The Story of Blood and Roses

"Do you know why they called it that?" I asked him playfully. He chuckled lightly and shook his head.

"Why don\'t you enlighten me, Mia? I can see that you are rather eager to inform me about this gruesome torture method that you seem to be so obsessed with." I gave him a pointed look before continuing.

"Because you seem to be so keen on knowing about it, I will do you the honor of getting to know this ingenious method," I bit back. "Supposedly, a man by the name of Perrilus took it upon himself to please his ruler, the great dictator, Phalaris Agigentum. It looked like a life-sized bull but had a door like entrance in it. The incredible part was that there were holes in the nostrils and horns of the bronze bull. A criminal who would be convicted of a capital crime would be put into this enclosed, but hollow bull and then slowly roasted to-"

"What?" he interrupted, looking at me with shock filled eyes. "They cooked this person and ate them?" an incredulous chuckle left his lips.

"Of course, not! As cool as cannibalism may seem to you, this device is slightly more complex." He huffed and gestured me to carry on. He seemed rather intrigued.

"So? What did they do next?" he urged when I didn\'t continue.

"As the bull was placed over the flame and the person inside roasted in the heat, they would scream in agony. The bull was so built that these screams would filter through the holes in the horn and nostrils and sound like a raging bull, thereby fulfilling the irony of the name."

"That was rather... intriguing."

"I know," I said, seeing that Cienna looked rather shaken.

"Where did you get this information from, Mia? I\'m sure you\'ve never seen this ritual happen before."

"Who told you that I haven\'t?" I asked him with a challenging look.

As a matter of fact, I found out about this method from a drug lord who was obsessed with Greek Classicism. He happened to love torture and Greece. I was rather horrified when I heard of what was to happen, and a bit flustered when he tortured his subordinate for lying to him, but I shortly understood the beauty of the method.

Cruel, gruesome, and painful.

"Who have you been mixing with?" he asked me, his voice as low as a whisper.

"Fanatics and psychopaths?" I offered, innocently.

"How did you survive?" he asked me. No, the curiosity in his voice was shrouded with fear and worry. It was rather endearing.

"Let me finish the story," I gave him a playful glare.

It helped that I killed them all in the end. It helped to know that I was invincible.

"Go on," he resigned after giving me a heated stare.

"The dictator, though, wasn\'t pleased with Perrilus. Because he had a sense of humor, he put Perrilus into his own device and put him to death. Unfortunately, karma is a bitch. The people of the kingdom rebelled against the tyranny of the king and he too was put to death in the very same brazen bull." I ended with a deep breath.

"What was the moral of the story, Mia?" he asked, a bit amused. I giggled at the fact that he had picked up the subtle hint.

"What goes around... comes around," I pronounced.

"And that karma is a bitch." I laughed loudly. "Are you Karma?" he teased.

"A bitch? Yes. Karma?" I let it hang there.

"No?" he taunted.

"Maybe."

.

"You want the mark to be right; you can\'t strangle her, Ethan!"

"You want to pin this as a suicide?" Ethan guffawed. "You fed her acid, which is proof enough."

"Not that it worked on her!" I came to the rescue. "She has poisoned her body to the extent that it got immune to acid, do you think that is easy?" I shook my head. I was rather impressed that she had rendered herself indestructible to all things liquid and poisonous. It was one thing about her that impressed me. For the life of me, I couldn\'t remember anything else about her.

Of course, this conversation was taking place while she was still lying in front of us, mostly catatonic. She was not dead; not even after sixteen hours of consuming the acid that Michael had assured me would kill slowly. It seemed that it didn\'t really work on the killing part and concentrated more on the pain when it came to Cienna.

At that moment, Michael and Ethan were engaging in a verbal duel where they decided how they would kill her off. While Michael was opting for sending a message by letting the cops find her body and deem it a suicide, Ethan thought it was all too complicated for us to carry out. It was an engaging conversation. I was siding with Michael on it.

"People are known to survive acid consumption, Ethan," Michael argued.

"What would happen after the autopsy report? They would find out then."

"They would also find out that it was not the acid that killed her, but the rope. That is why we need to make it look like suicide."

"I think both of you are deranged," he huffed and then shook his head at the motionless prisoner.

---------

[Donate @ paypal.me/SunScar9 and ko-fi.com/sunscar9 to ensure I don\'t starve.]