Page 51 of Ruthless Riches
After my skin was clean, he began placing the electrode pads. One went above my left eye, right near the temple, and the other went on the opposite side above my right eye.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “Please don’t do it. Please!”
The Butcher continued to ignore my pleas. He dropped down to the ECT machine and turned it on. When the screen lit up with a shade of blue, he pressed one of the buttons and rotated a dial.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then my body began to jolt. At the same time, pain seared through my head like a branding iron had been applied directly to my skull.
I screamed my lungs out, eyes bulging wide, and I sagged to the dirty cell floor, unable to remain upright. My right arm hung from the cuff on the bars above my head, stretched so far that it felt as if it would pull right out of its socket if I jolted any more.
The Butcher slowly turned the dial, increasing the voltage. Choked screams and sobs wrenched themselves from my mouth, and my body continued to jolt and quake. My mind conceded to the torment, unable to focus on anything but the agonizing pain radiating through my head.
Finally, the machine switched off. I was left cowering on the floor as the Butcher stared down at me.
“What’s your name?” he asked via the phone, as if he actually expected me to have forgotten everything already.
“It won’t work,” I rasped. “I don’t think electroshock therapy even causes memory loss. That’s just in movi—”
The machine turned on again, cutting my words short. A feral, inhuman scream escaped my mouth as pain lanced my body.
As I shook on the floor, rattling the old iron bars, I tried to think of a way to make the Butcher stop the torture, but I couldn’t bring a single thought to completion. There was too much pain radiating through my head for me to hold focus for longer than a second.
When the machine switched off again, an idea finally bloomed in my mind. I could pretend that the ECT was working. I had to be careful, though. I couldn’t say I’d lost every single memory. That would make it far too obvious that I was faking it.
The Butcher crouched next to me again, holding the phone close to me. “What’s your name?”
“Alexandra,” I said in a ragged voice. “I mean… Alexis. My name is Alexis.”
“How old are you?”
“I… um…” I drew in a deep breath. “Please… just give me a minute. Everything feels so… foggy.”
“How old are you?” the robotic voice repeated.
“Eighteen. Wait, no… I’m nineteen,” I said, making my head loll slightly. “Or maybe I’m twenty. I remember going to some sort of party the other day. But I don’t… I don’t know.”
The Butcher fell silent. Then another message played on the phone. “I can tell when you’re lying, Alexis. You’re doing it right now.”
“What do you mean?” I said, making my voice slur.
“You know exactly what I mean. You’re putting on a show. You haven’t forgotten a single thing.”
Shit.There was no point pretending anymore. I’d been caught out already.
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “Please don’t hurt me anymore,” I whispered, letting my eyes shutter as I sagged against the bars. “It won’t work.”
I expected the machine to turn on again, but nothing happened. I opened one eye a moment later to see the Butcher packing away the ECT machine.
That was it. It was over.
I breathed a sigh of relief. The relief quickly turned to horror, though, as the Butcher pulled out a hypodermic needle from a side pocket on the suitcase.
“What is that?” I asked as he turned to face me.
He didn’t answer my question. He moved closer, jammed the needle in the side of my neck, and watched in silence as the drugs took effect.
The cell around me began to blur as the intoxicated stupor took control of my body. Then everything went dark.
Over the next five or six days, the torment continued in the same vein. I would wake up without any recollection of going to sleep, and the Butcher was almost always there. He used the ECT machine on me every single time, trying to torture the memories right out of my head, and he’d also drug me with varying doses of benzos and painkillers.
