Tortured Thoughts
By Kessarine
Sharp, bright spiders of electricity danced along his limbs; his back arched in a grotesque parody of orgasm, and his lips stretched back in a wolf’s snarl. Men in uniform stared, some laughing at his plight, some gazing with sick fascination at the way the ends of his brown hair fled from his scalp.
One man, in a white trench-coat emblazoned with blood-soaked crosses, stood grinning by the switch. It was he who had commanded this horror, and he whose eyes crackled with the hate inherent in those forks of lightning. The whites of his eyes glowed redly like malignant coronas surrounding the black holes at the centers, which had once been stars.
Squall hung crucified upon the metal wall of the Desert Prison. Every so often he would be given a brief respite from the deadly current, during which his burned brain would be pummeled with taunts by overeager guards drunk with their power over his defenseless body.
“What’s the matter? Too much for ya?”
“Does it hurt? Huh?”
“Awww… I’ll bet you’ll start crying soon! Wager 50 gil he cries in the next five minutes!”
And they turned the current back on…
.
Squall was floating, flying through warm blue light. He was surrounded by feathers. He was a feather.
He was floating on his back in the ocean. Far off, on the shore, stood a gray stone house where (he lived?)
He sat at a wooden desk in a room which, though unidentified, definitely belonged to him. He wrote a letter in a scrawling child’s hand:
Dear Sis,
I am sorry I pullded your hair and hurted you. I didn’t mean to make
you go away. Can you please come back now? I miss you.
Squall Leonhart
He did not write his name in cursive but rather printed it, to make sure that Sis would be able to read it. Maybe she hadn’t known who the other letters were from because his writing was so horrible. He was so horrible; that had to be why she had left him alone.
That was why they were hurting him now.
.
The current stopped; Squall’s body sagged against his bindings. Seifer stepped up to him and slapped his face.
“So, Squall. I suppose I win.” The corners of Seifer’s mouth turned up in a square grin. “After this, I hope our little rivalry will be put to rest.”
With an effort, Squall forced his eyes open. The fluorescent lights of the room burned dancing sparks into his vision. “I am glad… you’re enjoying… your power over… an unarmed, bound man,” Squall breathed.
Another stinging slap caused black blossoms to open in front of Squall’s eyes. “One minute for every word, Squall,” Seifer growled.
.
Squall had found a seashell. It was a pretty one, curly and whirly like the way he felt after spinning around in a circle for too long. It was pink, too. Sis would like it.
He tripped and skinned his knee on the way up the stairs, but he hardly felt it in his excitement to give Sis his beautiful find. He walked into Sis’s room to give it to her, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t hiding under the bed or anything. After an hour of searching the whole house, he finally left it on the bed for her to find.
It was still there. That had been the day she had gone.
.
Another break. Squall used a bit of his precious strength to shake his head, to get the visions out. Each had been accompanied by such sorrow… He wondered whether physical pain wasn’t a better option.
“What are you thinking, Squall? Do you want to get out of this? Because, you know, it can continue for as long as we want.”
Just let me die, Squall thought.
It began again; but this time, rather than dreams, Squall was greeted with the blissful darkness of unconsciousness.