Sören woke up with a scream, to a shock against his right thigh. His thigh then seized up in an intense muscle spasm and he howled with agony.
He opened his eyes and saw Larry standing over him with a cattle prod in his hand. Then he looked around, and down.
He was in what appeared to be a basement, laying on a sloping table, his ankles and wrists tied. His limited range of movement meant he couldn't stretch out his leg, making the cramp worse.
He glanced over at the "man cave" section of the basement, like the one at Yeyette's house, except there was no workout equipment and Yeyette's furniture was tasteful and the couch, chairs and coffee table he was looking at now had seen better days; the garish orange-and-olive couch looked like something salvaged from a dumpster. He winced just looking at it. If they don't kill me, that ugly couch will, Sören thought to himself through the panic and pain.
Then he forced himself back to the present - distraction by looking at surroundings or conjuring a mental image of a beautiful place in nature was an old coping mechanism of his to endure his uncle Einar's beatings, but he needed to keep his mind inside his body now; his survival depended on concentration. Juniper was sitting in a brown armchair, and now she rose, carrying a bucket. Just before Sören could ask what the hell was going on, Larry smiled and put a cloth over Sören's face.
Water poured over Sören's head and he began to gag, feeling full visceral panic at the sensation of drowning. When the water stopped he gasped for breath. "Please, stop," he choked out through the cloth on his face.
There was a pause, and Sören thought that maybe they were done - just one round of this was one of the most horrible things he'd ever experienced - but then the water poured over him again, and Sören couldn't even scream, gagging, heart pounding, his entire body locked up with fear as the cramp in his right thigh continued, making the panic even worse.
Another pause. Sören tried to push with the Force against the cloth on his face and the restraints tying him to the table, but they wouldn't budge, and he felt weak - the spark wouldn't come. His shoulder was still sore from the dart where he had been injected with some kind of Force suppression drug, probably the same drug that Yeyette and Victor had been given by the United States government during and after the raid on their home in France.
Sören wondered, briefly, how Larry and Juniper acquired a drug that was in top-secret use with the government. The thought that Juniper was mixed up with something sinister and possibly had been for years chilled Sören to the core.
Then Juniper threw more water on his head, and Sören gagged and his heart hammered so hard he thought for sure he was going to die of a heart attack. It hurt to catch his breath now, every heave of his chest agony. The wet cloth was removed from his face - Sören's sweater and shirt were soaked to his skin - and he watched as Juniper took a step back.
"Bucket's empty, time to get more water," Juniper said.
Larry put a hand on her wrist, took the bucket from her and put it down. "Nayeth. Fatherest said to bringeth him aliveth. If thou keepest waterboardingeth him, he mighteth die."
Sören had always thought Larry's manner of speaking was fucking weird but this was even worse than he thought. Under other circumstances, he would find it hilariously funny, something to mock later. Now it just added to the creepiness of the whole situation, Sören's skin crawling.
Not to mention that Juniper seemed just fine with torturing him to death; it was fucked up when Larry had to tell her to stop. And... Larry's father? Sören had never met Larry's father, what the hell did that guy want with him?
"Fair," Juniper said. "Besides..." She licked her lips at Sören. "It'll be more fun if he's alive when I use the really enormous dildo on him, I want to hear him scream." She backhanded him and spat in his face. "You didn't even wake up when I put the plug inside you!"
Sören squirmed and realized there was a butt plug in his ass. He was no stranger to wearing a plug up there - Juniper had sometimes made him wear one to get him ready for being pegged later, and Anthony and Nicholas had bought him a vibrating one to tease him in public - but now he was never going to want to wear a plug again. He felt violated, even without the threat of Juniper forcing herself on him with a strap-on. He opened his mouth and couldn't make words, only an animal-like distress noise that made Juniper laugh hysterically.
"That's right. You'll always belong to me, you little bitch," Juniper said, and backhanded him again. "If Father lets me, I'll cut off your cock as a pretty souvenir."
