79

                                    

                                          

BRAN
"Strap her to the chairs! Hold her hands down!"
A man held Maria's hand down on the wooden table and another forced her on the chair in front of it, bending to strap her legs to it while the other forced her hands to the table top. 
Cold fear gripped her unlike anything she had ever felt before and it paralysed her, making her limbs weak and useless and unable to fight off the men. 
They were no doubt wondering why she was not fighting back, but in all honesty, she didn't care about that. She was asking herself two questions right now and why she wasn't fighting back wasn't one of them. 
Why were they strapping her to the table? 
What did they plan on doing to her? 
There should have probably been a third—why was her own father asking his men to handle her like that?
But she knew the answer and that was precisely why she wasn't bothering to ask herself that question. Her father was cruel, hands down the cruelest man she had ever met, and he did not care whether she was his blood or not—he would hurt her if it was the only way he got what he wanted. 
"Perhaps I need to teach you a few lessons so that the next time you consider disobeying me, you will remember the consequences of doing so, and think twice," Her father murmured almost to himself as he plucked a clipper from the shelf of weapons on the far end of the room, his eyes glued to the tool as he played with it, clipping and unclipping.
Each step he took towards her made her heart beat faster in trepidation and every clip and unclip of the clipper had her jumping slightly off the chair. 
What did he plan on doing to her with that? 
Of all the things her father had done to her, the vile things he'd made her do, the stomach-turning and churning acts he'd had her carry out on people, never once had any of those acts been carried out on herself—and definegly not by her father. 
He lifted his head and stared at her—or through her—with his cold, dead eyes. "I've always wondered how quickly nails can regrow on a mortal. Might as well satisfy that curiousity now." Her heart seized beating both at the words he'd just uttered and when he turned to the men holding her down and said, "Strap her hands to the table."
Hysteria grabbed her in a chokehold as the man holding her hands secured them with the clamps and the man holding her legs, checked to make sure that she couldn't move, then they stepped back, creating space for her father to come to her. 
He dropped down on the chair facing hers, the iron legs of the chair making a scraping sound on the ground as he scooted forward, looking her square in the eye as though they were about to have a conversation. Except that his eyes were filled with darkness and anger and the tool he was holding hung between them like a dark cloud. 
It was when she saw the evil in his eyes, when she saw how really angry he is and realized that this wasn't a joke, that he was actually going to harm her, that she suddenly found the strength to start struggling and she fought against her binds, but no matter how hard she tried, the clamps wouldn't give. 
She was locked in place with nowhere to run to. 
As though in a flash, her father's hand shot forward and gripped her outstretched fingers. "Let's start from the index one, shall we?" He said conversationally, the smile on his face, sick and terrifying. "After all, you love to point it at me when you're feeling particularly mouthy."
"Please don't do this," Maria sobbed as understanding dawned on her that the clipper's use was to pull her fingernails out. She'd heard about it happening to people and it was said to be terribly painful. "Please, father. Don't do this."