• 1-More Than Eyes Alone Can See
• 2-2
• 3-3
• 4-4
• 5-5
• 6-6
• 7-7
• 8-8
• 9-9
• 10-10
• 11-11
• 12-12
• 13-14
• 14-15
• 15-16
• 16-17
• 17-18
• 18-19
• 19-20
• 20-Index of Quotes

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Don’t go
anywhere. Where does she think I’m
fucking going to go? Not only can I not
see, but I think I’m finally feeling the affects of
losing so much blood. My head is
spinning and I haven’t even stood up in the past half hour.

And the pain. The pain was relentlessly and sadistically
chipping away at his control. He’d never
passed out before in his life, but now he would be more than willing to. He wasn’t sure how long it would be before he
was willing to beg for the pain to leave, but he knew it wouldn’t be too
long. Just as he knew he’d kill anyone
who witnessed such an indignity. Or perhaps
he’d just shoot himself, but he doubted that.
He’d lived this long; he wouldn’t roll over and die quietly now.

Even as he thought
that, another wave of pain crashed over him, stealing his senses from him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t
taste or feel anything but the pain.
Couldn’t smell anything but his own blood. And it didn’t stop, didn’t falter, didn’t ease up. It
gripped him in much the same way that sadistic bastard of a doctor’s instrument
had gripped his eyes, tearing at him. And when it finally let up, it left him
feeling hollow and raw. Left his lungs
and his muscles burning from a lack of oxygen, his mind reeling, his senses
muddled and confused. And cold. He realized that now.

He leaned against
the wall and waited for his mind to return to normal, afraid it never would,
afraid that the pain and the dark would warp his sanity until he screamed for
death. Can’t let that happen. Won’t let
that happen. I’ll blow my brains out
before that happens. With that
promise, he could feel his mind and his perceptions returning to normal for the
time being.

With the return of
his mental facilities, he heard a tapping where he assumed the doorway to the
room was. It was hard to tell. The room he was in distorted sound with echoes
and hollow rings. He was assuming that
it was loft-like in design - high ceilings, uncarpeted floors, lots of open spaces and few hiding plaWhat is that?

He suddenly
relaxed. It was the sound of nails
against a hard surface. Apparently his
hostess was waiting for ss ass awkward moment to walk into the room. He felt rage begin to boil as he wondered how
long she had been standing there – if she had stood and stared at the eyeless
man in the throws of pain. No.
Dangerous time to get angry. Not
enough control. Her only sin is being
softhearted enough to take in an injured man. He forced himself to calm down. If
she’s standing outside doe door, she’s waiting for me to let her come in. If that’s the case, she’s the most
intelligent woman I’ve even met. In
his experience it was rare to find a human who was willing to let someone deal with
pain on their own without butting in or goggling. He didn’t want to be coddled, and somehow she
knew that. That could be a problem later.
Intuitive people were often more trouble than they were worth. They screwed plans and often instigated
disorder. Look at what he did with the
information he gathered about how peopled acted. He was a first class manipulator because he
could read other people in the same way drivers read street signs. If he didn’t watch it, this woman would
become a liability. And liabilities were
always disposed with.
A n>A shame after the way she was helping him out. He had to make sure she didn’t learn too
much.

***************************************

<
<

Tess returned with
the promised blanket to find her patient in the throws of another pain
attack. Perhaps the most awful thing
about it was the way he refused to make a sound. How
long, how much pressure until his jaw breaks? She desperately wished she could give him
something for the pain, but knew she couldn’t.
Knew that Dr. Guevera favored the use of this particular pain altering
drug because it interacted with any other pain-killer in such a way that the
heart often stopped. She wasn’t prepared
to kill just to stop pain. Not when she
still had other alternatives.

She stood in the doorway of the room and
watched for several moments before turning her back on Sands. She knew that he wouldn’t be pleased if he
knew she had stood and watched him suffer.
She had known him less than two hours, but she knew that he’d rather
suffer alone than endure any attempts she made to ease his pain. He wouldn’t thank her for butting in, no
matter how much her guilty conscience cried out for her to do something to let
them off the hook. No matter how much
the doctor within her screamed to alleviate pain in any way she could. I will
not impose anything else upon this man.
He has lost enough today. Let him
keep what is left of his dignity.

So she stood, a
stranger in her own house, sharing perspersonal space with yet another stranger. She tapped her fingers on the wall out of
nervous habit – one of the few she hadn’t been broken of. She had been a nail-biter – but after having
her nails pared down below the quick on several occasions, she had taught
herself to stop. It was no fun to go
around with bloody fingers, especially since any
schoolwork she turned in that was in anything less than pristine condition she
was punished for and made to do over.
But tapping nails was acceptable.

Tess had no idea
how long she stood in the corridor outside her room waiting for some signal
that it was okay to enter. A lazy breeze
moved past her, ruffling shouldergth gth waves of brown hair. I
should tie it back before I start stitching, she thought idly. She studied her toes, thinking it was about
time to repaint them. She mentally ran
through her inventory of medications, antibiotics, bandages, and saline
solutions. It would probably be best to hook the man up to an IV, get some fluids
in him. All the while her fingers
went tap . . . taptap
. . . tap . . . t-tap. . . against the wall. She closed her eyes. A stray melody ran through her mind, a fly
buzzed in a corner somewhere, the harsh breathing of her patient settled out.

She heard nothing
more for several minutes, until a question came from the bloody figure on her
bed, “Are you planning on freezing me to death?
Because if you are, I’d prefer you simply put a bullet between my
eyes. I’m afraid I don’t have the
patience for anything else today.”

