damned_institute | NIGHTSHIFT 28: M31-M40 HALLWAY

Caim locked his jaw at Farfarello's words, still struggling even as the man started moving again. A brief rest before turning to torture, was it? He could only wonder what this demon had in store for him.

"This may hurt a little."

Crack.

Caim shut his eye and wrenched his whole body with the sudden sharp pain. It wasn't that bad (yet), but this would be no torture he'd expected; hell, he'd expected to die a bloody mess on the ground before a thousand enemy soldiers, not in some tiny room with a psychopathic demon crouched on his chest snapping his fingers. When the second finger broke, he bucked hard once, trying to upset Farfarello's balance; the third gave a similar reaction. At the fourth, Caim finally opened his mouth, lashing out in an attempt to bite Farfarello somewhere where it would hurt and failing miserably.

His hand was wracked with pain, but he still managed to keep himself in check. Caim struggled against the hands with his thumb and wrist, trying to at least make it difficult.

Farfarello chuckled softly, feeling his broken ribs grinding with the movement of his diaphragm. Licking one of Caim's broken fingers from base to tip, he murmured affectionately, "You're so cute. You still think you can win." He felt Caim's teeth graze his thigh, but was unconcerned. The blood loss wouldn't be enough to kill him, even on top of the rest of the blood he was losing from previous wounds.

Though it was the long way around, Farfarello slid back down to Caim's torso before switching over to his prisoner's other side and moving back up to reach his left hand. It was a drain on his energy, to have to move that much, but it was a lot better than exposing rather more vulnerable bits of his body to Caim's snapping teeth.

"Now this is really a lot easier to do with a pair of pliers, but we work with what we have, right?" Choosing the box-cutter over the filleting knife, for now, Farfarello slowly worked the corner of the blade under the fingernail of Caim's left thumb, prying it away from the nail bed one bloody, excruciating millimetre at a time.

Caim thrashed and bit, trying to catch something of Farfarello when the man moved, but he couldn't get far enough forward or to the sides. The sensation of that tongue running along his broken finger lingered, and he longed to shake it off, but there was something much more urgent that suddenly made its way into his mind.

Sharp pain - almost searing - under his left thumb's nail. The bastard was prying off his fingernail.

Broken fingers were one thing; this was something else. Caim thrashed and ground his teeth together, desperately trying to jerk his fingers into a fist and get them away from the knife blade. Damn it! If this was how he was going to end - bit by bit, inch by inch, taking eternities to get there - then he should just end it himself now ... !!

Farfarello watched Caim's face intently as he pried up the first nail. This was always a good test, and a wake-up call for his victim. That, or the acid, but he didn't have access to acid, here. He knew that look in Caim's eye, too. Desperation, terror, and resolve. "Ready to give up so quickly? What if you get a chance to escape later? Or are you just a coward after all?" Not that he couldn't keep Caim alive anyway--he had done this before, after all. You know, once or twice.

Smirking, Farfarello tore the fingernail he'd been working on completely off, and tossed it aside, before moving on to the index finger.

Coward?! Caim bucked again, but his body wasn't used to this specific kind of abuse and was wearing down. His lungs were bruised at this point, and the gouge just under his ribs was still slowly oozing blood. All these wounds were going to make him light-headed soon, no matter how often the pain brought him back.

I am no coward! -- Aaghk ...

His thumb convulsed with the pain of his fingernail being torn out. As Farfarello moved onto the next finger, Caim tried to bury his fingers in his palm, but it hurt too badly because of the gouge in his palm where the knife had gone through. Gods, would all these little inconveniences really lead to something so painful?!

Farfarello was beyond worn down, completely exhausted by the effort of keeping his battered body functional, but it didn't matter so much in his position--he wasn't doing anything strenuous, really, as long as he stuck to the more subtle tortures in his repertoire. Anyway, Schuldig would come back and yell at him if he lost track of time and let himself get too close to death.

Each of Caim's remaining fingernails was given the same slow, careful attention until the last one, the pinkie nail, was torn free and thrown aside. The ends of the fingers on Caim's left hand looked like so much raw meat, and blood was oozing from the wounds slowly. "Hey, Caim. I'll give you a choice. Which would you rather lose first, your useless flap of tongue, or an ear?"

Although his hand was screaming with pain and he was gasping for breath in an attempt to keep himself sane (relatively speaking), Caim almost forgot everything when Farfarello spoke again. The insult behind those words (whether it was there or not - he read too deeply into such simple statements sometimes) enraged him despite the pain and despite the helplessness of his situation.

He snapped at Farfarello, jaws closing over a foot away from the demon bastard's face, but still tried to rip him apart. You dare call me useless! It was a sacrifice, and one I was willing to make! You could NEVER have come close, you hellborn bastard!

