Текст книги "An Evil Mind"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

‘Are you planning on doing all that by yourself?’ That was Lucien’s key question.

Karen shrugged. ‘I guess.’ She looked at him inquisitively. ‘But I could do with a travel mate, what do you say, Lucien? It could be fun . . . New York, then the beach?’

Lucien saw the opportunity but he screwed up his face and gave her a quick excuse, saying that he already had a few things organized – a few summer jobs. He knew that if he’d said ‘yes’, Karen would probably tell someone else that they’d be traveling together – a friend, a professor, her parents, whoever. Then, if she never came back from their summer trip but he did, his name would be right at the top of the police’s enquiry list. On the other hand, if Karen disappeared when she was supposed to have taken a trip on her own, questions wouldn’t start being asked until much later. Many would just assume that she had given up Yale after one year and gone back to England. It probably wouldn’t be until her parents started worrying from the lack of communication that a few alarm bells would start ringing.

They met again just five days before summer break, and Karen told Lucien that she was planning on leaving for her New York and Florida vacation in four days’ time. That gave him three to get everything prepared. But Lucien had been meticulously organizing everything for two months. He had almost everything he needed in place. The only things missing were a few chemical canisters, and he knew exactly where to get them.

Lucien dropped by Karen’s efficiency apartment the day before she was due to leave for New York. His plan was simple. He would invite her to take a drive with him to Lake Saltonstall that morning for a picnic, saying that they’d be back before nightfall. If Karen said that she couldn’t for any reason, then Lucien would invite her for a quick goodbye drink later that evening, which he was sure she would’ve said yes to. Anyway, the final purpose was the same – to be alone with Karen either at a remote picnic site or inside his car before she was due to leave.

Karen said yes to the picnic.

They set off at around 11:00 a.m. He drove at a steady pace, and the ride to the isolated location he’d chosen by the lake took just under twenty-five minutes. But this time Lucien didn’t subdue his victim inside his car. There was no surprise attack. No needle to the neck. Lucien did actually prepare a picnic, with sandwiches, salads, fruit, donuts, chocolates, beer and champagne. They ate, drank and laughed like a couple of best friends. It was only when Lucien poured the last of the champagne into Karen’s glass that he added enough sedative to throw her into a deep, dreamless sleep for at least an hour.

It took less than five minutes for the drug to work.

When Karen reopened her eyes, there was no more picnic, no more outdoors. She came to very slowly, and the first thing she realized was that her head ached with such ferocity, it felt like an animal was inside her skull, clawing at her brain.

In the poor light and through the pain, it took her eyes four whole minutes to finally regain focus. As they did, she struggled to understand her surroundings. She was sitting inside a dark, stuffy and soiled room. The walls seemed to be made of plain wood, like a large tool shack in someone’s back garden. But something inside her told her that she wasn’t in anyone’s back garden. She was somewhere else. Somewhere no one would find her . . . a place where no one would hear her if she screamed. And as that realization dawned on her, that was exactly what she tried doing – screaming. And that was when she became aware that her lips weren’t really moving. Her jaw wasn’t moving either. Panic took hold of her body and she tried to look around her. Her neck wasn’t moving.

Oh, Jesus!

She tried to move her fingers.

Nothing.

Her hands.

Nothing.

Her feet and toes.

Nothing.

Her legs and arms.

Nothing.

All she could move were her eyes.

They stirred down to her body, and she saw that she was sitting down on some cheap metal chair, unrestrained. Her arms were loose and falling down the sides of the chair.

For a second, she thought she was dreaming, that she would very soon wake up back in her bed, that she would laugh and wonder why her brain had produced such tormenting images, but then there was movement in the shadows to her right, and the fear she felt growing inside her told her that this was no dream.

Her eyes darted in that direction.

‘Welcome back, sleepyhead,’ Lucien said, stepping out of the darkness.

It took Karen just a few seconds to notice that everything about him seemed different, starting with what he was wearing – a long, lab-like, plastic, see-through coverall. His sneakers were also covered with blue-plastic shoe covers.

Lucien smiled at her.

Karen tried to speak but her tongue felt heavy and swollen. Only undecipherable noise came from her throat.

‘Unfortunately, you won’t be able to say much,’ Lucien explained. ‘You see, Karen, I’ve injected you with a succinylcholine-based drug.’

Fear exploded inside Karen’s eyes.

