by Camilla Monk
“I hope he kills you!” My voice cracked, and it was becoming hard not to let go and beg for mercy.
“Oh, I love that! He played good cop with you, huh?” His intonation turned seductive, his hand reaching between my legs as he suggested this.
My breath hitched in revulsion.
“Did he play down there, Island?”
I squeezed my eyes and gritted my teeth in an effort not to scream as his fingers probed me. I clenched my fists until they hurt, praying he would stop. He eventually did, and a look of surprise appeared on his features. “Now, that’s . . . unexpected. We’ll have to examine it again.”
I thought I was in hell already with that creep assaulting me and planning to further examine my hymen, but I soon found out that we were only getting started. A cold hand traced my collarbones. “You know . . . March would have brought you back to me anyway.”
“You’re lying. He hates your guts,” I hissed.
“Yes, as he has aptly demonstrated in the past.” He sighed, scratching his scar again. “But it doesn’t matter. Once in the pack, always in the pack. If he had any idea who I’m working for, March would be here right now, crawling at our feet, waiting for a chance to lick his master’s hand.” I tried to make sense of his rambling, in hopes that it would delay the rest of our program.
“March already knows. You guys work for the Board. He told me that,” I said.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m a fickle man. I may take a job from the Queen, but it doesn’t mean I won’t keep an eye open for other opportunities,” he said, still caressing my neck.
I squirmed to escape his touch. “What are you talking about? Did you—”
He pinched my lips shut before I could finish, chuckling softly. “Chérie, we’re getting carried away! Take a deep breath and relax. This is for you and me. It’s the most intimate thing you’ll ever share with anyone.”
My eyes widened in panic, and I thrashed desperately against the thick black straps holding me down. “I already told March I know nothing about the diamond!”
He shook his head as he prepared a long needle and several bottles. “All right, all right. I knew you’d say something like that. So, let me introduce you to what we’re doing here. The way I see it, it’s like a reasonable exchange. I’m removing some parts, but if you tell me what I need to know, I put them back. There’s no pain involved. You don’t need to worry about that. I have excellent medical skills.”
I won’t lie. I was getting worried. And not just about whether he had an accredited medical degree. “W . . . what are you talking about? Please . . . don’t do this!”
“Calm down, Island. As I mentioned, ultimately you decide if I put them back. I’m your slave here. All you have to do is talk.”
I was crying again, and losing it for good. Of course, as a beginner, I immediately fell straight into torture’s most common psychological pitfall: hoping to escape the treatment by offering to confess everything and anything upfront. I was shaking and sobbing so much I’m not even sure if I made any sense. “I-I get it! I stole the diamond! I’ll tell you where it is if you let me go, please!”
He laughed again, and this time there was an edge to it. He was excited. “Island . . . I know you mean well, but years of experience have taught me that the amount and quality of the information you’ll provide simply isn’t the same once you’re staring at your own kneecaps on a steel plate.”
I’ll never know where I found the strength to control my aching bladder during this conversation. By the time he was done talking, he had a syringe ready, and my lungs were giving up on me. When he stabbed my right thigh and injected its contents, I produced a sound I didn’t know I was capable of, which probably qualified as a scream. A distant part of me thought I sounded like a million shards of glass were exploding in my throat, ripping it from the inside.
“Please, please don’t cry. You’re beautiful, you’re sexy, you’re confident—” His voice was trembling with excitement, and his gaze was fierce. He was kneading my thigh, and soon I couldn’t feel his hand so well. My leg had grown numb.
After having massaged my flesh for a while, he gave my skin a strong pinch that elicited no pain. “See? Like I promised.”
He moved to kiss my forehead, and I cried even harder, no longer able to process anything. I shut down as he prepared his instruments. My eyelids slid closed, I stopped feeling the cold drops of sweat running all over my body, and I was no longer listening to him, retreating into a world of my own, filled with math and mints.
