My piercing screams were resonating in the room. I was disoriented. Pearls of sweat were covering my skin. The slow pain and agony that I was in was like none other. I had never felt so much pain. I was broken. My torturer was ripping through me and he took his sweet time. Blood was pouring from me and there were no drugs to dull out the pain just the strict minimum to keep me alive. My whole body ached, not just my abdomen, where he was doing his bidding, but down to my toes.

My eyes were stinging from the stream of tears that ran down my cheeks and damped my gown. Sometimes I could hardly feel my legs now. It was a murder in the making but I was far from death. I was suffering too much for that.

“Please, please,” I begged but he didn’t stop. The pain was blinding and I felt every bit of it. I could feel my insides being torn apart. The pain came in waves as the ripper hack his way through me. The smell of blood and bowels saturated the spotless room. I could only imagine how it looked. I felt my flesh tear and looked around for a helping hand and there he was, Francis, the man who led me to this inevitable suffering. He was standing there with a beaming grin. He was enjoying all of this. He looked exited, ecstatic even and was capturing every bit of my agony on film. As if my pain and suffering was the peak of his happiness. I never would have thought that such a sweet and loving man would have led me to this ripper. I didn’t understand how such a kind hearted man could take part in such a bloody and painful act.

There were three of them, Francis the procurer, Boutier – as I heard the others call him – the helper and the ripper. François had done is job, he brought me here to the helper within minutes after the ripper had let his need known. Boutier was helping the ripper, showing him what to do, making sure that I didn’t give in to the sweet relief death would give me. Francis was circling them, soaking in Boutier’s teaching.

I remember when I first met Francis, I was visiting Paris when my bag had just been stolen near a metro station and on top of that I had broken a high heel chasing after the thief. I was sitting on a bench my broken heel in one hand and rubbing my sprained ankle with the other. Francis approached me with my bag in his hand. He lived up the street where my bag was snatched from me. He saw everything from his balcony and ran out of his apartment and caught my assailant around the corner. He came with me to the police and gave a detailed description of my assailant and served as a translator.

I spent the next two weeks of my stay in Paris with him. This good looking thirty something Frenchman became my personal tour guide. I quickly fell in love with his piercing grey eyes, his salt and pepper hair and his cute French accent. Little that I know that Francis would be marveling, like a mad man at each of my cries of pain, that he would passively watch the ripper like a proud father.

Another wave of pain shot through me, it was a big one and it took me to a groggy state. My screams stopped, the pain dulled and the room started spinning. I was sleeping away, the damages and the exertion left me raw. I could finally rest in peace. I was longing for this moment I just didn’t expect that it would happen like this. The hollering kept me awake. It helped me to cling to my consciousness. Francis approached me as a pudgy, covered in blood ripper landed on my chest. It was a little boy. He had his father’s grey eyes and his mother’s lips, my lips. He calmed down the minute I took him in my arms. He was resting on my chest grabbing my hospital gown with his little hands. My eight hours of rulling labor were hard but he’s here now, my little ripper named Ryan.