Succinylcholine is a neuromuscular-blocking agent. It blocks transmission at the neuromuscular joint, causing paralyses of whichever skeletal muscle was affected. In Karen’s case, her entire body. The nervous system, though, stays intact. She would still be able to feel everything.

Lucien checked his watch. ‘You’ll be in this state for a while longer.’ He stepped closer. ‘You know, I’m not a big fan of tattoos. I’m not sure if I’ve told you that before, but I will admit that that design you have on your upper right arm is very nice. Japanese, isn’t it?’ As he said that, he moved his right hand from behind his back, and the metallic blade glistened in the dim light.

There was no room for any more fear in Karen’s eyes. They just teared up as more unrecognizable sounds escaped her throat.

Lucien stepped closer still.

‘The main reason why I paralyzed you,’ he said. ‘Was because I wouldn’t want you to wiggle about and mess this up. This is very delicate work.’ He looked at the blade – a laser-sharp surgical scalpel. ‘This will hurt a little bit.’

Tears just rolled down Karen’s cheeks.

‘But the good news for you is that . . . I’ve done this before.’

Sixty-Six

Karen implored her body to move. She tried to gather together all the strength she had left inside her, all the will-power she could muster, but it simply wasn’t enough. Her body just wouldn’t respond, no matter how hard she willed it to. She tried screaming, talking, pleading, but her tongue still felt like a huge hairy moth inside her mouth.

Slowly and skillfully, Lucien used the scalpel to rupture the skin at the top of Karen’s shoulder blade. The first blob of blood came out, and he used a piece of gauze to clear it up. He proceeded to gradually slice and very carefully pull the skin off her arm.

Karen’s head had been paralyzed in a sitting-up sleeping position, slumped forward and slightly to the right. Her chin was low and almost touching her chest. Lucien had placed her in that position deliberately. He knew that once the drug had taken effect, Karen wouldn’t be able to move her neck, only her eyes. He wanted her to be able to see.

And so she did.

As Lucien moved closer, her eyes shot right and she saw the scalpel pierce her skin and the blood come out of her arm, but she was so scared that the pain effect was delayed. It took several seconds for a sharp and deep penetrating pain to finally hit her, releasing an animal-like, guttural growl that came from deep inside her.

The skinning, together with Karen’s contagious fear, filled Lucien with a mind-numbing satisfaction he couldn’t explain. Much better than any drug he could think of.

The entire process didn’t take him very long, and at the end of it Lucien was floating on air, high on the chemicals his brain had released into his bloodstream. He would’ve completed the skinning in half of the time, but Karen could only manage a few minutes before she passed out. Lucien wanted her awake, he wanted her panic, and so he interrupted the skinning process to bring her back to consciousness before starting again. That took time.

When he was finally done, he waited for Karen to come to again and lifted the bloody, tattooed piece of skin to show her.

Her internal organs weren’t paralyzed, and as her eyes caught sight of what used to be part of her upper right arm, her stomach shot half of its contents back up her esophagus and she vomited all over herself.

‘Don’t worry, Karen,’ Lucien said as he began to clean her up.

Karen shuddered inside at his touch.

‘That’s the only tattoo I want from you. I will not be taking any of your other ones.’

Karen had five tattoos in total.

‘But I do have a surprise for you.’ Lucien got up and disappeared into the shadows for a moment.

Karen heard a muffled scratching metallic sound, as if Lucien had begun dragging a beer keg across the floor. When he reappeared, she finally saw what he was dragging, and it was no beer keg. Lucien had with him a couple of metallic tanks, very similar in appearance to the large oxygen tanks one would find in hospitals. But somehow Karen knew that the contents of those tanks wouldn’t be oxygen.

At the top, a hose was attached to the nozzle of each tank. Lucien placed the tanks about five feet in front of Karen’s chair before returning to the shadows. Seconds later, he resurfaced, bringing with him a telescopic boom microphone stand that had been specially adapted. The alteration was that the stand had two boom arms instead of one.

He placed the stand in between Karen and the tanks before adjusting the two boom arms – one up, one down. The up one was leveled at Karen’s chest, the down one at her waist.

Karen’s eyes were following every movement with anticipation and an enormous sense of dread. She could almost feel her organs trembling inside her.

Lucien proceeded to hook a tank hose to each of the boom arms, so both hoses were now pointing directly at Karen.

‘I have a question for you, Karen.’

There was nothing Karen could do but just stare at him.

