He couldn't open his eyes.

Of this he was most acutely aware as his breathed raggedly, starved, and he finally tasted the stale, rotted air. Such putrid filth that suffocated rather than rejuvenated his long suffering lungs. Such a suffering he took for only a few moments longer, before the panic ran through him, hot and rapid as he tried to conjure everything that he had been made up to be, in the eyes of everyone. And he fought to move, fought to flail, fought to reclaim his dignity and fight out against this humiliation. But none of his golden boy, limber muscles could so much as twitch, as he felt the strains of his bondage cut deep into him, until the raw marks of fledgling bruises ran rings around him, beneath those black, serpentine cords.

And so he screamed. Screamed in fear and frustration and hate, as wildly as any beast, until the soul of her shoe came crushing down upon his twisted, blinded face, the heel of her stiletto piercing the tender flesh of his cheek and skewering his tongue so that his screams came as drowning, choking, soprano gurgles. So shrill and feminine and desperate! And she couldn't help but giggle as she drew the heel from his ruined flesh, no longer the living manifestation of some ancient, pagan god.

And yet he would not shush his howling, his pissing and moaning. He was as stupid as they come.

But she was forgiveness. And surely this creature deserved a sliver of her mercy?

Crouching in the growing puddle of his blood she had laid her withered hand upon his face and drew tender circles in the ragged edges of his wound, humming quietly a song that might have soothed, once, a child. So close was it to a lullaby. And his screams gave way to tormented whimpers, and she knew this was as close as he'd come to silence, until he was broken.

"You see, pet? You see what you've made me done? I've gone and ruined your pretty, pretty face..."

And her voice was nothing as he might have perceived, for it was old and jaded, soft and sweet, holding in its quiet undertones the slightest amount of hardness. The voice of a grandmother, lightly scolding a doted on grandchild. And his mind, already a pulsating mass of ebony pain and mayhem, could not comprehend. But that was fine. The woman was batshit insane. Of course she would explain.

Didn't they always?

But he would simply have to wait.

After all! She had been waiting years, decades, for this particular boy. The rancid offspring of them who had drove her own child insane, until they padded him away to rot and fester, his mind picked and probed and his body abused. Her son, the guinea pig.

But she was so much sweeter, so much kinder than that.

His torment would last a life time- decades upon decades of suffering.

While this boy would perhaps only last a few months before she treated him to the sweetness of oblivion.

And the score would be settled, finally, and she could rest in peace. A selfish old woman, destined for one hell or another, in this life or the next.