I sit in the passenger seat of the liberated hauler, shivering even with the heated air blowing.  I shrug my shoulders,  and pull my long legs up onto the seat, lowering my chin further into the collar of the battered black leather duster.  Clammy hands jammed into the pockets, my pale blue eyes stare back at me from the reflection of the window, heavy within their shadowed sockets.

I have no fuckin’ clue where my chummers and I are, other than the forsaken wilds of the CAS state of Tennessee.  My troubled eyes gaze into the darkened forest without seeing the beautiful, and maybe frightening, natural Awakened scenes.  I didn’t realize that my body shook with tremors, while my mind roamed the darkness, remembering suppressed horrors.

I now had the small cubby to my own for a room.  Master Derek had stopped the beatings when he got back a few weeks ago.  For several days before he returned Mistresses Anita and Sherene had tried everything to get me to tell them what I had done to the big fat Trog.  Nothing I said pleased them, because I hadn’t a fraggin’ clue what happened to the sadistic bastard.  Only that I had been in so much pain from the plastic cuffs and the metal chain twisted around my neck.  I remember thinking I am goin’ to die.  So I panicked. I knew how I was supposed to act, what services to perform, pleasures to give and when not to move, but I also remembered that the pain and fear had stopped while the fat ass made happy moans behind him.   I wasn’t even sure what the fuck had happened, other than I slumped as far as the chains let me in exhaustion when the rapist passed out and fell, slamming his head into the table on the way down, blood leaking all over the marble floor.

The next few days had been hell until Master Derek returned.  He treated me with his medication, and when I awoke next most of the pain was gone, other than some bruising and swelling that I had long since become accustomed.  I recalled being almost pain free for once, which was chill weird!   The next couple slotting weeks had been some of the best I could recall, he even got me pizza three days in a row once!  Ice cream once.  I should have known better.  Not that we were mistreated on a regular basis after so many years, other than the obvious, but we weren’t coddled either.  Master Derek had told the others he wanted me to study some strange chips, which was chill; biology and the human body and some other wiz stuff.  It was really pretty wavy, and while it didn’t make a bunch of sense at first, I thought I’d been doing better.  

I hadn’t even had to go to some of the regular sessions either. I mean, I still had to entertain some of the slogs, but it had only been some of the regs, and the chiller ones at that.    There had been all kinds of weird tests, but only once had I been able to do something similar, and that had been after they used the restraints again.  I’d passed out this time from lack of breath.  

Then Master Derek left again for awhile, and when he came back there was a new Master and Mistress with him.  Master Jonne was an elf like me!  He didn’t say a lot, but he didn’t beat me either.  I couldn’t really follow any of the stuff he was trying to teach me though I tried for weeks.  Mistress Fiera was scary though, a massive troll that just towered monstrously over me. I mean her fraggin’ arm was bigger than my entire body then, and she always had a slight smell of blood underneath.  Once though, with her tests I’d seen a golden glow erupt from his left hand.   Slottin’ magic!  It had been a seriously chill sight.

I’ll never forget what happened the next morning though, I mean I guess I did for a few months, but I doubt I’ll forget again.  They took me to one of the training rooms, and Carlos, Angie, and Katie were tied in various poses on different beds. Then Mistress Fiera explained that for every time I failed one of her tests, they’d punish one of my chummers.  I  didn’t really understand what they were asking at first, I mean I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not really. I never figured out how they knew that they were my only real friends. Where the others had been sent over the last half a dozen years, no one really knew.  We dreamed they escaped, but escaped to what? Probably death I realize now.  Once and awhile, when they moved us from one setting to another, I’d see someone I remembered, but not very often.   

The four of us had been together for as long as I could remember at that point.  I was the youngest of course, although we didn’t really know for sure.  I’d have been twelve then or so from what the masters had guessed.   Carlos said he was fourteen, Katie thirteen and Angie was probably seventeen, although she looked younger, at least that’s what everyone said.  They all remembered their parents, but I had no clue of mine.   Carlos’s had been attacked by some sort of toxic sludge near some place called New Orleans.  Katie’s mom had been eaten by some sort of ghouls outside a place called Shattergraves.  Angie, well, she just new her Dad didn’t come home one night.  My earliest memories were of Master Derek, and a friend of his named Taki.  

Even now, my mind balked at recalling all the memories of that horrific session. Mistress Fiera gave the commands, but several others punished my friends for my failures. I no longer really remembered the early stuff, some of it was just quizzes on things I had been told to read and study, and punishments for missing those answers, while not pleasant for my three friends, weren’t really anything different than what we had been trained for in order to serve the johns.  But each time I missed something, the punishments were harder, longer, or more violent.  Every time someone bled, the smile on Mistress Fiera’s  grew more terrifying.   Always before, blood had been accidental, but not that night.

When she started ordering me to demonstrate the magical stuff they had been working on, I panicked.  I begged, pleaded and cried that I didn’t know how to do it.  Even now, what they did to Angie with the “toy” sickens me when I remember it, and I have seen a lot of drek in my years, both before that night and the five years or so since.  It didn’t matter though because after that dreadful drek I couldn’t focus enough to demonstrate anything. I cried and cried, sobbing my apologies to my chummers over and over again.  Talon still says it’s best that I can’t see it all, although I’m not sure how she would know.  

They turned to Carlos next.  I didn’t recognize the silver tool Mistress Fiera took off the tray, although I know what it is now of course. Carlos was already bruised badly across large parts of his body, with several minor cuts for other questions I had gotten wrong, but still nothing too permanent.  I can’t really see what they are doing, although they tightened the belts on Carlos until he really couldn’t move at all.  The massive troll gave me thirty seconds to do to Carlos what I had done to the fat man or else.  I tried, I really did……or so I’ve always believed, but could I have succeeded?  Who knows, I didn’t. When the time passed, no magic came, none.  I learned what the tool did then though as blood poured down Carlos’ legs onto the floor.  I’ve never forgotten his piercing screams, even when I forgot everything else for awhile, they haunted me.

I never remember anything else from later that night other than the flames…..I’ve been trying to escape that drek and hunt the fuckin’ slog monsters ever since.

I shudder awake, having drifted off into the nightmarish memory.  I grab Maverick’s arm, and yell for him to pull over, panic on my face.  Maverick hit the breaks, sliding to a stop on the graveled road.  I yank open the door, jumping out, barely getting out of the vehicle before emptying the rest of my stomach all over the road.   As my stomach heaves again and again, orange flames danced and flew all over the astral terrain around my aura, warming me, invisible to the rest of the team.