‘Have you ever heard of a LIN charge?’

He twisted both tanks so that their labels were facing Karen. As she read them and understood what their contents were, her heart froze.

Sixty-Seven

Taylor had frowned at Lucien’s question, but Hunter knew exactly what he was talking about.

LN₂, LIN and LN are all known abbreviations used for liquid nitrogen. A LIN charge is a supercooled liquid nitrogen blast. It became known as a LIN charge because the military had created liquid nitrogen grenades and explosive charges that could be magnetically attached to structures like doors, walkways, bridges and so on. Their main purpose was to hyper-freeze anything – alloys, metal, plastic, wood – making them extremely vulnerable and easy to breach. The real problem comes when a LIN charge hits human skin.

Liquid nitrogen grenades differ from all other known types of grenade in one simple way. Their charge doesn’t need to break or penetrate the skin of the target in order to kill them.

The premise behind their effectiveness is based on the special chemical properties of the most abundant mineral on earth – water.

Water is the only naturally occurring substance on the planet that expands when cooled. If a human body is struck by a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen, it will become very cold, very fast. When that happens, blood cells will freeze instantly in what is known as a ‘shock freeze’. The real messy part comes because blood cells are made of approximately 70 percent water, and the water in the blood cells will begin to expand very, very rapidly. The result of all those water molecules in one’s bloodstream expanding so quickly is total body hemorrhage. The subject will bleed from just about everywhere – eyes, ears, mouth, nose, nails, sexual organs and through the skin.

Because of the supercooled charge, the molecules’ expansion doesn’t stop, and in consequence every single blood cell in the human body eventually explodes. It’s an excruciating death, and a totally horrifying sight.

For Taylor’s sake, Lucien briefly explained the entire process.

‘I’ll tell you this,’ Lucien said to Hunter and Taylor. ‘What happened to her body once I blasted it with liquid nitrogen was hell-scary, even for me. It was like everything inside her exploded, and all that blood came pouring out through . . .’ He sighed deeply and scratched his beard, sweeping his eyes over his barren cell. ‘Everywhere, really. I spent four days just cleaning and disinfecting that shack so wild animals wouldn’t take over once I was gone.’ Lucien paused, remembering. ‘My friend back at Yale told me that they were performing this experiment on a live frog in one of the labs. It involved liquid nitrogen. When he told me what had happened, I just tried to imagine how a human body would react. But even my fertile imagination didn’t reach as far as reality.’

If Hunter or Taylor had any doubts that they were sitting before pure evil, those doubts had just vanished in the last few minutes. Neither of them wanted to hear any more details.

‘The location, Lucien?’ Hunter asked. His voice was steady and reasonable. ‘Did you bury her around Lake Saltonstall?’

Lucien ran a finger around the grooves surrounding one of the cinder blocks on the wall to his left. ‘That I did. And I have a surprise for you. I revisited that site four more times after Karen, if you know what I mean.’ He pursed his lips in a ‘What can I do?’ way and followed it with a careless shrug. ‘It was a good site, well hidden.’

‘Are you saying we’ll find five bodies at the site, instead of only one?’ Taylor asked.

Lucien held the suspense up for a moment longer before nodding. ‘Uh-huh. Would you like their names?’

Taylor glared at him.

Lucien laughed. ‘But of course you would.’ He closed his eyes and breathed in as if his memory needed an extra burst of oxygen. When he reopened them again, they looked dead, emotionless. He began.

‘Emily Evans, thirty-three years old, from New York City. Owen Miller, twenty-six years old, from Cleveland, Ohio. Rafaela Gomez, thirty-nine years old, from Lancaster in Pennsylvania. And Leslie Jenkins, twenty-two years old, from Toronto, Canada. She was an international student back at Yale.’

Lucien paused and drew in another deep breath.

‘Would you like me to tell you how they died as well?’ His lips smirked, but his eyes didn’t.

Hunter had no intentions of sitting in that basement and listening to Lucien boost about how he had tortured and killed every one of his victims.

‘The location, Lucien, nothing more,’ Hunter said.

‘Really?’ Lucien pulled a disappointed face. ‘But it was just starting to get fun. Karen was only my second victim. I got better with each new one, believe me.’ He winked at Taylor suggestively. ‘Much better.’

‘You’re a fucking psycho,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself anymore. She felt disgusted just looking at him.

Hunter matter-of-factly turned his head to look at her, silently pleading with Taylor not to engage.

