The demon stood above her now, carrying a cat o’ nine tails made out of thick chain and tipped with dog skulls. Gripped tightly in his other hand was a smaller one, made of chains that ended in nearly a dozen tiny rat skulls. He had used it once before to whip her breasts and clitoris. The miniature skulls had beaten against her vagina like clubs and occasionally one of the rodent’s long front teeth would gouge a chunk out of her labia. Once her vagina had been beaten bloody, her clitoris a swollen and bloodied ruin, he had introduced his brutal phallus into it, further lacerating her already injured sex, matching his violent thrusts to her shrill cries for mercy.
There was already a sheen of oily black cum glistening on the head of the monster’s thick pulsating organ. It dripped from the bulbous glans onto the volcanic rock floor and sizzled there like oil in a skillet. Gloria licked her lips enticingly but the demon was not interested in her mouth anymore. He ordered her to turn around. Gloria tried to scream but could only emit a helpless whimper.
Her new master was an arch demon, one of the original fallen angels, tossed into the lake of fire by the hand of the Almighty back when mankind was first summoned from the protoplasmic stew to walk upright across the earth. At times Gloria imagined she could see glimpses of the radiant angel he had been beneath the self-inflicted scars, burns, piercings, tattoos, and other body manipulations. The ram’s horns grafted onto the side of his head. The rhinoceros horns that formed a neat row down the center of his spine along his coccyx. The gruesome smile that dominated his face where his lips and cheeks had been first cut away and then singed until they curled up tight around his gums, revealing a gleaming row of shark’s teeth and wolf fangs. The bisected nose that splayed across his face, one nostril pinned to each cheek with a silver ring. Even his titanic sex organ was a bit of the demon’s own artistry, the cock and balls of some antelope, a moose or a bull, with animal horns and spines embedded into it to further increase its capacity to injure. None of the creature’s horrifying features were original. They had all been modifications inspired by eons in hell as the torturer of sinful souls. Form followed function and his hulking form had taken on the shape of man’s fears.
The demon reached out for Gloria with one massive hand. Each finger ended in a long claw or talon stolen from an alligator, large jungle cat, or some bird of prey. There was dried blood, some of it perhaps several centuries old, caked beneath the nails.
Her body shook when she felt the creature’s touch. A hand clamped down on the back of her neck and bent her over until her head touched the cave floor. The first crack of the cat o’ nine tails felt as if she had been kicked by a small crowd of people. The dog heads punched into her back with enough force to break ribs or shatter vertebrae. The chains raked her skin, tearing at her, drawing blood.
She landed face-first on the gravelly floor, the skin on her palms and knees and chin abraded raw. She tried to crawl away, to pull herself along on her fingertips but was crushed to the ground under another blow from the cat o’ nine tails.
The gravel punched into her skin, left a trackwork of scars. “Please!” she shrieked.
The demon remained silent as he flailed at her with the dog heads.
“God please help me!”
God apparently wasn’t listening.
The demon grabbed her ankles and dragged her back along the floor until she was beneath him. His cock pushed against her ass. His clawed hands raked her back, grating the skin, exposing her spine. Massive fists crashed down on her, and she felt the vertebrae crunch, bits of bone exploding, crumbling down her sides. The pain was immeasurable, and to her horror she realized she was paralyzed. Every nerve ending was alive, sizzling like hornet stings, but now she couldn’t get away.
He lifted her legs and forced her into a squatting position, her ass pointed up, exposed, her forehead crushed into the gravel floor. Lungs frozen … unable to scream, unable to beg for mercy that never came anyway. Tears dripped onto the floor.
Hands on her hips. Cock pushed into her cunt, slowly at first, and she knew he was toying with her, prolonging her agony. Entering wasn’t the problem … the barbs decorating the base of the glans was the problem. He gripped her sides tighter, claws slicing her flesh. Drool dripped onto her back, searing the already tortured flesh.
He pushed harder, his twenty-two-inch cock digging deep, filling her cunt. She screamed, her already-damaged throat and lungs searching for more. As he pulled out, her cunt was stripped raw; she felt the skin flay, her insides burning like a sea of fire.