Creepy-hat didn’t like it, not one bit. He slapped me twice, and when I opened my eyes, he looked frustrated. “Island, don’t drift off on me like this. I need you focused, honey!” He was starting to sound a little hysterical. Was he angry?
Satisfied that he had some of my attention back, he allowed the grin to return to his lips. “Now, give me a smile!”
It’s funny. It was only when I heard him ask me to smile for him that it hit me. This guy wasn’t bad or cold or whatever . . . he was clinically insane.
I complied, although I didn’t know why. It was more of a rictus, anyway, that grew wider, which Creepy-hat seemed particularly pleased with. Once he was ready, he started to work, shaking his hips as he mouthed some little song in his head. Within seconds, he was done drawing marks around my thigh to guide his hand, and a small scalpel was tucked between his thumb and forefinger. I lay motionless and broken. Tears were still running down my temples, but it didn’t feel like I was crying. All I could do was stare at the massive lamp above me.
The human sense of self-preservation is a wonderful thing. I didn’t have much experience on how to proceed when you’re about to fight a battle for your survival, but the right words came anyway. Creepy-hat’s blade had already started biting into my skin, an inch above my knee, but I couldn’t feel it; I think that’s what allowed me to collect myself. “Did March do that? That scar on your cheek?”
His hand stopped, and his gaze shifted from my leg to my face. “Yes. Why do you ask, sweetie?”
I struggled with the lump inside my throat and went on. “It looks like it must have been painful. Why did he hurt you like this? What happened?”
The blade in his hand hovered above my skin, grazing my belly, breasts, and neck until it settled on my cheek, in the same area that March had wounded Creepy-hat. At that point, I did start to question my strategy.
“We were hired together for a mission in Colombia two years ago. He was expected to recover the client, who was hiding in the jungle. Las Cotudos . . . charming place, have you ever been there?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“He did his job, and I did mine, which was to interrogate the client. Now that we’re together, you can see it isn’t so bad, right?”
“Yes.” Now, that’s a yes that cost me a lot, mind you.
“Well, March wouldn’t agree with you. He interrupted me when I was almost done with our client, and—wait for it—demanded explanations. As if . . . as if he himself had never questioned anyone before!” His voice had become a little hysterical again, and I gritted my teeth as he went on. “You know me, I don’t pick fights, so I merely told March that most clients prefer my methods to the kind of brutal approach men like him profess. You agree, don’t you? Would you rather I break your fingers?”
“No . . .” I breathed.
This conversation was getting completely surreal . . .
“He gave me that nasty look and said that when I was done stitching the client, I should stitch myself,” Creepy-hat recalled in a brittle voice as he scratched his scar again. “And after that, he pulled out a knife and slashed my face. He sectioned two facial nerves . . . Can you believe I’ve lost taste on that side of my mouth? I would never do that to a client!”
Creepy-hat and March’s collaborations were bound to fail miserably one after another, I guess, because, as Creepy-hat said this, we both heard screams and gunshots coming from behind the tiled room’s black door. I saw his expression har
den in a split second, but he didn’t move to escape. He certainly knew we were trapped, anyway.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he said in a firm voice, one I assumed he intended to be reassuring.
Moments later, the black door was smashed open with a loud cracking sound. Creepy-hat might have been insane, but he was still well-trained. He efficiently dodged the bullet that was fired at him as a greeting, and I heard it shatter the tile somewhere behind me.
Was I happy to see March standing in front of us? Hard to tell. I was so terrified, so exhausted that I’m not even sure I felt anything anymore. Of course, not getting your kneecaps removed, your liver fiddled with, or whatever Creepy-hat had been planning on doing to me, all these things spoke of a positive outcome, but I couldn’t focus on that. My eyes were locked on the sight behind March’s shoulder, and it was difficult to focus on anything else. The fake police officer with the shaven skull was hanging a few feet away from the door. I say “hanging” because a knife had been used to pin his throat into the hallway’s grayish plaster wall, and his feet were no longer touching the ground. His eyes wide open, he was producing eerie gurgling sounds as blood poured from his neck in a steady flow and dripped on the tiled floor.