‘You think so?’ Lucien seized the moment.

Taylor disregarded Hunter’s look. ‘I know so.’

Lucien looked like he was considering that statement for a moment. ‘You know, Agent Taylor, you really do have a problem with naivety. If you think I’m unique in the urges I have, then you’re unmistakably in the wrong profession.’ He threw a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Every single day thousands, millions of people out there have murderous thoughts. Some start having them very, very young. Every day there are people out there who in their own way consider killing their spouses, their partners, their neighbors, their bosses, their bank managers, the asshole bullies who torment their lives . . . the list goes on and on.’

Taylor glanced at Lucien as if his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on.

‘What you’re talking about are spur of the moment, heated thoughts,’ she returned calmly, emphasizing the word ‘thoughts’. ‘They are understandable, angry psychological reactions to a particular action. It doesn’t mean that any of it will ever materialize.’

‘The location, Lucien,’ Hunter intervened. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why Taylor was still feeding the fire. ‘Where are Karen’s remains?’

Lucien ignored him. Right then, he was more interested in pushing Taylor a little further.

‘Naive, naive, naive, Agent Taylor,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘With every human thought, spur of the moment or not, there’s always a risk that the thought might one day – fed by anger, hurt, disillusion, jealousy . . . there are a thousand factors that could help it grow – become much more than just a thought. It’s called the law of probability. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Your databases are overflowing with such examples. And it happens because anyone, and I mean anyone, independent of upbringing, gender, class, race, beliefs, status or anything else, could, under the right circumstances, become a killer.’

Let it go, Courtney, Hunter pleaded in his head.

Taylor didn’t. ‘You are delusional,’ she replied without thinking.

Her response only amused Lucien more.

‘I don’t think that I’m the one who’s delusional here, Agent Taylor. You see? It’s very easy for anyone to say that he or she will never cross a certain line, when that line is never presented to them.’

Lucien allowed his words to float in the air, giving Taylor a moment to digest them before moving on.

‘If one day they come face to face with such a line, they’ll sing a very different tune. Trust me on this, Agent Taylor. It was one of my experiments – presenting that line to someone who swore she could never take a life.’ Lucien looked at his nails as if considering if they needed trimming or not. ‘And, boy, did she cross it.’

Taylor choked on her own breath.

Hunter stared at him in disbelief.

‘Are you saying that you forced someone to commit murder as an experiment? To prove a point?’ Taylor asked.

Hunter had no doubt that Lucien was very capable of such an act. He was very capable of much more. But Hunter had heard enough, and despite Taylor being the lead agent in this investigation, he lifted a stop hand at her and took over.

‘The location, Lucien. Where in New Haven are those bodies?’

Lucien scratched his beard again while studying Hunter.

‘Of course I’ll tell you, Robert. I promised I would, didn’t I? But I’ve been telling you things for far too long now, and it’s my turn to ask a question again. That was the deal.’

Hunter could feel that coming. ‘Tell us where the bodies are first, then, while the FBI verifies the site, you can ask your question.’

Lucien agreed with an eye movement. ‘I can see your logic, but I’m sure that the FBI is already verifying the four names I’ve just given you.’ He looked up at the CCTV camera on the corner of the ceiling inside his cell and smiled at it. ‘Which means that I’ve already given you something to keep you busy. So now it’s my turn.’

Lucien gathered himself before staring deep into Hunter’s eyes.

‘Tell me about Jessica, Robert.’

Sixty-Eight

Back in the holding cells’ control room, once Director Kennedy heard the four names Lucien had given Hunter and Taylor, he immediately got on the phone to one of his research teams.

‘I need proof that these people are real,’ he said to the lead agent. ‘Social security numbers, driving licenses, whatever.’ He dictated the first three names with the respective ages and home towns, just as Lucien had mentioned. ‘The fourth person – Leslie Jenkins – is from Toronto in Canada. She was an international student at Yale, probably in the early 90s. Check with Yale, and if need be check with the Canadian Embassy in Washington. I also need to know if these people have been reported missing. Get back to me ASAP.’ He quickly put the phone down.

Kennedy remembered once having a conversation with a military weapons expert who had joined the FBI. They had discussed LIN grenades and charges. The weapons expert had showed him actual footage of what happens to a human body when it’s exposed to a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen. Kennedy had probably seen more dead bodies and attended more violent crime scenes than most people in the entire FBI, but he’d never seen anything quite like that footage.

Kennedy was ready to contact the FBI field office in New Haven, Connecticut, and ask them to dispatch a team to whatever set of directions Lucien was about to give them, when Lucien changed the game and asked Hunter about Jessica.

‘Who’s Jessica?’ Doctor Lambert asked, looking at Kennedy.

Kennedy gave him a delicate headshake. ‘I have no idea.’

Sixty-Nine

While Lucien’s question resonated against the walls, Hunter felt the air being sucked out of his lungs as if somebody had just hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. He looked at Lucien with narrow eyes, half doubting his ears.

Taylor couldn’t help but let her gaze wander over toward Hunter.

‘I’m sorry?’ Hunter said. No amount of poker face could mask his surprise.

‘Jessica Petersen,’ Lucien repeated, clearly enjoying Hunter’s reaction. The name traveled through the air slowly, like smoke. ‘Tell me about Jessica Petersen, Robert. Who was she?’

Hunter couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lucien, his brain trying hard to understand what was happening.

Police or medical records, he concluded. That’s the only possible way. Somehow Lucien gained access to either police or medical records, or both. Hunter then remembered the feeling he had when Lucien kept on asking him about his mother. Hunter felt as if Lucien already knew all the answers, and he would have, if he’d gotten his hands on police or medical records. The medical examiner’s report would’ve stated that Hunter’s mother had died of a pain-killers’ overdose, and put the time of death sometime in the middle of the night. Finding out that Hunter’s father worked nights, and therefore wasn’t at home, wouldn’t have been very difficult. The only other person in that household at that time was a seven-year-old Robert Hunter. Lucien would’ve had no problem putting together most of what had really happened that night. He just needed Hunter to fill in the gaps.

‘Who was she?’ Lucien asked again, coolly.

Hunter blinked the blur of confusion away. ‘Someone I knew years ago,’ he finally replied in the same tone.

‘C’mon, Robert,’ Lucien shot back. ‘I know you can do better than that. And you know you can’t lie to me.’

Their stares battled for a moment.

‘She’s someone I used to date when I was young,’ Hunter said.

‘How young?’

‘Very. I met her just after I finished my PhD.’

Lucien sat back on his bed and stretched his legs in front of him, getting as comfortable as he could. ‘How long did you date her for?’

‘Two years.’

‘Were you in love?’ Lucien asked, tilting his head slightly to one side.

Hunter hesitated. ‘Lucien, what does this have to do with—’

‘Just answer the question, Robert.’ Lucien cut him short. ‘I can ask whatever I like, relevant or not, that was the deal, and right now I would like you to tell me more about Jessica Petersen. Were you in love with her?’

Taylor shifted on her chair.

Hunter’s nod was subtle. ‘Yes, I was in love with Jessica.’

‘Did you make plans to marry her?’

Silence.

Lucien’s eyebrows arched, indicating that he was waiting for an answer.

‘Yes,’ Hunter said. ‘We were engaged.’

For the briefest of moments Taylor heard Hunter’s voice croak.

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Lucien commented. ‘So what went wrong? I know that you aren’t married or divorced. So, what happened? How come you never married the woman you were in love with? Did she leave you for someone else?’

Hunter gambled. ‘Yes, she found someone else. Someone better.’

Lucien shook his head and noisily sucked his teeth with every head movement. ‘Are you sure you want to test me again, Robert? Are you sure you want to lie to me? Because that’s what you’re doing right now.’ Lucien’s look and voice became hard as steel. ‘And I really don’t like that.’

Taylor kept a steady face, but her eyes looked lost.

‘You know what?’ Hunter said, lifting both of his hands up. ‘I’m not talking about this.’

‘I think you’d better,’ Lucien countered.

‘I don’t think so,’ Hunter replied in the same conservative tone a psychologist would use to address a patient. ‘I was brought here because I thought I’d be helping an old friend. Someone I thought I knew. When they showed me your picture back in LA just a few days ago, I was sure that there had been some sort of bad mistake. I agreed to fly over here because I thought I could help the FBI clear all this up and prove you’re not the man they thought you were. I was wrong. I can’t help because there’s nothing to clear up. You are who you are, and you did what you did. Unfortunately, no one can change that. But you said so yourself – there’s no rush to any of this because there’s no one we can save – and when I leave, the FBI will carry on interrogating you about the location of all your victims’ remains.’

