Worse Than Death

I can think of things so much worse than death.

Imagine being stripped completely bare of your clothing. Oh you still have your pride, your individuality, your own mind and beliefs. You have your own spirit. But there you stand naked, at the hands of your tormentors, and you know that this is merely the beginning.

A warning.

A warning of what they are to do to you. They plan no more or less to do to your mind and soul, what has been done to your body. Stripped bare and for the world to see. To be a servant to them, to bow and to scrape. You fight them at first, but the beatings stop you. Following, obeying, and struggling against them because you believe that you will never fully let them have you. They may have your body… Cliché but true.

And for a while it is YOU who has your soul, your mind, and your spirit…

But you can be starved from so many things- - touch, sound, light, warmth, food.

Your mind slowly deteriorates from thinking into feeling. And for a while, that is your world. All that exists is the pain within you, and the world outside seems to fade just a bit. Every laugh, order, and cruel touch is burned into your mind, forever scarred and there beneath the surface. Already they have begun to mark you. And then one day you might notice how less and less you fight, how more often then not their presence is more welcome to being alone.

Soon you crave any touch that they would bestow upon you, and soon… oh so soon the pain begins to become so ingrained to your body it is a pleasure to feel at all. For when you aren't being tormented, used, tortured, humiliated, all that you can feel is this growing emptiness, gnawing away at anything left of YOU. Because that dying part of you that you had so firmly within your control, is leaving you as nothing more then a shell. Your pride is what causes that emptiness, but soon it will die too, and then you will be left with nothing but numbness. For without pride or spirit, you don't fight the tide that has been turned against you. You let the undertow drag you beneath the crusty waves and inside your mouth is a sharp bitter taste of regret that can never be fixed, the icy coldness that surrounds you is the loneliness and loss of hope.

Oh I can think of things far worse than death.

When you see that person as your master, your savior, your world, your everything.

When you are content with the thing you have become and soon forget to question it…

When you are as stripped within, as you are without. Raped of mind, body, and soul.

So much worse is it when you lose yourself, and do not think to look back and question your world of pain.

~*~

Love is like torture, it slowly sucks the life out of you.

(Read that in an email from a friend.)

Inspired by: The Reaping, Innocence Farewell, and Restraint all written by Anne Phoenix (also inspired by a book where Sleeping Beauty was turned into a slave). What can I say, Miss Phoenix inspired me. Actually all her 'RoughSide' fics kind of inspired this. What can I say? Hope you don't mind. This is my reaction after having read her stories (WHICH WERE EXCELLENT) but left me feeling …. Horrified. Which means she wrote them very very well. For any of you who don't know who she is go here: