CHAPTER 1

I didn't know how long I was there. It could have been a month. Or a year... maybe a decade. It felt like a century.

When I came to, at first, I only remembered the feeling of being strangled. I tried to move, to struggle against the iron grip on my throat. But it was to no avail. When my last breath seemed to leave my body, and the pain in my lung left my head blank, I died.

Or did I?

When I came to, I was held aloft in a dark chamber. My arms and legs were bound. My breath was ragged but steady enough. I was alive, that was for sure, and it uplifted my spirit for a moment.

When the single, iron-clad door to his chamber opened, I felt a tiny sliver of hope. Whatever it was that forced him into this cell, it must have been a mistake. I had never done anything that deserved this kind of treatment... or had I? My mind was jumbled, but the hope remained. Until I took in the sight of my unbidden visitor.

A giant — muscled like a strongman on steroids — squeezed himself through the doorframe. He sported an entirely red tan as if the sun had burned the white off him. Two curled horns sprouted off his bald scalp and the 'clap' of his hooven feet let my skin tingle like a thousand ants crawling up his skin as I recognised them for what they were. His face was all broad hard edges and a square, elongated chin. Although he had no beard, the eyes gleamed with a yellow iris and square-shaped pupils.

"Ahm, hello there… this must be a—" a quick punch to my jaw cut off the sentence quite efficiently. It was enough to make me cry out in a fury. Not enough to teach me to shut up.

The goat-man grinned maliciously. I recovered fast, staring into the goat-man's eyes with the same malice.

My defiant demeanour vanished quickly when the abomination's fist connected with my gut.

My vision exploded in pain as I vomited my stomach contains over the floor. In my twenty years, only the one time I broke an arm was comparable to that suffering. But a second punch to the same spot broadened my horizon on how much pain a human could feel. A few minutes later, my very innards already screamed with agony. My abdominal muscles were a mush of bloody pain as I finally lost consciousness.

When I woke up again, everything hurt. As if the pain spread from my centre into every single muscle in my body. I groaned once, and the door to my cell opened immediately. My whole body spasmed in fear at the sight of my torturer as the goat-man entered the room again, the same unrelenting, cruel smile on his face.

The abomination did not utter a word. He waved his left arm in a grand arc as if to announce the entrance of a star-guest to the show.

Following the motion, my blood froze as I took in the various instruments that littered the wooden table next to him.

I whimpered when my torturer neared an arm-long knife at the table. I soiled myself when the goat-man moved over to an elongated steel device with screws to crush whatever was between them, slowly. But at the end, the red-skinned monster decided on a simple, small hammer and walked over to his helpless captive, still the same smile on his face.

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The goat-man gently tapped the kneecap of my right leg with the hammer as if to let me know what would happen next. I cried, cursed and begged.

And the hammer struck true, shattering my kneecap. Tears watered my sight as I cried out from the excruciating pain. I couldn't bear it. Not even for a second. All my thoughts were limited to a single goal: it had to stop! The pain had to stop. "Please, I tell you everything I can, I'll do everything you want! Whatever you want from me, I'll do it!" I tried to negotiate.

My pleading enticed the first vocal response from my torturer: a chuckle. A menacing, cruel chuckle.

And then the hammer struck my other kneecap. Even begging was beyond me as my brain locked up in a torrent of pain. Every time I thought it couldn't get any worse, the goat-man taught me better by shattering another bone until I finally lost consciousness again, the torture overwhelming my nervous system.

But die, I did not. When I woke up again, everything hurt again. But I could move my feet. Whatever happened, my kneecaps were there again. Ready to be shattered again…

It was only on the fifth day that I stopped counting days. My brain was not up to the task anymore when the goat-man entered my cell once more. The sadistic goat's smile was broad as ever when he dragged the massive iron pot of water inside the small cell. For just an instant, my mind deigned to hope that I would be washed off my bloody state and be brought in front of some ruler to beg for forgiveness for whatever.

Then the goat-man shoved the pot underneath my feet and lowered the chains that held me above ground. When my feet touched the water, I felt how dearly my throat needed the liquid substance. The pain yielded to thirst, I tried to bow down near the water, but the iron chains held me up, far from the relieving liquid surrounding my feet.

The goat-man chuckled, kindling up a fire beneath the pot. A fire that did not stop burning beneath the pot of water that my feet were submerged in.

Bound as I was, I could not escape the nearly boiling pot, so I bent my knees to my breast, keeping my feet out of the water. The goat-man laughed and turned to a windlass that I had not recognised yet.

The goat-man 'blehd' as if to mock me, as he worked the windlass, relieving the strain on the chains that held my body aloft. Letting my whole body sink near the big, boiling pot of water. "Wait, please, I lower my feet again, please," I begged, but as always, it was to no avail.

I cried, sobbed and begged further when my buttocks started to touch the boiling water, but the goat-man just stood there, smiling at his victim's outage—smiling as my flesh began to boil from my bones.

I did not know which day it was. Nor did I know the month. Or year. The door opened, and I knew it was time for his daily torture. What would it be this day? The Hot iron? The boiling water? The insects? The last option was the one I feared the most. With time, the goat-man found ways to keep me conscious for a longer time.

And with the insects, he even made it to several days before I finally succumbed to… death? Was it death? I didn't know. What I did know was that I always came back to life. There was no escaping.

I almost jumped out of my skin when I suddenly heard a different voice addressing me.

"So you are the earthling that held on?" a fruity, mature voice reached my ears. The impossibly sensual, female vibrations of her voice nearly forced my member to stand, despite the situation.

What I saw, gliding down the stairs to my dungeon, was more than any man could stand after what I went through. A Woman. Clothed in a see-through white dress that left nothing out. My tortured mind did not know what to focus on— her perfect breasts, the slim waist or the wide hips that perfected her unequalled body.

This Otherworldly being lifted my chin from the chains I was bound to. And her gaze stuck me like a deer in the light of a car.