Hunter peeked at Taylor. A frown had creased her forehead after she heard the word ‘leave’.

‘They’ll just use different methods,’ Hunter continued. ‘Less conventional ones. I’m sure you know what’s coming. It might take a few days longer, but trust me, Lucien, in the end you will talk.’

Hunter got up, ready to leave.

Lucien looked as calm as he’d ever looked.

‘I would really suggest that you sit back down, old friend, because you’ve misquoted me.’

Hunter paused.

‘I didn’t say that there was no rush to any of this. I said that there was no rush in finding Susan’s remains, because you couldn’t save her anyway.’

Something in the way Lucien phrased his words made Hunter’s heartbeat stumble, pick itself up, and then stumble again.

‘And I’ve never said that you couldn’t save anyone. Because I think there’s still time.’ A tense pause as Lucien looked at his wrist, consulting his invisible watch once again. ‘I haven’t killed all the victims I’ve kidnapped, Robert.’ Lucien accompanied those words with a look so cold and devoid of feelings, it could’ve belonged to a cadaver. ‘One is still alive.’

Part Three

A Race Against Time

Seventy

Hidden location.

Three days earlier.

She coughed and spluttered awake, or at least she thought she was awake. She couldn’t really tell anymore. Her reality was as terrifying as her worst nightmares. Confusion surrounded her twenty-four hours a day, as her brain seemed to be in a constant state of haziness – half numb, half awake.

Due to the lack of sunlight, she had lost track of time a while ago. She knew she’d been locked in this stinking hell-hole for a long time now. To her it felt like years, but it could’ve been just months, or even weeks. Time just trickled by, and no one was counting.

She could still remember the night she met him in that bar on the east side of town. He was older than her, but charming, attractive, well educated, very intelligent, funny, and really knew how to compliment a woman. He made her feel special. He made her feel like she could light up the sky. At the end of the night, he put her in a cab and didn’t offer, or even suggest joining her. He was very polite and gentleman like. He did ask her for her phone number, though.

She had to admit that she was quite excited when he called just a few days later and asked her if she would like to go out for dinner with him. With a huge smile on her face she accepted.

He picked her up that evening, around 7:00 p.m., but they never made it to a restaurant. As soon as she entered his car and buckled up, she felt something sting the side of her neck. He’d acted so fast she didn’t even see his hand move. The next thing she could recall was waking up in this cold and damp room.

The room was exactly twelve paces by twelve paces. She’d counted and recounted it many times. The walls were crude and made of brick and mortar, the floor of rough cement. The door, which sat at the center of one of the walls, was made of metal with a rectangular, lockable viewing slot about five feet from the floor. Like a prison door. There was a thin and dirty mattress pushed up against the back wall. There was a blanket that smelled of wet dog. No pillow. On one corner there was a plastic bucket she was told to use as a toilet. There were no windows, and the weak, yellowish bulb locked inside a metal-mesh box at the center of the ceiling was on 24/7.

Since she’d been taken into captivity, she’d only seen her kidnapper a handful of times, when he would enter her cell to deliver food and water, a new roll of rough toilet paper, and to swop her toilet bucket for a clean one.

So far, he hadn’t touched or hurt her. He never said much either. She would scream, beg, plead, try to talk, but he barely ever replied to her. On one occasion, his simple physical response scared her so much she wet herself. Out of pure fear, her subconscious mind kept on urging her to ask him what he wanted with her, what he would do to her. So one day, she gave in and asked him. He didn’t reply with words. He simply looked at her, and in his eyes she saw something she’d never seen before – unadulterated evil.

He would bring her food and water, sometimes daily, but not always. Though she had completely lost the concept of time, she could still tell that some of the intervals between rations were way too long. Certainly, way over a day or two.

Once, just after the third or fourth food delivery, she had waited for the door to open and tried surprise-attacking him with all the strength she had in her, clawing at his face with her chipped nails. But it seemed like he’d been waiting for it to happen all along, and before she was able to put even a small scratch on him, he punched her stomach so hard, she immediately doubled over and puked. She spent the rest of that day lying on the floor in the fetus position, contorted in pain, her abdomen sore and bruised.

Sometimes the rations were larger than others – more bottles of water, more packets of crackers and cookies, more candy bars, more loaves of bread, sometimes even fruit. Then he’d be gone for a long time. The larger the ration he brought her, the longer it would be before he came back, and the last ration she got was the largest of them all.