I was in a small bedroom. A man was chained to the bed, naked and pitiful. He looked half-starved. The walls were dingy, and a strong stench permeated the room. My stomach lurched. Instantly, I wanted out of here. I didn't want to relive this memory, whoever it belonged to. I didn't know if it was the man's on the bed or someone else.
As I stood there trying to figure out how to pull myself from this horror, a rattling sound surprised me. I jumped and whirled around to find a wooden door, and the handle rattled again. The sound of keys on the other side told me this man had been locked in here.
I didn't know why. He was chained to the bed very well. There was no way he could've broken through the restraints, especially in this emaciated condition.
"Hello, my pet. Are you ready for our lesson today?"
The man on the bed whimpered. His legs pulled up. They weren't tied down. He tried to twist onto his side, and he hadn't even opened his eyes yet. As I stood, helpless, the man that entered picked up a knife I hadn't noticed from the table. As he moved toward the pitiful naked man on the bed, I yelled. "Stop it!"
I didn't recognize the man with the knife, but I knew neither of the people in the dream was Vincent. I didn't have to be here experiencing this, the worst of this man's obviously horrible, tainted memories. "Stop!" I ran forward and tried to grab his hand as the knife cut into the naked man's thigh. A ribbon of blood bloomed on his pale skin.
"No," I moaned.
The torture of innocents always made me sick. I could punish the worst sinner without blinking an eye. I could cut an evil person, dismember them slowly and carefully so they lived through most of it.
But the innocent? I couldn't abide their torture.
As suddenly as I was sucked into the memory, I was pulled out.
I sucked in a deep breath and wrapped my arms around Michael. "Shit," I hissed. "What took you so long?"
"We didn't want to interfere until you yelled," he explained.
"Could you hear me?"
"Yeah." He wrapped his arms tighter around me. "I'm sorry. I'll go next."
"Damn right you will," I whispered. "And we need a word."
"Bananas," Lucifer said. "There's no reason we'd say bananas for any other reason while in one of these dreams."
"Ugh, I hate torture dreams," I said. I spent another minute wrapped around Michael as his wings held us up, then I spread my own and put my big girl panties back on. "Let's keep going."
True to his word, Michael sighed and touched the next soul that looked like Vincent's. Within seconds, he yelled. "Banana! Banana!"
Gabe yanked on him and pulled him away from the souls. "Shit," he said. "Some serious fucked up shit."
"What?" I asked. I didn't want to see it, but my curiosity couldn't be contained.
Michael looked at the soul darkly. "He liked animals." He shuddered. "In a really gross way."
"Eww," Luc said. He looked disgusted. "Oh, those people are theworst."
I thought pedos were the worst myself, but that was a close second. Yuck.
"Gabe? You or Luc next?" I asked. I needed more time to recuperate from the torture scene before diving in again.
Luc sighed. "I'll try, but I don't know if it'll work."
It took nearly ten minutes to find another soul that might've been Vincent.
Luc's shoulders slumped as he looked down at the mass of swirling colors. All dark, all evil. "This one looks heinous."
He dove down and touched the soul but went quiet. After several minutes, he called out. "Banana."
Michael and Gabe grabbed his arms and hauled him up. He recovered pretty easily. "Politician," he explained.
We all nodded understandingly. We knew the type. The man probably hadn't any memories that involved direct torture. There wasn't blood on his hands literally.
