WHEN I WOKE UP, I was strapped to a stainless steel table with gutters running down its edges to a drain hole.
The Prayer was leaning over the table, hungrily rubbing its jagged forelegs together in anticipation of a feast. Its bulbous black eyes, glistening like oil-slicked basketballs, were maybe six inches away from my face. Its snakeskin snout twitched as its red dreadlocks dribbled down between its antennae to tickle my chest and neck.
I fought against my restraints but it was no use. I was trapped like a formaldehyded frog pinned to a block of wax.
I glanced to my left.
Mel was holding a pair of jumper cables.
“Call it the Stockholm syndrome,” Number 1 boasted. “The kidnap victim now sides with her captor… ME! But, can you blame her, Danny Boy? You see, I showed Melody a little snippet of you and Dana sleeping under the stars in that worthless museum. I showed her how you were gawking at that stardust girl when she sashayed onto your train. Poor, poor little orphan boy Danny. You had no father to teach you about girls because I killed him before he could. So, allow me to school you: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!”
“Wait a second.…” I zeroed in on Mel. “You are Dana. Dana is you.…”
But she wasn’t listening.
She was clamping her jumper cables to my toes. One was the grounding cable. The other a hot-wire.
She flicked a switch and sent a sizzling electrical shock soaring through my neuromuscular system. The pain was excruciating.
And then it stopped. I nearly cried from relief.
Until Mel hit the switch for the second time.
My body spasmed. My fingers splayed out in agony. My back bucked and my head banged against the hard steel table.
That’s when I knew the girl torturing me wasn’t Mel.
Melody Judge could never be that cruel to any living creature.
Clearly, this torture was going on inside my head, though the burns on my wrists from straining against the straps felt pretty real.
The Mel thing flicked the switch again, cutting off the electricity that had fried who knows how many of my brain’s synapses—right when I needed my full mental powers. If this torture was a mind game, the only way to fight back would be to imagine the pain away.
But before I could, the Mel thing flipped the switch again.
“No,” I begged through numb lips as my body convulsed on the table. “Stop. Please.”
The Prayer mocked my pleading. “S-s-top! P-p-p-lease! Ha!”
So did the thing that wasn’t really Mel. “What a wuss!”
Then she cranked up the voltage.
I knew the pain searing every fiber of my being wasn’t real but it seemed a whole lot worse than real.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mel!” I screamed hysterically. “Whoever you are. Stop. Please!”
All I heard in response to my plea was uncontrollable laughter.
From The Prayer and his newest disciple: my soul mate Mel.