Red Feline had all lost sense of time, she was not aware of when the lashing stopped or the exact moment she fainted. She could see her body lying on the cold floor of the dark room, she could feel the cold air coming from the outside through a drafty door somewhere, or perhaps a window. The hard, cold floor felt as gentle as a mattress and Red Feline let her body rest, her mind shutting off any sensation of pain, even though her entire body was screaming.

She had survived again...and again she was not sure if at the time when she was lost in her dark, silent world, when she was not in touch with her real existence, when her ass was exposed as it was, he took advantage and came inside her. It would've been so easy in the position she was in, her body bent over, so accessible, so vulnerable, so open.

She felt the stare of her torturer glancing at her naked body. "She looks so beautiful", he thought, as he moved around her; but then again, maybe it was her who was putting those thoughts in his mind, for, after all, he was her creation, but she couldn't be too sure.

Reacting to his movements she painfully and slowly tried to move her head. She couldn't follow him, so she just closed her eyes again and wished that this moment of peace would last forever.

Her wounds were closing, the blood drying up. She could feel the nail on her breast moving with her breathing and the one in her back pressed against the floor. She tried not to move so as not to intensify her pain.

She could hear, half awake as she was, her torturer walking about, she knew this peace wouldn't last forever.

Her fears were confirmed when she felt his hands taking the shackles off her wrists, she hoped that perhaps, in a rare moment of compassion he was freeing her from her bonds, that he came to the decision that she had enough punishment, that she deserved to go free after all the suffering .

But all those wishes were just empty cries of anguish in the dark night of her soul. He was not freeing her at all...he was preparing her for more torture and that is how she would've invented this story. She never gave her heroines a chance to go free before the ultimate torture.

The Man in Black took Red Feline's hand and gently raised it over her body to the front. She saw the wooden stick he held with his free hand pass over her head. He inserted the stick in between her bond and her wrist.

She didn't want to guess what he planned for her now. She didn't want to think, she wanted to go off into her dark world, that new home she found beyond time where Piroska was hanging from her cross, facing her tortures. "Nine", the soldier cried out as the lash went flying to meet Piroska's flesh.

Red Feline noticed something she had not noticed before. Piroska's body looked very much like her own and there was something that made her wonder even more. A birthmark below her waist, to the left of her navel.

She lingered in between dimensions for a short while, perhaps a fraction of a fraction of the time that it takes for an elusive thought to travel through the mind.

The Man in Black grabbed Red Feline, raising her slowly, to get her other arm in front of her, to then place her down again. The touch of his hand on her arm was strong, her dark peace was disturbed, the sight of Piroska hanging from her cross dissipated.

She felt something pleasant in the way the Man in Black held her arm, there was something like a warm vibration coming from his touch. As if he was transmitting something good to her. It was almost as if this was a fantasy and she was with a lover who was caressing her skin with tenderness.

But as she was placed on the floor again, she felt lonely and fearful. Her other wrist was tightly fasten to the wooden bar, again her hands felt numb, again her dark world was invaded by pain. There was the anticipation of what was about to happen, she knew that the wooden floor under her was not going to be her companion any longer, that the wooden bar was her future.

She could see that her eyes were closed and that she had found some rest, finally, in one of her bodies at least, because the other one was facing the whip again as the soldier screamed "Ten!", and the lash cut across the air and crashed on her breasts. The young slave raised her head to look up to the far- off world where her other body rested and then closed her eyes and waited, her heart pounding, for the next lash to carve its number on her body. "Eleven!".