_ Rosario, I Beg You

Pain was an abstract concept until now.

I'd thought I understood suffering. I'd thought I'd known what it was to be broken, to be crushed beneath the weight of agony.

I was a fool.

The Devil had a way of redefining misery, of stretching the limits of human tolerance until all that remained was a whimpering, devastated husk. 

I was that husk.

I was under the Devil's grasp. I screamed—no, I tried to scream. But my voice was gone, my tongue twisted into a useless lump of flesh. 

My body which was once free and once strong, folded in on itself like a marionette with its strings cut. Every muscle shut down, every limb curled inward, returning me to the prison I had known for seventeen years.

I was a child again. A helpless, broken thing.

The Devil stood over me, his overly dark shadow stretching long across the cold marble floor. His eyes burned like an endless pit of fire and malice.