He could taste blood, his blood, maybe someone else’s, he wasn’t sure. His arms burned with the acid running through his veins as he hung, stretched like a crucifix in the dark cave. His body ached like nothing he’d ever felt before. He kept reminding himself to go back to his old Drill Sergeant and tell him that he found a pain worse than the man’s boot on his neck. Sweat poured down his body, stinging and burning the open wounds on his shoulder and down his chest in a gruesome road map of agony. His nose had become used to the smell of his own piss running down his leg, since he never moved from this spot, not even to use the bathroom. Each breath he prayed was his last on this earth as he began to sway again, getting a little of the breeze from his movements. In a word; Titus was fucked.
He’d not seen daylight in what felt like days. If not for his power, he’d have never figured out that he’d been in this hell for close to a week. Each day was the same routine. The daylight hours would be slaves beating him relentlessly with no reason but to do it. He was fed rotten bread and stagnant water quenched the aching thirst in his throat. At night, he’d come. With all the pomp and circumstance of a coronation, he would come into the room, watching Titus hang from the ceiling, arms spread and feet tied together with just an inch separating him from the ground. Then he’d feed. The man, using nails on his fingers that seemed as if they could cut the moon would peel away the skin of his shoulder in thin little strips. The man would then eat the strips like spaghetti slurping into his fanged mouth.
Tonight was no different as Titus once more felt that slow rush of cool breeze flow through his veins almost washing away the acid pumping from his heart. Thirty minutes later (Titus could set his watch to it if he had it,) the man entered with no less pomp than the first time he entered this Hell on Earth. He was dressed in purple, and from the look of it the finest silks and satins all of Iraq could afford. Titus wasn’t sure he was in Iraq anymore. When he was kidnapped it was just south of Fallujah, now he could be anywhere in the Middle East. The man, for his blaring pale skin was a native to the land, obvious in ways if you stared long enough and Titus would have this man’s face etched into his brain forever. Gold and jewels that would have cost Titus a year’s pay adorned the fingers and neck of this wraith of a Middle Eastern man. The gold toothed grin seemed almost stereotypical as he laughed into Titus’s young face and clapped his hands, “Please, clean this dog, I will not speak with animals this filthy.” His accent was thick enough, but Titus could understand him easily enough. English was not this man’s first language.
Hand-maidens with the beauty legends were made of came and washed Titus down with salt water. Once more something he couldn’t drink but would burn his body up. He was at least clean of the dirt and dried blood but the open wounds still seeped from time to time. Titus watched as the man leaned in and punctured his shoulder with one of those nails and pulled it out, the color of the crimson of Titus’s life. He licked it clean with fangs just as long as the nails and a tongue black as the night itself. He gave a bellowing laugh that shook the cave and caused the multitude of guards armed with swords and guns to falter just a bit.
“What’s so funny, I thought you weren’t supposed to eat pork.” Titus gave a weak laugh as he spat out the response. He was rewarded with a back hand across his cheek that split it open and made Titus pray for unconsciousness, but it never came.
“Quiet animal, animals do not talk unless they are spoken to, have you no manners. Is not your military here to teach us such manners of the Western world?” The man began to lean back and as if on cue one of the guards produced a chair of a wood Titus could only describe as pricey. The man sat down and stared up at Titus awaiting a response.
“Titus Morgan, C.A.T. tag: 7932115, call sign: harbinger,” Was his only reply.
“Yes yes, I know this my little toy, but you see, I am still trying to figure out, why you are here, on my land, my soil. There is no interest here for you. For your soldiers, yes, but not you, you have no right to be on my lands.”
“I’ll have to tell my leaders about that then, you got a phone?” Titus smiled down to the man. Before he died, he just hoped he could get under his skin.
“Yes, now we are how you dogs say, getting somewhere, who is your leader, little toy? I’d like to know why he brought a controller of the dead onto my sands. Who is he?”
“That dude…that dude that fucks your mother.” Once more Titus was rewarded with a back hand from the man. So fast was the fist that Titus never saw it, just felt its sting long enough to send him swinging in the chains with another bit of blood missing from him.
The man in the satin and silk stared at him leaning in real close, nearly touching Titus’s nose with his own. “You will have to pay for that, my little toy, just as you will pay for each day your country is in my land, my territory.” Titus couldn’t stare at his eyes, he knew better, so his nose was the only thing he focused on as he wished and prayed death on this man.
“I wouldn’t get too close there Sultan, I’m a biter.” Titus made a lunge towards that nose but teeth clasped onto air instead as the man flinched back. “What’s the matter,” Titus said as the man produced those nails and began to swirl them around his bicep, peeling the skin away from muscle, “Are you afraid of something?”
Titus awoke with a start and laughter in his head. His first reaction was to go for the gun, and magically he found it in his hand. A dream, he was sure; nothing more than the same nightmare for nearly seven years now. Nonetheless Titus got up and cleared the house as he knew he would and how he always did each and every time that man would step into his dreams. He ended up in the bathroom, so he laid the Colt 1911 on the side of the sink and splashed water on his face before looking in the mirror. One thing he never could figure out after each dream, who was laughing?