Farfarello had sacrificed an eye for much less, really. It came of not giving a damn what happened to him. "Oh ho. Sensitive about the tongue, hmm? I think I'll save it for last, then."

That said, Farfarello snaked a hand in to grab Caim's hair, leaning down onto the man with all his weight, which would have to substitute for strength, given the circumstances. The last thing he needed was for Caim to bite his fingers off while he was working on the tough cartilege of his ear. Neither of the knives he had were ideal for the purpose, but he needed to save the filleting knife for more delicate things. Box cutter it was.

For this kind of work, Farfarello tended to wish he had three hands. Sawing through cartilege without being able to grip and brace the outside of the shell of the ear with his other hand made for a much messier line than he liked. It looked sloppy. Oh, well.

His head mostly stilled, Caim tried to lash out again now that Farfarello was closer, but the sudden presence of the knife near his face momentarily stopped him. Blades this close to him had never dont such a thing before, but before, he'd been armed as well; even when he'd been momentarily unarmed, at the mercy of some enemy soldier, he at least had armor and free limbs to fight back with.

Everything was rushing down into hell, and he could do nothing to stop it.

The sudden sawing of the small blade at his ear was enough to drag Caim out of his internal panicked plans. He tried to howl with pain, because by the Gods did it hurt! No, it wasn't his other eye, but each part of his body was still a part of him, something he could not afford to lose. And yet here he was.

It was a good thing that the box cutter had never been a spectacular sort of blade to begin with--it would have been a real shame to ruin a beautifully made knife on this kind of work. The box cutter was holding up fairly well, though--dulling a bit on the thin, flexible cartilege, but showing no signs of snapping. Finally, the ear was completely severed, and Farfarello threw it in the general direction of the discarded fingernails. "I'm told things sound very strange, with the outer ear gone. Distorted, directionless."

Moving back down Caim's body, Farfarello stopped and sat on Caim's hips this time. The sexual connotations didn't even occur to him--he wasn't interested in that right now, at all. What he was interested in was slicing off Caim's damaged shirt, to get at the terribly fragile skin beneath.

It was true - what Farfarello said, that was. While part of the voice came through properly, likely through the undamaged ear, half of it was unusual and wrong. Caim shifted his head to the side, trying to block the damaged ear from any more pain or sound. Farfarello shifted down on him (and the connotations didn't occur to Caim, either; he had zero desire, zero interest, and was worried about his death right now more than anything else).

Caim's chest heaved as he tried to keep his breathing normal. He was light-headed now, or at least getting there, thanks to all the blood loss. What was the bastard's plan now ... ?

At long last, Farfarello pulled out Lecter's filleting knife. "Do you know what this knife is designed to do? It's meant to separate skin," Farfarello touched the very tip of the knife to Caim's belly, "from meat." The knife slid through the layers of Caim's skin smoothly, performing its function perfectly. "Damn, Lecter has good taste in knives. Of course, if he was here he'd be more interested in rendering you into flank steaks and rump roasts. I just enjoy this."

Caim tried to still his breaths as the knife sliced through his skin, a sharp pain that was nothing compared to the throbbing in his head and hands. He could see the blood welling up even as his vision spotted and wavered. Skin from meat? Surely this man didn't intend to ... no. No, he said it himself.

Then he ... Caim struggled to find Farfarello's intentions. Why? What was he going to do, rend him apart? Rip out his internal organs? What?!

Skinning a live person, even a bound one, was a delicate sort of operation. A slip of the hand could cut too deep, scoring the muscle or worse. Farfarello had considerable experience with this particular art, however, so he was able to very, very carefully expose the muscles of Caim's abdomen, the bloody mess of skin coming away in one contiguous sheet. That was the hardest part, really--any idiot could cut off little bits of skin, but keeping it from tearing apart was much, much trickier.

"Almost the end now." The degree of blood loss Caim was suffering now would cause him to pass out fairly soon--no one lasted very long, when it came to being skinned.

He was --

NO!

AS the layers of skin came away, Caim's mouth opened as he tried to howl with pain again, the sensation of being skinned too much for him to bear. He wasn't some animal to be hunted and killed, rent apart for someone's use or sick enjoyment! Caim tried to break himself free even as pain wracked his body, the blood spilling down over his sides and staining the sheets bright red.

No! NO! I won't die like this! Not here, not now, not at this demon's hand!

"The funny thing about people is, we pretend like we're different, special. Blessed. But inside?" Farfarello lightly brushed his fingers over the wet, red planes of Caim's abs. "Just meat."

"That six pack you no doubt worked hard to sculpt? It's just a paired muscle, transected by bands of connective tissue. Rendered into its parts, it really doesn't mean anything." Farfarello put down the filleting knife and switched back to the box cutter, not wanting to waste the fine blade on anything he didn't need its precision for. Touching the tip of the box cutter blade to the exposed flesh just below Caim's solar plexus, Farfarello smiled. "And under here, well, guts look the same in every mammal, really, except for size."

