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Life is givennew meaning when spent in captivity.
If you can call time spent in captivity life at all. I go into it knowing what to expect—the absolute worst cruelty humanly possible. Nothing short of what the devil himself is capable of. I should know; I was given a taste of it for years.
But that was just it.
A taste.
When I’m taken, it’s with the damning knowledge I’m a dead man. I’m about to be put through hell. I’m going to suffer as much as a human can possibly suffer before their body gives out and can take no more.
I fought like no other. The whole time, knowing I wasn’t going to win. Me and two of my guys against a whole crew? Even I’m not that good.
But I put up a fight. I gritted my teeth and swung my fists. I fired my gun. I lodged my Balisong knife in the eye socket of a soldier or two. Their blood splattered on me, and I counted it as a trophy like I always do. I worked my way through ’til the odds became insurmountable and I was toppled. They finally overpowered me.
I was dragged before Lucius beaten, bruised, and bloodied.
He sat back in his big leather chair, a glass of whiskey in his meaty palm, and helaughed.
“Who stabbed him?” he asked.
“That was Donatello, Boss,” De Trolio said, gleaming with pride at his soldier’s work.
Lucius nodded his approval. “Take him to his cell. No food. No water. No nothing. Let him sit on the cold, hard ground and think about how he’s a piece of shit. Fuckingscarafaggio.”
Hate poisoned his voice. Hate burned in his glare as he looked at me like scum on his shoe.
Nothing new, always expected, but packing an extra punch given the circumstances.
Two men gripped my limp body by my arms and dragged me away like a lifeless dummy. I was tossed inside a dark, wet cell made of concrete and reeking of piss and stale air. My body smashed into the hard surface as I landed on my side. Not the good side either, the side with the broken ribs.
For who knows how long, I laid there, barely able to breathe, ’til I worked up enough energy to roll myself over. My eyes slipped closed. I fell asleep for what felt like a second but what must’ve been hours, because I coughed being woken up.
One of the guards kicked me hard in the side. Still not the good side, the side with the broken ribs. He laughed doing it, repeating the action two more times, the acute pain making it so that my side felt like I’d never inhale a normal breath again.
“Get the fuck up, bitch.”
Another thing I’ve had to grow used to—being talked to as subhuman. I’m nobody within these walls.
The most rookie guards get to beat the shit out of me, treat me like I’m the garbage they toss away each day.
That guy in particular dragged me out my cell for what they call in-processing. What’s otherwise known as humiliation to any person with dignity. Stripped naked, hosed down, I’m paraded like that. Naked ’til they toss a worn pair of pants at me to wear. Nothing else, no socks, no shoes, certainly no luxuries like a shirt.
I’m chained like a fucking dog to the pipes in the boiler room.
“Where the real fun starts,” the guard taunts as he yanks on the chains connected to my wrists. “You’re property now, which means you’ve got to have the mark. Rules are rules. Hopefully we get it right the first time.”
He did not get it right the first time.
I was chained to the boiler, forced to stand stock-still or risk burning the rest of my body against the steaming hot pipes, as a smoking iron pressed into the back of my shoulder. My skinsizzled. It fucking melted as the burning hot iron fused with it, branding my flesh with the Mancino logo, reflecting ownership.
Property, as the asshole guard called it.
My teeth clenched and my muscles flexed, my body bracing for the pain. But there was no preparing for it—the heat seared into my flesh unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I inhaled the sickening stench of burning flesh.
My burning flesh.
But I didn’t give them a real reaction. I bore the extreme pain in silence. I was knocked down to the ground, kicked in my side. He called on his friends, who eagerly joined in. A group of them circled me and got their laughs in, jamming their steel-toe boots into different points of my bruised body.
One sick fuck, who I learned was named Gilbert, voiced aloud how he thought it’d be fun to take the iron to other parts of me. Really mutilate me,reallydo damage.
