Wicked Bliss

The torture continued on the second day. The Master came in early to empty her bucket. He didn’t speak to her, and she didn’t make a sound when she realised he’d entered other than quick, scared breaths. Any time he stood near her, she flinched, recoiled, or retracted her head. He came with another round of water for her to drink and then washcloths again and scrubbed her down as he had before. She took it docilely enough but trembled and made soft, muffled moans when he treated her face where the fur had been burned away and the skin was seared and raw. He shushed her and patted her reassuringly, chuckling again.

A few hours passed. It could have been around lunchtime because when the Master opened the door and clicked on the yellow light, he was chewing something, and once he’d rattled the trolley back into the room, he was picking at his teeth with a cocktail stick. He was whistling as he selected an assortment of tools, lining them up on the top tray. He hovered a hoof over them when he was ready as though choosing a chocolate from a box. He settled on the wrench and then stooped to collect a bulky blowtorch from the bottom shelf. The hiss of its ignition elicited a tilt of the head from Rainbow Dash. The Master watched her, smiling to himself, placing the tip of the wrench at the head of the flame. Slowly it began to heat up, and finally when it was glowing red, he killed the torch, put it back, and stepped up to Rainbow Dash. He gave her no warning, jabbed the hot metal into her stomach. There was a hiss, and Rainbow Dash gave a great muffled scream and thrashed, banging the back of her head again and again off the desk top.

He came back again later. This time it was a straightforward beating. His kicks and punches weren’t skilful, but with his weight the blows were hard, and she had no way of mitigating them. Blood, drool, and snot all dripped from Rainbow Dash’s head, which hung loose once he’d finished with her. With her patches of raw skin, blackened fur, stains, and swellings, she was starting to look less like Rainbow Dash and more like a prop from a Halloween shop.

The day ended with a change of pace. The Master started by firing a taser at her. She gurgled, rigid as a board as the current passed through her, and he opened the knots and released the belts. She tumbled to the floor. He’d removed the bucket so it wouldn’t spill. Before she could even reach to remove the blindfold, he’d kicked her in the face, and she gave a grunt through the gag and smacked her head on the wall. He zapped her with the cattle prod again and again until she was cringing away with nowhere to go. Then he would just wait, sometimes for over ten minutes, saying nothing, until she’d gathered herself enough to attempt to find a way back up onto her hooves, at which point he would zap her again. After nearly two hours of this she had curled up into a shaking ball, twitching and shuddering. He knelt down beside her and soothed her before dragging her back to the base of the bed frame, pulling her upward, propping her against the desk top, and tying her up again. It was a struggle at first not because Rainbow Dash was resisting but because she could barely stand up by herself.

On the morning of the third day the Master wanted to talk again. He’d pulled the gag out and offered her water. She drank much more slowly than before but still managed two of the double mugs before shaking her head. ‘Anything to eat?’ he asked. Rainbow Dash shuddered and shook her head. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You must be hungry.’

‘Two days,’ she croaked.

‘Mm?’

‘You said …’

‘Oh, that’s right. Two days.’ He leaned in and chuckled, flicking her face. She shrank back; the back of her head once again hit the desk top. ‘Well, let’s see,’ he said. ‘Do you want to go?’ She said nothing. ‘Well?’ He jabbed her in the chest, and she coughed, grimacing. ‘Do you want to go?’

‘Yes,’ she wheezed.

‘What’s that?’

‘Yes! I want to go!’

‘After what we’ve been through together? I’ve cleaned you up. Treated your wounds. Fed and watered you.’

The look she managed to give him in spite of everything, of mingled fury, pride, and contempt, prompted him to cut out the games if only for a moment. ‘Fine,’ he snapped, glaring at her. The smile was back on his face quickly enough. ‘Wait here,’ he said as though she had the choice, and he turned, unlocked the door, and closed it behind himself.

When he came back, he was holding a long, narrow stick of wood; it was a fence post from a field. Coiled around it was a bunch of rope. He had the cattle prod hanging on his belt, so when Rainbow Dash slumped to the floor once again, she blinked, swallowed, and made no attempt to fight. He grabbed her roughly and pushed her over into prone position. She grunted, squeezed her eyes tightly together as they began to tear up again from the pain, but held in her voice. He dragged her forelegs together behind her back, fed the fence post through the gap between them and her shoulders, and started winding the rope around both, tugging everything tightly into place. If she were to stand, she’d have to use only her rear hooves and stoop to counterbalance the weight on her back. Except he turned her over again and pushed her remaining legs close to her body and tied them in place first with the belts from the desk top and then with spare cord. She was stuck firmly in a low squat. She couldn’t roll, because the post prevented it, and she couldn’t take a proper step, because her legs wouldn’t move. He stuffed the gag back into her mouth and rewrapped the blindfold around her head.

‘You want to go,’ he said once he’d risen and opened wide the door. ‘So go. The front door’s open. I won’t stop you.’

It was a near-hopeless situation because it would have been hard enough for her to get out of the room when she couldn’t see and barely move let alone when she was additionally impaired by the injuries she’d sustained. What’s more she had no knowledge of the plan of the building she was in, how many rooms, the locations of staircases or doors. She spent the next few minutes shuffling through positions, gaining ground minutely only to lose it subsequently with her next loss of orientation. When she fell backward, too much weight on the post dug into her back and pulled at her joints. The solution in the end was to move forward by falling onto her face and tossing, moving like a worm, each inch costing the most miserable struggle. But the wounds on her face, which had barely closed, would not permit her to put up with the friction, so she seesawed to her hooves, where she squatted indefinitely. After a while she was snivelling. After a longer while she was squirming, attempting weakly to smack her face on the ground as though to knock herself out, muffled squeals leaking from her snout. As the time crept on, they dissipated into croaks.

The Master had left the room after a few minutes of amused spectating, and when he returned, he found her leaning into a corner, some of the weight of her held up by the ends of the post, which were touching the two walls. The moment he removed the gag she rasped, ‘Please …’

‘I take it you want to stay then?’

‘Please …’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you until you tell me that you’ll stay.’

Rainbow Dash’s pleading devolved into snivels and sobs. The Master waited. ‘Say that you’ll stay,’ he prompted.

‘I—I’ll stay …’

‘And I’ll help you,’ said the Master, grinning.

He took the vegetable knife from his belt, and in a few seconds he’d cut the ropes. The post rolled to the floor with a thunk. Rainbow Dash collapsed into the wall, her limbs flopping like dead fish to rest beside the heap that was her ruined body. ‘I’ve had a change of heart,’ said the Master, kneeling beside her and whispering in her ear. ‘You’ve impressed me, so I’ve decided to help you. You’re going to love me for this.’

He took from his belt an injection like the one he’d paralysed her with on the day he’d taken her, only this one had in it a thick-looking liquid, bright pink. He gave it to her, stroking her scraggly mane. Then he pulled her like a sack of potatoes to the bed frame. If the injection had done anything for her, you couldn’t see it. Apart from her breathing she looked all but dead. He strapped her torso, raised her legs, tied them up one by one. He neglected to replace the gag or the blindfold, as though they wouldn’t be needed any longer, left them hanging on their posts.

It took a while, but then she moaned, a deep, quiet sigh at first, but soon her voice found itself again, and she was giving off croaky, raspy moans. Her eyelids flickered. She moaned again, louder. The Master sniggered and stepped slowly backward out of the room. This time he didn’t lock it.

He left her strapped there, moaning softly, her eyes rolling into the back of her skull.