Sören shuddered and once again tried desperately to push with the Force and free himself from the restraint table. He had no doubt this wasn't an empty threat and Juniper meant it - she was unhinged enough to stalk him, unhinged enough to waterboard him, and...
Wait, Father? Sören blinked. It was one thing to know Larry's father had something to do with this, but... were Larry and Juniper married now? Why was Juniper also calling Larry's father "Father"?
Were they actually brother and sister and never told him? Had they been fucking behind his back all along, the entire time he was with Juniper? Sören felt the urge to vomit.
Juniper took the cattle prod out of Larry's hand and then she shocked Sören's left thigh. Sören shrieked with pain, and sobbed as his thigh spasmed, the pain shooting through his side and then his whole body, making his right thigh clench again.
"We'll let you rest," Juniper said, and patted Sören on the head before kissing him on the cheek - making Sören's skin crawl even more. "Then we'll be back. Might waterboard you some more before the rapey fun times."
Juniper and Larry went upstairs, and when the door closed behind them and everything went dark, Sören broke down. He felt like his mind had been shattered, and for a few minutes he just wept in hysteria, convinced he was going to die... or that they would never stop torturing him and he'd wish he were dead.
Sören cried so hard that it aggravated his lungs, which were still recovering from the three rounds of waterboarding, and he tried to take a few deep breaths and pull himself together. If he was going to make it out of here alive and relatively unscathed, he needed to try to calm down.
Once again, he tried to push with the Force against the restraints. He pushed and pushed, and nothing. Pushed and pushed and pushed, still nothing.
More deep breaths. More pushing.
Sören closed his eyes and finally let himself zone out. The most serene mental image he could come up with was Bob Ross on Joy of Painting, making happy little trees and happy little clouds. Sören's mind's eye imagined Bob Ross painting trees made of light, a sky with silver-gold flash like labradorite...
Sören remembered the strange stone he'd found at Reynisfjara when he and Yeyette had visited Iceland, years ago. A stone that seemed to be made of warm white-gold light, glowing like a lamp, and threw off rainbows. He still had the stone. When he'd been with Juniper, he'd never told her about the stone, worrying she would want it for the gemstone collection she kept on her altar.
Now, suddenly, he visualized the stone, burning bright. Bathing him with light, until it felt like his entire body was made of light. He felt warmth, despite the cold water in the dank basement. The ropes around his wrists and ankles felt like they were getting hotter, and Sören pushed.
He felt them loosen just a little.
Sören kept pushing and pushing, drawing on the vision of light, the feeling of heat. He pushed for what felt like an eternity - he had no idea what time it was, if mere minutes had passed or several hours - but at last the rope on his left ankle snapped, and then the rope on his right ankle. He grit his teeth and pushed harder, his head throbbing with the beginning of a migraine, but he had to do this to save his life.
The rope on his left wrist came undone, and he reached and frantically worked on undoing the right wrist. Just like an operation, he thought to himself, but he still pushed with the Force anyway to make it go faster.
With his wrists unbound, he sat up. Now to get the fuck out of here, he thought to himself.
He patted down his pockets. They'd taken his wallet and his phone - Sören was going to have to cancel all of his cards and change his number if he made it out of here alive... if he couldn't find his phone upstairs. He wasn't banking on getting enough time to do that safely - he wasn't even sure he could get past Juniper and Larry, if they were up there; the Force still felt weak, like an Internet connection that had dropped and was up again but loading very slowly.
He had to try.
Making as little sound as he could, Sören walked up the stairs. He had to stop and rest a few times - he was extremely sore from the way his thighs had locked up from the cattle prod, and the fall he'd taken in the coffee shop parking lot. But he had no choice to keep going, through the crunch, through the burn of his aching, protesting muscles. He tried to catch his breath as quietly as possible at the top of the stairs.
