** Authors note: Warning, extreme content **

They made me hurt this time.

You know how I'm always banging on about pain and pleasure being two sides of the same credit-chip? Well, this wasn't that kind of pain. This was serious, non-fun, torture pain.

Mainly because I was seriously tortured.

Of course, after a preliminary kicking, they'd dragged me off to a special room and started with my teeth again, seriously, no imagination. After that though, things took a turn for the worse. Yes yes, worse than having your (only recently grown back) teeth pulled out one by one? For sure. That was just the starter.

Now, I've been on both ends of torture before. Mostly, I'll admit, on the administering side, although not as much as you might imagine for, what some* people call a brutal dictator. Mainly it's because there are far better ways of getting information out of people than torture, which is not reliable. If the person is going to cave in at the threat of pain, they do so very quickly in my experience. If they aren't the type to cave, then they'll, eventually, end up just telling you what they think you want to hear. Like I said, not reliable.

It's much easier just to stick a probe into their brain and scan their thoughts and memories. Of course, you can make that hurt too if you like, just for kicks.

Apart from extracting information then, the only other reason for real, serious, torture is revenge, and, frankly, I've rarely felt bothered enough for that.

Naturally there's the kinky stuff, whips and sticks, gags and ropes and, sometimes the odd knife here and there, but that's just fun, something all the family can enjoy.

No, this was the second option. Inflicting pain and suffering for revenge. And old Horny was getting his money's worth, let me tell you.

I had been strapped down to a table at first, although later not so much, mainly because of the fact they'd chopped my legs and arms off. Okay, I mean, not right away, that would have been too quick. They'd started small, with the fingernails.

I will admit, the guard doing all this knew their stuff, I'd have been impressed, even hired them, in another situation. I wasn't so thrilled about their skill in my current position of course.

Anyway, so once the fingernails were out, then they smashed my bones, slowly, starting from the hands and working their way up to the shoulders.

My screams had been legendary at this point. And, before you ask, yes, I would have passed out from the pain, but they had injected me with something to stop that happening.

Sometimes advanced medical science sucks.

How can I explain the pain? Agony so great you just want it to stop, even if that means death.

Well, maybe the closest I could come is if you get a really bad, sharp toothache. I know most bodies have this sort of thing phased out, or you can usually just turn off the nerves, but perhaps you live in a primitive world where this doesn't happen. Anyway, imagine the really bad, super painful toothache, and now imagine that all over your body. And you can't make it go away.

Constant, scream inducing agony. Well, that was my world, and I didn't enjoy it.

After my legs and arms were crushed, they sawed them off, slowly, so I was just a head and torso.

They took a break then, to fuck me a few times. Seemed my aura was still working at least.

Then, rest time over, back to it. One of my eyes was plucked out and left hanging down the side of my head, which gave me some odd images that I still have nightmares about sometimes.

Then it was a bit of random cutting. My lips were cut off, both from my face and elsewhere, along with my nipples and any bits that I had left that were convenient.

Finally they slit my stomach open and dug out my guts.

At this point my vision was, finally, beginning to fade. Whether it was through loss of blood (which they'd also managed to reduce substantiality, or I'd have bled to death long since) or the pain was finally overwhelming the medication I don't know. I do know that my mind had begun to hallucinate, so they were working with diminishing returns on the torture front.

I just about remembered them sticking something up my ass, tying something around my neck and lifting me over a fire. They were going to roast me on a spit for dinner for fuck's sake!

As the flames licked at my ravaged body, my last thoughts were that I hoped I gave them food poisoning.

*A few billion here and there.

~*~

I woke up screaming.

“Hey, it's all right, you're all right,” a familiar voice near me said.

Panting hard, I looked around. I was back, once again, in the resurrection room. The robo-droid was just floating off, having done whatever it did to bring me around.

Standing to my right was Echo. She reached out to touch my arm, but I jerked back.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling away slightly.

“No,” I shook my head. “No, it's just I'm a bit on edge, you know?”

She nodded, and, just for a fraction of a moment I thought I saw Gurgo the Great look out of her eyes. “You'd better get used to it,” he said. Then it was all Echo again, looking concerned for little old me.

“They didn't take long to get heavy,” she said.

Taking a deep breath, I checked my arms and legs. Yep, they were back. Swinging said limbs off the table, I looked at her. She was still damned cute, stood there in her tiny little bikini. Despite everything I'd just been though, I felt horny looking at her. Which, of course, meant she felt that too.

No, not now, I said to myself. Trying to 'turn off' my feelings I dropped to the floor and started walking back to my cell.

“Why are you always here when I come around?” I asked. “Well, before you it was Jolly of course, but we had a falling out.”

She shrugged. “I don't know. There's always someone waiting when you wake up. They're odd like that. I think they have a set of rules that must be followed, no matter how stupid they seem. Like the exercise time, you know?”

I nodded, wondering if there was anyway to take advantage of this.

“And they never attack you in your cell either,” she went on, stroking my shoulder. I breathed a little deeper and forced myself to stand further away. She took the hint and dropped her arm.

“Well, thanks anyway,” I said.

We reached my cell and I stepped inside. She looked like she wanted to come in too, and I really wanted her to, but I shook my head. “Not now. I need to rest, you know?”

Echo nodded in turn. “Next time then,” she said.

“Yeah.” I watched her go and went to lay down on my bunk. The door slid shut by itself, but I was asleep by then.