body pinned between his pale, naked legs. I screamed and flailed. He grabbed my throat with one hand, the other fumbling with my clothes. I gasped and choked and swung my arms at him to no avail.
After all I had been through and now this. I’d begun to think that maybe Adler had talked to him about the abuse, but that was wishful thinking. Adler didn’t care.
My shirt ripped, his nails scratching my upper chest. He grabbed my bra and yanked. It felt as if he’d punched me in the back he pulled so hard. I continued to beat on him but my hands hurt something awful. It felt as if my bones were made of glass and had shattered within a sheath of skin. I felt so weak, so helpless that I was going to have to allow him to rape me to avoid the mounting pain of trying to fight him off.
His hand whip-cracked my cheek. At that point I let my body go limp, but I didn’t say anything to him. I had nothing to say to this sick madman and the candelabra was too far away for me to use it on him. I was going to have to clench my teeth and hope he was quick. As terrible as it may sound, I had to choose between him beating me or violating me. To choose between the lesser of two evils is no choice at all.
Pain throbbed in my hands, knees, legs, and face, and I knew that when he was finished I would have a great deal of pain in other regions of my body, the thought of which caused me to break down. Perhaps it had been there all along and I had been keeping it together to hold onto my strength and not show weakness, but I could no longer hold back the tears that spilled as Blake pulled off my pants, grunting and breathing like some kind of aboriginal caveman.
Every ounce of my being ceased as if I was floating in a pool of water or on a cloud. It was all I could think of to remove myself from the vile acts he perpetrated on me. Nothing I visualized could take me away from the hell I’d been thrust into.
I clenched my teeth, tasting blood. The room began to get hot, so hot, and then Blake yelped. He jumped off of me as if something had foiled his vile plans. The heat intensified. I realized then that I had removed the block from my mind. Salpsan’s voice whispered to me; however, I could not recognize the language he spoke. The fever that dominated me drove away my pains only to replace them with something that could have been insanity incarnate. Blake stood there at the edge of my bed, his flaccid penis dangling between spindly legs. He was afraid, but clearly didn’t understand from what he should fear.
“Grab him,” Salpsan said in my ear. “Grab him for me.”
My brain felt swollen like a watermelon trapped within my skull and fit to burst. I lifted my feeble hands but they felt strong, and they were deep red like a terrible sunburn.
“Grab him!”
I cannot explain where the energy came from except that Salpsan had somehow harnessed his power to control my body. I rose from the bed in one quick movement. Blake flinched, but clearly he didn’t understand what was happening until I grabbed his hand and he screamed. The acrid smell of burning flesh assaulted my nostrils. My eyes burned but I couldn’t close them as I watched my grip on his arm sear into his skin. I could feel his heartbeat as my fingers sunk deeper, burning through flesh and muscle. Blake flailed and tried to pull away, but for that moment I possessed a surge of power, pure energy. I clenched my fingers through his muscle until I could feel his bones. Even then I didn’t stop. I gripped tighter. The sound of bone breaking brought me out of the trance like a bullet from the chamber of a gun.
I pulled my hand away and collapsed on the bed.
Chapter Nine
Where to Go From Here
I woke into pain. Disoriented, I’d begin to think that maybe I had been beaten, but then I remembered what happened. I would have leapt out of bed had it been maybe fifteen years earlier, but the way I felt I could do no more than lumber around. I thought for sure that Blake would be lying on the floor, incapacitated or dead, but I was alone.
My hands were coated in a thin layer of burned flesh, but the pain was my old familiar arthritis. The burned flesh wasn’t mine. I rubbed my hands together to remove the offensive stuff. It flaked away like burned chicken skin and left a greasy black residue that I wiped away as best I could using the sheet on my bed. The nasty odor of burned skin lingered in the still air. It was enough to cause the urge to vomit.
There was no way to tell time, but the extreme cold indicated early morning or even the middle of the night. I looked at myself in the mirror hanging above the dresser in my room. Eyes drawn, lines deep, and more wrinkles than yesterday. This place was aging me, killing me. I couldn’t remain, hoping that Adler would let me go free once he was satisfied with whatever it was he’d been scheming, whatever he thought he could gain from restraining a demon, monster, whatever in a desolate room, a chamber of horrors.