And he repeated this, slowly, slowly, until his motions increased in speed, until finally he came, his thick, viscous semen like battery acid. When he withdrew, he wiped his cum on her back, fingered her crushed spine, licked at the blood and shattered bone.
He dragged her back to her cage. She was an unrecognizable lump of mutilated flesh, a pile of pulverized bones. Unable to move, he tucked her into an awkward, bent shape and slammed the door shut.
*
This time they let her sleep, though she didn’t know why—there wasn’t any compassion here.
Several feet below her cage the demon slept, its massive chest rising and falling with breath that she imagined didn’t really exist. If she wasn’t breathing, why would it? Probably the same as her—habit.
Her body was restored again; she was able to move. She couldn’t imagine an eternity of this … the nonstop assault, the repeated agony. She knew she deserved to be punished, but hell—she hadn’t done anything so horrible to deserve this. Had she? Even her suicide had saved another life. Surely there had to be some forgiveness …
But the demon wasn’t talking. Refused to answer her questions, refused her mercy when she begged until her throat was screamed raw. Yet there had to be a way out of this.
The demon stirred, and her bowels cramped, her heart dropping into her stomach. But it didn’t wake, and she sighed relief, her body trembling.
The bars of the cage singed her skin, no matter what her position. Kneeling left grooves like barbecue tracks in her knees and calves, her forehead seared by the bars.
She tried to reshift her position in the cramped cage, at the same time avoiding contact with the cage, but movement was impossible. The thick iron collar around her neck weighed her head down, and she tried to ignore the needy, rotting fetus corpses that reached out to her. Her shoulder bumped into the bars and scorched her skin, and she covered her mouth to keep from screaming. Leaning back, trying to stretch her aching spine, she bumped into the cage door. It creaked open, the rusty hinges screaming. Gloria glanced over her shoulder, shocked.
The door was unlocked.
But why would it have been locked? The demon slept right below—why would anyone even think of trying to escape?
But Gloria thought of escape. The idea of it actually made her salivate.
She glanced down. The floor was several feet away. Not an impossible distance, but she was squashed in that cage, unable to maneuver, unable to gain the leverage she needed. And if she fell the wrong way, she’d land on top of the demon. The only way to do this was to grab hold of the scorching bars. But a few moments of pain would be worth it if it meant freedom from this hellhole.
Gloria moved backward until she was at the edge of the cage, until her ass hung out the door. Now squatting on her feet, the tender flesh there in agony. Leaned forward and gripped the bars on the floor, and swung her body out of the cage. Legs dangled in midair until she lowered herself, her feet scrabbling for purchase. A bit lower and she found the ground, and let go of the bars. Her fingers were unrecognizably mashed and bloodied stumps, burned nearly to the bone.
She didn’t care. She knew she would heal, the pain would eventually subside.
But now—she was free.
*
Gloria crept cautiously out of the cave, trembling with every step, afraid the demon would awaken and drag her back inside. She reached the mouth of the cave and looked back over her shoulder at the sleeping demon. Then she ran, as hard a
nd fast as she could down the long dark passage that led away from that torture chamber, unsure of where she was going. Dashing without direction through a vast labyrinthine honeycomb of caves and tunnels. Just trying to put distance between her and the demon. Gloria fled, stealing down the corridors, the only light on the pathway small human skulls fitted with dripping candles, hands caressing the cold, wet stone walls. From every corner came screams and wails, pleas for mercy, the hideous laughter of broken minds that had lost all hope and reason. Sounds of whipcracks, of acetylene blowtorches popping into life, chainsaws, thuds like something hard hitting something squishy. Her mind raced, imagination working overtime.
There was an exhilaration coursing through her as her naked feet pounded down the corridor and her sweaty, blood and semen soaked body parted the dense humid air. She was scared, terrified, but she was free. She almost felt like laughing, like shouting, but she was still in hell, still in danger.
She wrapped her arms around her cold, naked flesh, repressing shudders. Nothing was following her at least; glances over her shoulder confirmed that.