***************************************

Patching Sands up
was a long, tedious, and painful experience for both patient and surgeon. Tess didn’t dare use anything stronger than
topical Novocain to lessen the bite of needles and antiseptics.
It’s a type of neural suppressant that interacts badly with any kind of
painkiller or narcotic. Ten percent of
patients who have a reaction slip into a coma.
But seventy percent die because their heart stops.” She laughed dryly. “They wanted to make sure that even if you
did seek out help, it would only kill you.
I always knew there was a good reason I hated them all.” She fell silent for a moment. “I can tell you this though. If we proceed with just the Novocain, it’ll
handle the pain of actually cleaning the blood off your face. But once I start cleaning and examining the
actual wounds, the pain will probably be so great that it will overcome the
last of the drugs in your system, and you’ll pass out. As small of a comfort as that may be.”

Tess let Sands
think. She was offering him a hell of a
choice. Incredible pain and oblivion in
which he would be defenseless, or more of a drug that had left him defenseless
enough for this to happen in the first place.

Ten minutes or so
went by as he weighed his options. “Is
this drug habit forming? Am I going to
walk out of here as messed up as an opium addict?”

“Not after just one
more dose. Anything past that, and yes,
addiction is a possibility, especially if you’re addicted to anything
else.” Tess just trailed off. What else was there to say? The choice was his.

“I’d ask you to
simply shoot me in the head and put me out of my misery, but I suspect you’re
getting tired of cleaning up my blood.”

“No, I wouldn’t ask
that if I were you.” She felt cold at
how casually he spoke of murder and suicide.
If she hadn’t been able to tell that he was a natural killer upon first
seeing him, she’d be able to now. She
wasn’t even sure why she was helping him.
She’d watched him gun down people today with no remorse. Of course today might be a bad day to set standards
for him. But she had been around enough
men like him to know that killing men gave him no more pause
to stop than killing anect.ect. She
wondered if her own quest had driven her mad as he. But
surely, he didn’t deserve this. If it’s
in your power to help, hadn’t you do so? The only person you’re capable of judging is
yourself. Beyond that, you’re out of
your depth.

“Give me the
drug.” Tess was startled out of her
thoughts, and grateful that it had happened before she had given herself a headache. Not that she could be certain. “Señor, I’m going to have to do quite a
bit of . . . of housekeeping. I’m afraid
that Guevera left a bit of a mess behind when he was done. This is going to hurt, but I’ll be as careful
as I can. If it gets to be too much, we
can take a break. Do you understand what
I’m saying?”

“The bastard did a
number on me?” The words sounded as if
they were making their way out his mouth through a haze of pain and
befuddlement, but at least they were semi-lucid.

“Yeah, he did a
number on you. But I’m going to do my
best to keep that number as low as I can.
I’m going to start now.
Okay?” She was his jaw
clench. “Okay then,” she whispered. Then she picked up a small roll of gauze and
started soaking up as much of the blood as she could.

***************************************

Sands was beginning
to wonder if he had really lost his eyes.
He could have sworn that he kept seeing flashes of color. Somewhere his mind was telling him that this
was caused by misfired neurons in his brain, but he wasn’t paying too much
attention to that. Instead, most of his
focus was set on keeping himself from screaming. He wouldn’t have minded letting out a bellow
or two if he could have been sure that it would have sounded manly. But no, he was certain that if he let himself
scream then it was going to come out as the girliest scream ever uttered by
masculine lips, and that after that he would start begging for the pain to
stop, for his tormentor to stop. He last real link with reality was the handle of a gun in
his hand, and the quiet, nearly incomprehensible murmurs of the woman tending
him.

No matter how
gentle she was being, though, it wasn’t enough.
It seemed as if the air itself was keeping the fiery agony blazing in
his eye sockets. On and on it went,
never letting up, never growing bad enough for his mind to simply shut down and
let him escape.

He had no idea how
long this lasted before one particularly deep touch set off an explosion of
light in his mind. His entire body
stiffened, his spine arching off the bed.
He managed to contain his screams deep in his throat, but he still heard
them in all their clarity. A muffled
voice cut through the pain and the light, “Shh.
I’ll stop. I’m sorry, I’m sorry .
. .”

There was a light blinding him. He looked around the small darkened
room. “Sorry baby, but I told you I
wasn’t interested in your scheme . . . Too small. . . .” That bitch Ajedrez was still alive. She was sitting on the edge of a nearby
table, smirking at him. Some part of him
cried out that he had already killed her, but he must have been mistaken. Not a problem, he’d kill her now.

“Die bitch,” he hissed. Her expression didn’t change. Not even when he pulled the trigger and heard
faint screams. Before he could shoot
again, blackness rushed up to claim him.
The last thing he heard was a weak moan.
He sincerely hoped that he had killed her.

***************************************

Tess was being as
careful as she could, but she knew that each touch, each wisp of wind stirred
by her movements was just increasing the man’s agony. Why had she even agreed to give him more of
the drug? Surely it would have been
kinder to them both, but especially for him, if he had been able to pass out. But no.
She had respected the wishes of a man near crazed with pain, and now she
was regretting it.

What’s a few more regrets? Isn’t that what led me to bring him here in
the first place? Regrets and guilt over
situations I can’t change or influence, yet feel responsible for anyway?

But
if you don’t try to make payment for the cartel’s acts, who will? Tess hated that voice, the one that spurred
her to right all the wrongs made by one family.
A family she had never even truly been a part of. But you do listen, and you listen because
you’re afraid that without some sort of penance, the blood of your father will
rise in your veins and you’ll find that you’re just as capable as he of doing
things like this.

Stop. It was red. “Great, more blood to clean up.” Having made that complaint she collapsed in a
nearby chair.