The loss of blood, the exhaustion, and the pain were all becoming too much. Even as he continued to try and struggle, weakly, desperate for one last chance to drag himself out of the room and find someone to help him, damn it all, Caim could see the edges of his vision fading. His fingers were going numb, dulling the broken sensation; his feet were likewise.

It wouldn't be much longer now, something in the back of his head murmured even as his jaw opened to try and snarl for air, for fighting, for blood, for help. Soon he was going to pass out, and after that ...

I can't die yet! I can't die before finding her ... before getting out of here ...

It felt like forever since Farfarello had seen that look, that despairing look of realisation that men got when they were close to death. It was pure bliss, to see it again.

Farfarello's smile turned dreamy, the look in his eye one of ecstasy as he began to make what would be nearly the final cut.

With great delicacy and care, Farfarello drew his blade down the line of connective tissue separating the two sides of Caim's rectus abdominis, exposing just a hint of the vitals that lay beneath. "Have you eaten today, Caim? This could get extra messy, if you have."

With no further warning, Farfarello plunged a hand into the bleeding slit in Caim's muscle wall, viciously grabbing a slimy length of intestine and pulling it through, looking at it thoughtfully once it was out into the open air. "See? Meat, like any other."

It was the invasion of his body, the sudden rude and horrific entry into his stomach and the just as sudden removal of his insides that drew the final breath from Caim. It was terrifically painful in that instant, when his insides left his body. As he silently howled in pain, his mind a jumbled mess of rage and pain, he saw his own innards suspended by the madman's hand.

How often this sight had been presented to him, only with someone else's entrails spilling out onto the ground after he had cut them to pieces. But they had died quickly, almost mercifully, their skulls crushed or removed entirely.

His vision and pain slowly began to dull, fading into nothing. As his labored breathing was cut short by bursts of coughing inspired by spasms of pain, his struggling stopped entirely. There was no more energy to expend on fruitless tasks. He wasn't going to survive, wasn't going to get revenge, wasn't going to save her.

As the spark of life sputtered and died, Caim was left with only infallible despair (at his death, at being helpless when he died) and absolute, unending hate.

(For dying - at the one who killed him - for everything this place had done.)

For a long while, Farfarello just stayed where he was, smiling blissfully. Ah, it had been too long by far since he watched the life go out of a man's eyes. Well, eye, in this case. It had been a brief session, no time for the really intricate stuff, but still, it had been good.

Eventually though, his body started to complain loudly about the abuse it had taken. No pain, of course, but a lot of stiffness, and a distinctly unpleasant shortness of breath. Pity he couldn't do anything about that punctured lung, or the blood leaking into it. Night should end soon enough, though, and he'd be all patched up. Peachy.

In the meantime, since Roland hadn't returned yet, Farfarello decided to borrow his bed for a little rest.

[]

And William's moment of intuition was correct, as always. Walking down the hall, the doctor recognized the distinctive smell of blood. Nothing strange, especially on this night, but the doctor continued to follow the scent anyway, coming to a stop at the source. M40.

Hmm-ing to himself, William pushed the door open and stepped inside the room before coming to a stop. My.

He almost was unable to hold back an impressed whistle as he surveyed the damage. One man in pieces, clearly not the work of the vicious creatures outside, unless they were capable of tying them to beds. Intestines were scattered, blood smattering almost every surface, flesh scalped... Very creative. William turned his gaze to the second figure in the room, recognizing Fararello almost immediately.

"Enjoy yourself?"

Farfarello smiled, not opening his eye just yet. "Immensely." He looked like a man who had just had very good sex, which was more or less what he felt like, too. Never mind his injuries, he was a happy little psychopath.

"William, wasn't it? We met at breakfast one day." Farfarello made a point of never forgetting a voice, even if he wasn't necessarily good with faces. In the dark, voices were a lot more important.

"Correct," came William's response as he once again turned his attention to the disemboweled carcass. The damage was quite extensive, but even so, the body was still salvageable. It could possibly be used for a small variety of experiments... A smile came to the doctor's lips.

"Did you have any further use of this?"

Most men would question why anyone would have any use for a mutilated corpse, but not Farfarello. Hey, if William wanted to fuck with, or just fuck, a dead body, who was he to judge? "Not really. They only interest me while they can still feel."

A grin formed on the doctor's face. Wonderful. "Perfect, then I will take it off your hands." William paused for a moment, hmm-ing to himself once more. "But first, where would I be able to find medical supplies?" It was time to patch up the poor, poor man.

NIGHTSHIFT 28: M31-M40 HALLWAY

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