I was mesmerized.
I raised my head to look at March. He was holding that same rather scary-looking gun I had seen before. I know it’s a little unfair, since he looked extremely pissed, and a little out of breath, but I thought of what he had told me in the woods about wanting to tenderize me, and it made me wonder if he had done this on purpose. Had he been waiting behind the door for the right moment to intervene, as a punishment for escaping?
“You don’t need to pretend to be saving me again. I really don’t know anything . . .” I was so tired; I didn’t see the point in trying to believe in this play anymore, and my voice was down to a whisper.
Incomprehension flashed on March’s features before his ever-reliable poker smile came back to mask his thoughts. “Good evening, Mr. Rislow. I’m sure you won’t mind if I recover my client.”
My eyes shifted to Creepy-hat. He looked tense but collected, scalpel still in hand, like he was weighing his options. “I seem to have no choice. Will you go easy on my assets, though? You have no idea how hard it is to find and keep decent employees these days.”
Creepy-hat hardly looked worried, and since he was implying that March’s killing his men was little more than a running gag between them, I assumed both assholes were on the same page, and he had never intended to let me live in the first place. I stopped caring. I thought it was a little cruel for March to keep acting like he was going to save me, though.
“Go away.”
March took a step toward the table and placed his hand on my forehead. “It’s okay. We’re leaving.”
Tears welled in my eyes again, and this time I spoke louder. “I said, go away! All you people do is lie to me! He said he doesn’t work for the Board. He works for your master!”
I registered a certain confusion on March’s face before he raised his gun to his colleague. “Island, what are you talking about?”
I went on, still sobbing. “He said you’d bring me back to him anyway because you’ll never leave the pack!”
His eyes widened at this last word, and Creepy-hat paled, his own eyes darting around for a possible way out. To my surprise, March parted his jacket to place his gun back in its holster. He no longer seemed mad: all I could perceive was cold determination as he spoke to Creepy-hat. “We’re done here. I’ll take care of any new developments and inform the Queen that your mission is over.”
Upon hearing this, Creepy-hat smiled at me tenderly. “Don’t worry, sweetie, he’s bluffing. He’s not going to kill me. He’s smarter than that.”
Something dark filled March’s gaze as he glanced at my naked form, the blood running on my leg, and the equipment surrounding me, and his jaw clenched imperceptibly as he confirmed Creepy-hat’s statement. “You’re right. I’m not going to kill you.”
If you ask me, I’d say he did, but March seemed to be an expert at playing on technicalities. I caught the look of surprise in Creepy-hat’s eyes when his former colleague lunged at him and easily wrenched the scalpel from his slim hand. A black-gloved fist brought him crashing face-first against the instrument tray, and I barely saw the small blade shimmering under the surgical light before it plunged in his nape, above his shoulders. My eyes squeezed shut at the sick noise of bone cracking. Creepy-hat slumped on the floor with a quiet whimper, much like a wounded puppy. I was so out of it that I didn’t even feel vindicated that the man who had been planning on disassembling me minutes ago was now a disarticulated lump sprawled on the floor.
March undid the straps holding me to the table, and I was free. Yet I didn’t get up. I still couldn’t feel my right leg, and my body wouldn’t move. Rolling to my side, I managed to curl up a little. I stared at the tiled wall, physically and emotionally drained. All I wanted to do was wait—not wait for something specific, just wait. March had other priorities. His dark jacket landed on me to cover my naked body, and I registered its unusual weight again; I figured it was bulletproof. He bent over me and reached to clean the cut Rislow had made earlier and place a few transparent strips across the wound.
“Butterfly bandages. You’ll hardly see the scar.” His voice was soft and soothing. That’s what he did, I realized. He got me hurt, and then he smoothed me back into shape, only to do it all over again. Until when? Or what?
Dismissing that depressing thought, I snuggled into the warmth of his jacket, breathing his scent and slowly recovering from my state of shock. “How did you find me?”
