Jade's point of view:

Dirt.  Grit.  Is that smell.....blood?

My left eye is swollen shut.  My entire body feels bruised.  That bastard!  I set him free and he kidnapped me.  Me!  He was supposed to go after that albino slut!

My clothes are torn.  My gown!  Did he have any idea how expensive it was?  It was ruined now.  Ruined!

How did I get here?  I remember.....I remember that whore doing her voodoo magic on me.  I remember setting him free so he could kill her.  She's been sleeping with my husband for far too long now!  I don't care that he denied it.  Instead, this monster morphs into something otherworldly, in front of my very eyes, and then he takes me with him!  Now I am lying on the hard cold...what is this?  Concrete?  Dirty, hurting, and....What is he doing?  I am tied up.  I can't move!  What has he done to me?

His head is much larger now.  His teeth...His teeth!  They are pointy as a beast!  His eyes are glowing like fire.  As if it weren't frightening enough that he sprouted wings and horns before he took me away!  His skin, it no longer looks like skin, but rough, red scales.  His body has grown so large, his shirt is in tattered shards, and his pants look more like pathetic, cut off shorts!

I feel my hands clench.  My writs are going numb.  I want out!  I try to kick my legs, but I can't.

"Ha ha ha ha."  Is that bastard laughing at me?

"You little wench," his voice gravels out.  It sounds sickening, more like an animal.

"You didn't really think I work for you?" he asks me.  Why would he say that?  Didn't I say I would pay him handsomely?

"I care nothing for your money or material possessions in this world.  What matters, is power.  Surely you can understand that?  After all, you are the reason I am so strong.  You handed me those children on a silver platter, and so many more."

They were not children!  They were vagabonds.  All of them!  They shouldn't even be here.

"With all your toys and your trinkets, and your favored things, you forgot that you were a human too; no more special than anyone else."

How dare he say that!  I am an elite member of society!

"And where is your society now?" he asks me.  How can he do that?  Is he reading my mind?

"I am."

No!  He can't be!

"You disgust me!  Vile human!  You can't even love your own flesh and blood."

Why should I?  She doesn't even look like me.  She didn't turn out how I wanted at all.  We outlawed customizing the genes we wanted.  I have to live with that.  I have to live with the fact that I can only have one child too.  Everyone else must suffer the consequences as well!  Those children, all those people, they never had the right to live.

"Such a self-righteous woman, always pitying herself.  You could have come up with something different.  With the outlaw of abortion, the morning after pill should have been made more available.  This would have prevented the pregnancies that were unplanned.  The children of multiples, you could have allowed only one of them to have a child.  The multiple births that happened were never something that happened intentionally, or with human meddling.  Not for the past sixty years."

It was true.  I'll give him that.  But why couldn't it have happened to me?  Why couldn't I have had just one child that looked like I wanted?

"Still only thinking of yourself, you vile little beast."

You are one to talk.

He gave an inhuman growl, grabbing me by the neck with his clawed hand.  Disgusting, vile touch!  Get your hands off of me!  Instead, his leathery lips curl back into a smile, revealing his incisor like teeth.  He then holds my head pointing at the sky. 

"Look at your floating city now!"

I see into the distance.  The bottom level begins to explode, sending fiery debris everywhere.  Why should I care?  This was only the bottom level:  the level of workers.  That place didn't have anything to do with me.

"That level was the foundation on which the rest of the levels stood.  With it no longer there, they will all crumble down, one by one."

I will find another floating city to live in.

"No.  You won't."

He takes his giant mouth, and he bites down on my bound hand.  I want to scream, but I can't.  He bites my other hand, and then my feet.  I don't even notice when he lays me back down on the ground.  It hurts so much.  He's eating me, alive!  I can hear the sounds of my bones crunching as he chews.  He eats all of my limbs to stubs and then peers down at me, a look of disgust as he sees me.  How dare he look at me that way!  This should not be happening to me.  Not to me!

"You don't even taste all that well."  He wipes his mouth with distaste.  "Your soul is not even worth the effort to consume your essence.  You wasted away long ago, you soulless creature!"

He grabs me by the neck once more, and we take off flying.  Just when I think he is going to hurl me to my death, he throws me in a stinking pile of...I don't know what it is.  It's disgusting.  Is this....shit?  Did he really throw me in a human cesspool of waste?  I open my mouth to scream in outrage, though no sound can come out, and I sink to the bottoms.  I can't breathe.....  The filth around me, surrounding me, invading my lungs.  I can see nothing, hear nothing.  My chest feels like it is exploding, and then I feel no more....