Up ahead: brighter light. She wished there was some place to hide in the corridor, but the walls climbed endlessly, and she couldn’t see any alcoves. So she had to press on, and hope that whatever was ahead wasn’t worse than the torture she had just escaped.
A hundred feet ahead, she came to the entrance of a cavernous room. In the center was a bubbling river of lava. Thousands of people were thrashing about in it, clawing at the air, trying to reach the bank. Every time they moved, they were whipped back into place. As the fiery lava consumed their feet, they sank lower, until it dissolved their calves, thighs, torso, until nothing remained but a screaming head, begging for help as their flesh and bone melted down into that boiling sludge.
Naked souls shrieked in agony in that boiling lake. Their flesh had already been melted away and now only their spirit remained, burning there for all eternity, or until one of the demons took an interest and singled one out for special attention in the caves.
The demons controlling the room were as horrible and terrifying as the one that bastard Vlad had sold her to. They were massive creatures, adorned with chains containing dangling skulls, some of babies, some of animals; ram’s horns, antlers, and tusks sprouted from their foreheads, curlicues of sharpened bone, jutting toward an intended victim. Huge, thickly muscled legs that ended in hooves, talons, or claws, thick black toenails clacking on the hard dirt floor.
Each carried a weapon more ornate than the one before it. Clubs studded with what looked like gigantic fishhooks, swords of sharpened steel fitted with razors, cat o’ nine tails made of thick leather and bulky chain, axes heavy with dripping blood.
With all the horrible shrieks and screams and curses from the damned, the demons were perfectly silent. Just like the one she’d left back in the cave. Their eyes gleamed with lust and passion as they meted out brutal punishment in mute ferocity. Occasionally one of the demons would reach down into the boiling lake to wrench free a bit of loose flesh or skin from one of the burning victims before it was consumed by the flames. There were piles of such liberated tissue along the river banks.
“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered into her hand, plastering herself against the wall. Praying that nothing down there had spotted her. Gloria could only guess what the re-appropriated material would later be used for. She searched the room with her eyes, hoping to find a place to escape, another door perhaps, but the room was surrounded by stone walls. The only way in or out was behind her.
The screams coming from this room—the pure anguish, heart-wrenching suffering—tore her heart from her chest. What had these people done to deserve this? What could anyone do to deserve this?
Several feet away, a demon worked relentlessly, using its razored claws to flay the skin from a woman’s body, the layer of epidermis pink and pulsing and dotted with blood. Slowly it tore away the dermis, first from fingertips, moving back to wrists and arms, the skin separating in long, bloat-white strips, and then moved to her shoulders, gouging claws into the flesh, creating chunnels, something for it to grab onto. Peeled back another layer, the flesh exposed now on her breasts and ribcage and stomach. The demon continued until the woman was a throbbing mass of blood-specked soft tissue and exposed nerves. It tossed the long strips of meat and skin onto a large pile and then threw the woman back into the burning lake. Then it reached in to grab another victim.
Around the cavern, countless images of torture, suffering. Gloria sucked in, searching for a breath that no longer mattered. Her skin tingled as if attacked by insects. Several feet away, a man dangled from the impossibly high ceiling. Chains had been imbedded in his flesh, and he hung spread-eagle. The demon beside him lifted its weapon, a long, slender knife shaped like a cobra, its tip spread out as if the snake were about to strike. With surprising agility and speed, the demon impaled the man’s bowels and lifted, dragging the knife through his torso in a fierce, upward movement. The man’s intestines spilled from the jagged hole. His eyes rolled up, his face a frozen tapestry of pain and fear.
Gloria turned for the exit, unable to watch any longer, unable to accept what she was seeing. The exit remained unblocked, unguarded, and she fled, stumbling down another corridor, dazed and overwhelmed. She had escaped—but to what? There was nowhere to go. Hell was everywhere.
A tiny exhausted voice echoed from a cave just ahead of Gloria. “No! You can’t! You can’t do this! It’s not fair!” The voice was familiar, though to Gloria it sounded broken and defeated. Just like her own voice.
