The cage is dank and cold, offering nothing in the way of privacy. Once it was used to contain dog fights but now it has a more sinister use as a single girl huddles alone. For the last week she has had companions with which to share warmth but day by day they dwindled. Now a week later she is the sole survivor of a horror that even she cannot describe. Each of the girls was taken by force, first from her home and then from the cage. Each girl taken to her death, the row of heads sitting on the table just outside the cage is evidence of this. How they died is the worst kind of mystery, their screams and their sobs giving no clues to the violence wrought upon them, so close but always out of view. Mica however was different, she came willingly when she was caught in the rain and her bus was late. 

There isn't the words to express the fear young Mica felt, the closest I can come, is to tell you that each second was a dread in itself. Every tic of the second hand, Mica wishes would spell the end of her wait and every second is a disappointment. To not know your fate is one thing, to know it is near and unavoidable, lurking just outside your vision is another. You begin to wish the time would just go, let what happens, happen and be done with. To live with a feeling that it would be better to be a head on a table is a terrible thing.  

For three days her captors leave her to alone with the clock. Every second a fresh torment, causing her to wish for suicide. Even that dignity is striped of her. When her time comes, she is dragged to the final resting place of her peers, but there is no rest for the dead here. The room is a makeshift altar, a tribute to dark gods and scattered about in jars are the parts if all those who came before. Each one killed specifically for a malevolent purpose, by a man professing magic. Slowly he kills his victims taking what he needs and adding their ingredients to his nganga. He has saved Mica for last, thinking it is symbolic that she was given up in the rain. Her bus ran late, so she took their offer of a ride, all because of the rain. She is special to him in a way she cannot understand, Kadiempembe the god of criminals gave her up to him as a gift. Now he will repay that gift using her as best he knows how.  

Dragged before him she gags from kneeling in the remains of others like her. He smiles at her but it is not a pleasant one as he taps a hypodermic needle releasing the air bubble. She struggles only a little before he plunges the needle in, filling her vein with methamphetamine. It is the first street drug Mica has ever experienced and the intensity overwhelms her. It makes her head spin as her heart pumps faster and the skin on her scalp crawls. When he begins to cut her fingers off she barely feels it, still her eyes never leave his blade not even for a minute. He chants as he flays her knuckles, cutting skillfully through the joints of her once petite hands. When the pain starts to shoot up her arm as nerves are severed and she shakes uncontrollably, she begins to scream. Slowly he chants as two men hold her down and he takes his ingredients. The most potent of spells require the best ingredients, taken from the most fearful in a most painful way. What the drug helps with the pain, it intensifies the experience giving a deeper more meaningful effect.  

When he is done with Mica's hands and feet, the voodoo man continues carving symbols into her naked flesh. Blood is collected from her wounds, filling small jars until she becomes faint. A shot of adrenaline brings her back and bandages are applied to her wounds. Just when she thinks her suffering is over Mica is returned to the cage where she is forced to eat and drink. Inside the cage, where the clock still ticks and the heads stare. The priest, as one last insult to her poor broken soul brings to her the nganha filled with the bloodied content. She is forced to drink the cold mixture, after he adds her own finger bones to the cauldron.  

"For your healing." He says before leaving her to suffer the seconds once more.  

Tomorrow her head will join the others upon the table but until then, she is not made aware of this fact. The next twenty hours will seem like an eternity to precious Mica, her suffering will make the last ingredient as precious as her life was.