Chapter 249: Peaches And Cream, Sweeter Than Sweet
[FROLO]
The musty smell of blood, sweat, and tears was not unique to the third hallway. If anything, it was the easiest hallway to walk in since the others were significantly more horrendous than it was.
The lighting was dim, and the bulbs flickered like they were on their last fight for life. Maybe someone hadn’t bothered to change them after so long.
The stench of death, however, lingered here more than anywhere else, even as the sound of chains rattling and echoing across different places filled the different hallways.
The distance between the first occupied cell and the main door was unhinged, like someone really was aiming for the literal fight for life.
There were no guards here, which should have made it easier for an escape, only that the silver-poisoned bars wouldn’t let anyone out that easily. The walls were poisoned, too.
If anyone ever made it to the door, then they definitely had quite the motivation to get out. Besides, someone was bound to try, no.
"You’re wasting your breath. This is your what... Thirtieth attempt?" a voice mocked, its horrid laughter a discomforting sound in the kind of hell that everyone knew nothing about.
"You can’t keep me here," someone said, and the voice from before just burst into laughter.
This time, it echoed against the walls, the annoying sound circling back to both their ears. Only that one person was carrying what looked like a butcher’s blade, a katana, and a chainsaw.
While the other...
Was bound to the wall with chains meant for the worst of the worst. Heavy, rusty, laced with high amounts of silver, and definitely not meant for anyone to survive.
The second voice definitely wouldn’t survive it, not after everything that had happened in this dungeon.
Thing is, dungeons had been phased out in Frolo for so many years because everyone found a different way to deal with others. Some preferred jail cells. Some preferred modern prisons.
But others still preferred having their prisoners hanging on the walls like they were meat in a butcher’s exhibition.
"Nice try, sweetheart. Anyway, today we’re going to learn about bones... Specifically, the spine. Your friends gave out quickly, let’s see how you fare on, doctor, hmm?" he said.
The sound of his sinister laughter made his prisoner, or the doctor as he called them, try to push back further into the wall. But there was no one to scream at. No one to come save them.
"Wh... what are you doing?" the doctor shrieked as the sound of a chainsaw being sharpened hit their ears. It was as if this was what they’d been waiting for. But would it make it any better?
"Trying to figure out a way of sending your bones or just a bone from your spine as a souvenir without creeping Romanov out," he said intently, lifting his head occasionally as the sparks from metal grinding on metal were seen.
It was almost unhinged... Almost. But only because the doctor had done the most unhinged of things.
"You can’t do that," the doctor said, and the captor paused to look in their direction as if that was the most diabolical thing he’d ever heard.
"Can’t do that? Come on, Doctor Hamid... You need to give me more credit than can’t do that. I’m offended. Guess I’ll take another tooth then," he said as he looked at the doctor who was trying to shrink into the wall.
There was nowhere to hide.
Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to even imagine things would change. Because this man had been slowly torturing him daily for months now, like a man with nothing to lose and maximum fun to have.
On some days, it was broken fingers, others, acid. The scalpel days were always the worst. Because there was no telling what his captor would do with the scalpel.
"I watched your surgical videos on Romanov, doctor," he said, as he grabbed a pair of electric clips and hooked them on the doctor’s bare nipples.
"He trusted you," the captor laughed sadly, his smile disappearing like that was the most painful motivation for what he was doing. Like it was just normal for him, and yet still as painful as ever.
"Actually, on second thought, should I use the defibrillator to test if there’s enough electric current today?" he asked, and the doctor’s face morphed into pure fear.
If the man used the defibrillator on him again, Doctor Hamid wasn’t sure he would survive. But then again, surely, he had to have known by now that there was no escape out of this, right?
"Please..." the surgeon begged, and his captor stared at him amusedly.
"Yeah, Romanov said that a lot too, remember? In those videos you secretly recorded of him and sent to Milan, no?
"How he begged and said he’d do anything just to get a baby," the man laughed in disbelief, and so much pain like he’d been the one affected greatly by the doctor’s betrayal.
"I bet you all laughed after he left with tears in his eyes, believing it was his fault when in truth, he’d been okay and you took his belief in himself," the captor continued like a man on a mission.
"You’re insane," Doctor Hamid said, and the captor just laughed.
"I know... It’s a compliment at this point in my life. Gets me the front row seats and allows me to deal with rats like you, Doctor Hamid," he added amusedly, genuinely smiling like that was the best thing he’d ever heard about himself.
Maybe he was really a few screws too loose, but who cared, right?
"We didn’t take away Romanov’s ability to conceive," the doctor rambled.
"I know," his captor said as he stared at the red button in his hands. A button connected to the clips on the doctor’s nipples.
He stepped closer, inspecting the clips like a man who was trying to figure out if he was doing it right or if he needed a better strategy. Well, he knew what he was doing. He’d tortured this man every single day.
"You just took his ability to trust himself enough to conceive," the captor said before he pressed the button.
Then he watched in awe as the doctor jumped from pain at first, then began screaming as the electric current flowed through his body, threatening to burn him from the inside.
"You’re a screamer, doctor," he laughed over the doctor’s pain as the doctor screamed his lungs out. The man’s voice was hoarse, and the fact that he was sweaty didn’t help his case either.
Not to mention the metallic chains on him.
He was doomed.
And just when the doctor thought he was dying for real this time, the captor released his hold on the button and prolonged the doctor’s misery.
"Not so mighty and confident now are we, doctor?" he mocked as he set the button on the floor before grabbing the defibrillator.
"Romanov nearly flatlined five times in your operating room... Let’s see if you’re strong enough to take it too, right? And I brought more scalpels. This is going to be fun!" he said to the nearly unconscious doctor.
When the doctor didn’t respond...
He shocked the doctor on the chest, charging the defibrillator so high that the doctor began rambling apologies.
"I can’t hear youuuu!!!" he shouted in a sing-song voice over the doctor’s weak screams and his convulsing body.
But not once did he stop the torture.
Somewhere above them, the city carried on as if nothing was happening.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Romanov was busy getting flustered over protein bars.