Chapter Six
An unknowable interval later – it could have been an instant or eternity – consciousness returned to me. Before I had a chance to wonder if I was in heaven, and whether my endless sentence of torture and toilet service was about to begin, bodily agony convinced me that I was still somehow alive.
My throat was on fire, and I was wracked with terribly painful hacking coughs. My shoulders and upper back were horribly cramped, the arms below them completely dead. I tried to ease their numbness and contortion, only to find I was still hogtied. With that and everything I’d undergone and endured since setting out for the club came crashing back into awareness.
Still coughing painfully I gagged with revulsion. Wonder and gratitude at finding I was still numbered among the living cou
