Torture

She ran through the forest. The wind whipped her hair against her face. She could feel the soft touch of it and of cloth against her skin, of her own breathing and blinking and living. She could feel things again. But then she heard the bell. Night fell in the forest, sudden and deep, as the feelings faded away. Her eyes opened, her short-lived tears of joy falling into the grit of her cell’s floor. Melody is already awake in the cell across hers. “You awake, Joy?”
“Yeah,” she croaks into the darkness. She rises from the floor and brushes grit from her face. After a few minutes of silence, she says to Mel, “Do you ever think about our names?”
She can almost hear Mel’s shudder. “Every time He says it,” she whispers. The One Who Keeps Them There gave them their names. Unintentionally. He says He enjoys the Melody of her screams, and that her pain gives Him Joy.
Joy looks down at her tattered body. Scrapes from Him dragging her down the corridor. Bruises from Him hanging her from her wrists. Lashes from His whipping. Slices from His claws. And so much layered blood. It’s all she’d ever known.
The only thing she had keeping her from insanity was the dream. The dream she had every night. The dream she didn’t recognize and probably never would. Because it was just a dream. Just a nameless dream, she thought, standing and stretching her back.
She scraped yesterday’s spilled food from the stone floor, hungrily swallowing the flaky ‘porridge.’
“Awake, my children,” He growled from the steps. Immediately Joy and Melody collapsed, knowing that He liked to wake them Himself. His scratching footsteps stopped in front of their cells. He held a fire, and the light burned their eyes as much as it would soon burn their skin. Fire days were the best days.
After the fire they got new skin.
They would be clean, for once in a long time.

Melody shrunk into a corner. Fire days were the worst days. He put it places it shouldn’t be. He burned her in the places that she found her solace. The places he didn’t usually reach. The places that didn’t hurt. She got her new skin, yes. But she needed, then, to get used to it. To learn it.
If only she could live in her dreams. Her dreams of painless light. Her dreams of unburning warmth. Her dreams of water without stench, of beings that bring no pain, of movement without the aching tear of scars and tissue.
Her nameless dreams. “Just dreams,” she took the risk to whisper.
“Scream for me!” He bellowed, and she was burning, burning, burning.
She screamed.

Joy watched her go. In the firelight she could finally see Melody’s face. Contorted with pain, she was so frail and fragile looking. Do I look the same, Joy wondered, the same limbs, the same face, the same scars? She’d always thought she looked like Him. Black and claws and hooved feet.
Melody screams, a ringing sound against the walls, and Joy tilts her head. She has such a beautiful voice, she thought. The noise echoes away as the flaming Melody is dragged up the stairs.
Joy got to work. She finished the flakes of food from the ground. She added to the cesspile in the corner. She folded the dirty paper that was her bed. And then, she reached into the deepest wound she had. Blood flowed from it again, but she didn’t mind. She usually ate it when it dried.
Deep in her side, between two slippery, lumpy things, she found the bone. Her own bone, from a finger. The one she bit off her own left hand. Every time there’s a fire day, every once in a very many tortures, she could see his key. She could bite into her bone. She could shape a mimicry. She could escape.
Soon it would be ready. But she heard him, coming down the steps. She stabbed it back inside herself. She knew it will be lost under the new skin. Lost until he sliced her again.
Mel was dropped into her cell, pale, shaking, and new. Joy was grabbed by the ankle and set alight. She took care to look at the hallway as she’s dragged, unflinching even as she burned. “Your silent suffering, your hidden hurt, it brings great Joy to me, little one,” He growled. The hallway stretched the other way, into the darkness.
Into the direction she’d never been. To somewhere where she swore she heard another voice, a new voice. Before He came walking down. And past them. And down the hall. The only time He’d done so. And then the tiny far-off voice was silenced. And for the first time, they had something new to eat.
Then all other things became small because of the pain. As he took her burning skin away. As he grafted a new one. As he shoved her pieces back together and slid them into their places.
But in her pain, she watched the key. She whimpered out a pattern. High long whimper, low short whimper, three shrill whimpers, and another low one. That was the key, the bumps on it. Seared into her memory with the pain. Growing there like her dark new skin.

Melody lay on the cool floor of her cell, feeling the soft new skin. Everything felt different then. Anything she once enjoyed was frail and tender. Her scars had protected her, the blood dried to her skin had camouflaged her, and her toughness had protected her from the rough cell. Then she was a fetus, she was soft.
She wanted not to feel again.

Joy didn’t notice when she was put back, but she woke up clean. Different. Different was good.
Joy had a plan to slice herself. To get the key. She reached arm deep into her pile in the corner and retrieved the other bone of her finger. This she would sharpen into a knife. This she would retrieve the key with.

As she worked she hummed her pattern. As she hummed Melody listened. She has such a beautiful voice, Melody thought, I wish I could hear it scream, just once.

The key felt right. Joy would wait until He came and went. Then she would use it.

He took Melody first. He tore her and broke her again.

Then Joy. He wrecked her new skin. And as He dropped her to the floor she finally screamed. Because being so close, the last time, the last time, it all hurt so much more.

Melody heard her scream, had heard her work even through her humming. She’s leaving tonight. And so, in silent anguish, Melody smashed her head. She smashed it into the walls, the floor, the pain was great, until the last thing. She felt her skull break.

But the key, it clicked. Joy ended the torture. But she knew the moment would come. She would need to leave. And there wasn’t only one key on His side. Melody wasn’t getting out. “You’re all I know,” she whispers to the lump that she can barely see in the dark.
Then Joy turned away, but she heard Him. Behind her the stairs shuddered with his cloven steps.
And Joy ran down the corridor. And she felt the breeze on her face. The breeze. It was real. More stairs led down. Down.

And Joy paused.

And Joy thought of Melody.

And Joy turned back.