Chained

Henry was forced onto his knees by a foot planted squarely in the center of his spine, pain already coursing through his body, threatening the corners of his vision. He could feel the knife grazing against his skin as they sliced his shirt open, not even pretending to try and keep from cutting him in the process. He wouldn't have expected them to. They didn't give a shit about him or his life at the point. It was only a matter of moments after his shirt had been stripped away from him that the whip was lashing against his flesh, the ragged bits of steel embedded into the end digging into him and tearing his back apart.

It was hard to say how long the flogging went on for, especially seeing as he blacked out at some point during it. He woke up chained in a dank cellar chamber, held in place by both his wrists and his ankles, the chains just long enough to allow him to lay on the floor with his hands by his sides. His head felt like it was buried in mud. The pain in his body was a dull throbbing now, which confused him. The last he remembered, each blow was tearing through him like a hot knife through butter, Now the pain was dulled and nearly gone.

But the instant that he tried to move, the pain was back, running through his body like wildfire, paralyzing him and threatening to drive his entire body out of his control. He must have been laying on the ground for hours that the pain had dulled down as much as it had.

But the true concern hadn't come yet. Henry had no choice but to settle down and wait out the pain, knowing that in time his skin was evolve to resolve itself, at which point he may have been capable of doing something in order to escape. But that was when he saw the massive numbers of snakes beginning to slither their way into his cell. He couldn't tell what kind of snakes they were, but knowing the luck that he had been having, he had no reason to doubt the possibility that their fangs were laced with poison.

He cried out in pain as he was unable to stop them from biting at him all over. Every part of him was on fire. There was doubt in his mind that he had been poisoned. And by so many snakes, it wasn't very likely that he would be able to survive long.

The only question was how long, and how bad it would hurt until then.