The one thing Gloria took comfort in was knowing that she had saved her daughter, had sacrificed herself for Angela and the baby. Though Angela turned out to be something Gloria hadn’t expected … but it didn’t matter. Gloria would have given her life a thousand times to spare her child this agony.
Yet that voice, the child’s voice pleading, the one now screaming, was unnervingly familiar. And Gloria knew that there were no real bargains in hell, that she had traded her life and sacrificed her soul to damnation for nothing at all.
“Oh, God … Angela.” A mother knew her child’s voice, especially if that child was in pain. Gloria could have picked that sound from a chorus of thousands of crying children.
The crack of a whip followed the helpless little whimper. Then came shrill screams. Gloria ran toward it, inside a cave a few yards ahead.
Her daughter dangled from the ceiling by her arms nearly twenty feet off the ground. Angela’s wrists were chained together, and she was suspended from some type of pulley system. The end of the chain was held by a fat, hideous creature. The thing’s body was covered in the same type of gildings that had covered the body of her demon, but this one was half the size. Human size, not an arch demon. Not one of the fallen angels. Whatever this thing was now, it had obviously once been a man.
A razor-barbed leash was gripped tightly in his other hand, and he was whipping Angela to shreds as she dangled helplessly nearly two stories off the ground. Her legs were spread wide by chains shackled to each ankle and affixed to bolts on opposite walls. Beneath her was a pyramid shaped sculpture lined up perfectly between Angela’s legs. The tip of the pyramid was tacky with bits of meat and gore.
“Oh no. No.” Gloria knew exactly what was about to happen. She looked over at the hideous little demon holding the other end of the chain … just as he let go.
“No!” Angela wailed as she plummeted from the ceiling onto the tip of the pyramid.
The sound was like that of a machete cleaving through a watermelon. Sharp and wet. The point of the pyramid gouged up into Angela’s vagina, pulverizing the soft pink labia, cracking the pelvic bone and jarring both hipbones out of their sockets. The pyramid point split her sex wide open, drove deep into her womb. A river of blood rushed from the vicious gash, which now extended up to her bellybutton.
Angela’s eyes went wide. She opened her mouth as if to scream but blood sprayed from between her lips in a wide arc. All expressio
n drained from the girl’s face, and her head drooped towards her chest. If this were anywhere else, Gloria would have thought the girl was dead. But she knew better. They had already died once to get here. Death was a luxury they were now denied.
The little fat demon turned toward Gloria. It grinned broadly, and licked its yellowing rows of fanged teeth with a thick purple tongue that looked like some type of mollusk. Gloria recognized him. Same red ring of hair and ridiculously comical moustache. Same shark-toothed grin. Same black soulless eyes. Even with all the hideous scars and horns and piercings, she still knew him.
“Fucking Vlad,” she said through gritted teeth. There, in hell, torturing her daughter. Now Gloria knew what this had been about. He’d procured Gloria for that big hideous demon she’d left behind in the cave, and in exchange he got to have Angela. Gloria started toward him. He slowly hoisted Angela back up into the air, her body dislodging from the pyramid with a hideous sticky ripping sound that made Gloria’s stomach lurch. Blood cascaded from between Angela’s thighs as she ascended once more towards the ceiling.
“My little girl. What have you done to my little girl?”
Her daughter’s head wobbled listlessly on her limp neck. Pain had destroyed her mind. She looked like a lifeless marionette, and her suffering wasn’t over. It would never be over as long as she was in Vlad’s hands.
The skin on Gloria’s neck bristled. From behind her, something was coming, fast. Something large, something pissed.
Lumbering down the corridor, filling up the entire passageway with its bulk, was her demon. She cried out, and moved back away from the cave where her daughter had been hoisted into the air to be dropped again onto the point of the pyramid. She threw herself against the wall of the tunnel, afraid to move, nowhere left to go. All she wanted was to melt into the stone, to disappear from this room. All she wanted was to not have to face that demon again.
Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II Page 8