“I didn’t. Ilan did.” The muscles in his jaw tightened. “He pulled every string in Paris’s underworld to find this place.” I could tell he was grateful for that, and a weak, cheesy part of me wondered if maybe March had been scared that I would die, if maybe . . . he cared a little.
A low sound broke our exchange. Below us, what was left of Creepy-hat was trying to speak. It was almost inaudible, a wet, raspy murmur, but we both heard the words before he passed out. “You picked the wrong side.”
March didn’t even blink, but somehow, I got the feeling that Rislow’s point had landed close to home. Perhaps in that secret place within himself where he locked away his doubts about this odd job and the pact he had made with me. Ignoring his victim’s insinuations with disconcerting ease, he helped me put on his jacket, cradled me in his arms, and carried me through a maze of decaying and deserted hallways. I tried to avert my eyes every time we passed the still form of one of Rislow’s men. I counted seven bodies, including the bald guy now decorating the wall, and as we reached what seemed to be the entrance door, I wondered if there were more.
Once we were outside, he walked us through a sinister park. Granted, it didn’t help that the sun was setting and we were in fall, so half of the trees were leafless already. There, despite the declining light, I got a better view of the building, an abandoned mansion with several broken windows and brick walls that threatened to be swallowed by brown ivy. A dilapidated signboard dating from the nineties helped me connect the dots. We were less than an hour away from Paris, in a small suburban town called Maincy. The place had been a private clinic at some point until it had been shut down. On the estate’s rusty gates, several other public signs regarding a series of city-approved building permits suggested that the project to rehabilitate the clinic had fallen prey to France’s inextricable administrative maze for the past twenty years, allowing the place to turn into some sort of improvised haunted house for Rislow’s sick enjoyment.
When he stopped in front of a brand-new black BMW, I assumed Ilan had played fairy godmother again and replaced the unfortunate Mercedes. March helped me into the passenger seat and worked on fastening my seat belt—safety first, right? As he adjusted the belt, I noticed a few dark stains on his jacket, some on the shoulder, another on the front, near my breast. Without thinking, I brought my hand up to touch them.
>
A cool wetness coated my fingertips. Red transferred from the fabric, staining my skin. I stared in horrified fascination. This wasn’t March’s blood. More likely that bald guy’s, and perhaps the blood of a few others. Against the pasty, almost bluish white of my skin, it looked surprisingly dark. I inhaled the earthy, metallic scent permeating me, a combination of fresh blood, dried leaves, and musty walls. I probably zoned out for a few seconds, since the vision of his hands cleaning mine with a small wet wipe surprised me. I couldn’t remember having seen him move to fetch it.
He was thorough, gentle, wordlessly wiping my fingers several times, insisting on getting under each nail—out of habit, no doubt. His hands were warm. He was a different man from the March I had seen maim Creepy-hat minutes ago, the March whose jacket was drenched in the blood of the men he had killed, and I found myself unable to reconcile those two faces of a same coin. Once he was satisfied with my hands’ state of cleanliness, he folded the wet wipe over and over, until all that was left was a tiny reddish square that he carefully slid into a plastic bag. He then moved to work on removing most of the bloodstains on his jacket with a second wet wipe.
His eyes were focused, his gaze empty.
“Are you sad?”
He paused upon hearing me murmur the question, but didn’t look up at me.
“No.”
I felt my eyes tear up, but I had no idea why. “Don’t you regret it . . . when—”
I heard him swallow. “No. After a while, you no longer think about it. You don’t think about anyone specifically.”
When his hand resumed wiping the front of the jacket mechanically, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist to stop him. “But you’re sad . . . right now.”
His eyes still wouldn’t meet mine, but I saw the corner of his lips twitch in a derisive smile, not even enough to reveal a dimple. “Let’s call it a general sadness. I’m not sorry for any of them, Island.”
I let go of his wrist. “No. You’re sorry for yourself, for what you are.”