Even after what I’d been through, I felt it was still my duty to check on Salpsan. Something deep within told me that he was inherent evil, perhaps nightmare incarnate, but I had spent too much time with him in close proximity to be fearful. As oblong and distorted his yearnings may be, he had clearly been stolen from his homeland, be it here on Earth or somewhere beyond, which, even considering what Salpsan had shown me, I had a hard time believing. It was clear that we had made a connection, particularly after what he’d done last night when Blake tried to rape me. Adler may have considered Salpsan to be dangerous enough to keep strapped to the bed, but I had nothing to fear.
Salpsan’s room was a furnace. Fire blazed on the hearth into perpetuity for I was certain that no one was actually tending to it, particularly considering that Blake had been incapacitated.
As uncomfortable as I felt from the extreme heat, I knew I was safe in that room. The pains I had woken with only fifteen minutes ago had gone. My joints felt as if they’d been oiled, the crippling arthritis that had turned my once beautiful handwriting into jagged pigeon scratch vanished.
“When are you going to remove my restraints?” Salpsan asked in a smooth voice. No hint of the previous agony that he had suffered from in the past several days. His entire bottom side must have been festering with bedsores, and here he was, head cocked so that he could see me, speaking so clear and concise. It was unnerving, yet somehow calming.
“I don’t know whether I should do that or not.”
“You told Mister Adler that I needed to get exercise, that my muscles were growing weak. You don’t want me to be weak, do you?”
“I’m not so sure you are weak.”
“Mentally, no. In a matter of speaking, I can do whatever I want, but I am restrained to this physical form, weakened from the transference.”
“Transference?”
“Through the realms. Through space and time. Through something.”
“From hell,” I whispered.
To this Salpsan smiled. Even a face as hideous as his could benefit from a good smile. It brightened him up and somehow lightened my heart, if you can believe that. I thought back to the moment I first laid eyes on Salpsan and what I thought of him and how my opinion of him had changed, was ever changing. His smile played upon my mind as if eating into my thoughts.
“You are safe in here. With me.”
I nodded. Yes, safe. At least it felt that way.
“Neither of us are supposed to be here. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I can do something for you.”
His words breathed into my soul, warm like the breath of a voice at my ear. His lips remained still, eyes burning into my retinas, speaking into my mind.
“What can you do for me?” I asked in a breath of a whisper. Head like cotton, body in a bliss of warm butter I heard the words come from my mouth but didn’t seem to be in control of what I was saying. Not autopilot but the sense of drowning in a daydream, or maybe a massive dose of morphine.
“Take your hand; touch my body.”
I didn’t want to touch him, not the way h
e was eluding to, but I couldn’t prevent myself from removing the heavy wool blanket that covered him. Fingers running over the dense spikes and calcium protrusions that mapped his body I felt something stir within, something vaguely remembered from the other night with the goat, something I hadn’t felt in more years than I could account. I had dedicated myself to my work, particularly after menopause and what seemed like a perpetual string of lousy dates and boyfriends that ran the gamut from abusive to boring and passive. Sex had mostly been uninspired and selfless, but that warm exuberance radiating from my heart in waves brought me back to those few moments of sheer, unadulterated pleasure I’d been fortunate enough to have experienced in my life.
“Lower.”
Subconsciously I’d only removed the wool blanket down to his hips. For something Adler claimed to be the son of the Devil, his figure was inherently human. There was a bulge beneath the blanket. My eyes widened and I nearly gasped like some kind of inexperienced teenager. Was it adrenalin coursing through my veins, or perhaps fire from Salpsan’s mind?
The bulge throbbed with the pulse ringing in my ears. My heartbeat accelerated, matching the throb of what appeared to me a massive erection, the likes of which I had never seen before. Salpsan was a large man, and that throbbing member, calling to me, was more than most women could handle without pain, particularly someone like myself. However, I wasn’t in my own mind, and the more I watched the throbbing woolen fabric and felt it in tandem with my heartbeat, I hungered for him. A physical appetite that caused me to salivate uncontrollably.
Pulling the blanket back the rest of the way I was amazed at the size of him. Male anatomy was nothing new to a nurse; however, I had never seen anything like this. Not only was his member massive in size, it was covered with tiny thorn-like bumps that resembled fat rose thorns that had been filed to non-lethal nubs. The tip was a great deal larger than the shaft, dark red and throbbing. I could almost…
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