To Sören's surprise and relief, they hadn't locked the basement door, so he wasn't going to have to use the Force to unlock the door. That meant he could reserve what was left of his Force ability if he had to do an attack.
Suddenly he felt Anthony's touch in the Force, and Yeyette's. Anthony couldn't even make words, feeling the horror of what had happened across their Force bond...
Sören, I'm on my way, Yeyette's voice spoke into his mind.
I have no idea where the fuck I am, Sören said.
Eugène knows. I'll be there soon.
Sören knew the cat was Forceful enough to be toilet-trained, but being able to figure out where he was like some sort of homing pigeon or rescue dog was something else entirely, and it made Sören wonder if he was hallucinating the entire exchange.
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but he needed to get out of here. Now. Sören counted three under his breath, and then he pushed the door open.
He came out into a shabby kitchen with peeling paint on the walls, an oven and fridge that looked like relics from the 1970s, and mysterious stains on a linoleum counter. There was nobody in the kitchen. His ears picked up muffled voices from the living room. He looked out and saw Juniper and Larry sitting in the living room drinking champagne and eating tinned caviar on toast, as if they were celebrating "their victory", and he felt another wave of nausea.
There was no way to get to the front door without getting past Juniper and Larry, and that meant a fight. Even though it seemed like the drug was wearing off and his Force powers were coming back, his body felt weak - just getting up a flight of basement stairs felt like an ordeal and he was ready to keel over.
Through the kitchen windows Sören could see that the sun was setting, and the clock on the wall said quarter after eight. He'd met "Serena" at the Coffee Grounds at one PM. That still didn't tell him whether he was in Terre Haute or somewhere else but he was guessing he wasn't farther than Indianapolis.
Sören ducked down to avoid being seen, and did some more looking around. There was a back door, and a sun porch on the way there. Ah ha. Sören made his way to the sun porch, again trying not to be seen or heard. He used the Force to push the door open.
Juniper's altar was out there. Sören saw his wallet and cell phone, along with a small ceramic ashtray that contained what appeared to be a lock of his curly dark hair, a few pubes and fingernail clippings - Sören looked at his hands and realized they'd cut his nails while he was out of it - and once again he recoiled in disgust. Once again he wondered what Juniper had been up to while they were together, and if he'd been taking "samples" of his hair, pubes, and fingernails and if that was why he'd felt compelled to stay with her for months after he'd seen the writing on the wall that the relationship was unhealthy.
Sören knew he needed to get out of here, fast, before he was discovered - before they shot another dart in him and dragged him back downstairs for rape, torture, and possible murder - but he lingered for another moment, as if he were witnessing a bad trainwreck. He took his cell phone and wallet - he was still going to have to change his number and cancel his cards to be on the safe side - and then he grabbed the ashtray of "samples" and shoved it in his pocket as-is...
...and then he reached over the altar and found himself taking her Book of Shadows and a sphere of black glass. He shoved the sphere in his other pocket and tucked the book under his arm. He didn't fully understand why he was taking it - perhaps as a form of psychological warfare, that he could use her personal affects against her, too, not that Sören believed in that stuff - but once he had it, he scampered off like a squirrel stealing picnic treats. The back door banged behind him.
Oh shit. Sören knew they would hear that.
Sören began to run towards the road. He had a bit of a ways to go, and his body was not happy with him running, cramping up again, making him stop and double over every few paces. But the adrenaline was strong, and if he could make it to the road and he had correctly heard that Yeyette was on her way out to him, he had a chance. He had to keep going.
Juniper and Larry appeared to live in the sticks, on a property with some nice trees... and a much less nicer lawn that had a broken-down rusted orange Ford Pinto on cinder blocks, a refrigerator, a toilet seat, and overgrown weeds. It was comical, the contrast between Juniper and Larry drinking champagne and eating caviar in the living room, and this.
But there was no time for laughter. "THERE HE IS! GET HIM!" Juniper yelled, just before the living room door flew open.