The light flickered overhead, dipping her battered body into darkness and then fishing it out again, like having your head thrust under water, unsure of whether you would ever see the surface again. Several spots on Yves’ body were already black and purple, the areas that suffered repeated blows. Her nose made an unsettling twist to the right side of her face and leaked a free-flow of snotty blood. The Faceless Man had no reservations about beating her, about where he hit her, or about what to do with her when he was done. She was a living rag doll for his amusement and was being crushed under the hazy blanket of her own suffering.
She wanted very much to curl up under the unfamiliar blankets beneath her and hide from the buzzing overhead light, to become a fetal cocoon of recovery, cowering from the empty gaze of the man without a face. The red-grey version of the light that skidded past her swollen eye sockets was spiking her forehead like a molasses covered pin, dragging at her muscles and sticking deep within her brain. She could not turn her head away from the light or squint harder to avoid it, her muscles screamed like rusty wheels that were content to remain still and silent for the rest of their lives.
In Yves case, this could be a very short amount of time. The Faceless Man could return at any moment and choose to end her life, taking his dull box cutter and dragging it across her throat to rip it open and finish what he started. Or he could rape her again.
No, oh god, not again. Yves would rather he kill her than suffer through his torture again, she would welcome the rip and tear of his razor than the other form of ripping and tearing he would want.
Testing her wrists against the ropes, Yves was bombarded again by the flood of brutal agonies across her whole body. When she pulled with her arms her legs were yanked down towards the foot of the bed, stretching her midsection like a rack and pulling taut her bruised and broken skin. She must have a broken rib, the left side of her chest began to feel very warm and was the loudest complaint when she made sudden movements. She had to pull though. Of course she was frightened of his return, especially if he found her struggling, but she was more frightened of never escaping this place.
Yves had been prisoner before, had played this game with other monsters, and it was not a game with winners.
She kept pulling at her wrists, wriggling her thin forearms back and forth against the aging rope. The veil of her fluid-packed eyelids hid the restraints from her, but she could feel how they were rough and frayed, but still strong and thick. She would just have to keep pulling. Each yank on the rope threatened tear at her torso, her legs and arms moving apart like polarized magnets. Slow, wiggling motions were the best she could do without having to choke back screams.
Then the tears came, caustic streams of salt that lurched down her cheeks, moving slower than any other tear she had ever cried and burning her fractured skin the whole way down. She had a menagerie of bodily fluids on the bed, a soaking mattress of disgust. She wondered who else had been laid out on this pedestal. Who else had been raped and died at the hands of this man?
The thought of those women, of people who had a fate just as poor as her own was enough to cut the tears, to dry up her bulging sockets. She moved her wrists faster, pulling and twisting her arms against the knots that remained invisible behind her clouded vision. Her sweat coated the ropes and provided a slight lubricant, giving her a fraction of an inch at a time, bringing the rope to bear against the fattest part of her hand – across her thumb and back of her palm.
“Come on” she whispered, her dry lips cracking and stinging as they opened to the wet air in the bunker. The rope was holding strong, a fat manacle against her not-small-enough hand, she always thought she had delicate hands, small women’s hands, but apparently they were still too large.
Come ON, she pleaded to the panic in her own head, just let me go! This must be what Hell feels like, giving up a little hope only to get it stuck on your fat hands. Crushing that hope just before a man comes in to rape you. Hell.
In Yves Hell, it was worse. Yves never fell asleep, or became tired, or naturally lost consciousness. She was quite sure that the Faceless Man’s sedative which helped in her capture was intended to knock her out, but of course that was not going to happen. She was doomed in a way. It had been a blessing, the ability to travel through the night, to keep traveling until her feet were bloody, simply because the rest of her body said “keep going, you’re okay.” Yves didn’t know why, or even care why she could live without rest, especially because her life had become an escape, a running away from the East and blindly walking into a forgotten wilderness. Traveling twenty four hours a day without pause was the greatest advantage she had in her one-woman exodus and thanked God for the miles she covered.
But now it was a curse. Never would she pass out from shock, or black out from a blow to the head, she would be awake and aware for each time the Faceless Man came to bear against her, with a blind- consciousness that gave her the displeasure of feeling and smelling and hearing all the ugly things, but being stifled under her blackened eyes, which were almost caked shut with blood.
An eternity of wakefulness. She kept struggling against the rope.
The perspiration on her wrists turned clammy, giving them purchase instead of making them slippery, the rope fought against her with the urgency of a living thing. It wanted her to be tied up here, it was an accomplice of the Faceless Man.
That was when she heard the voices.
Two voices, muffled and distressed, dancing in from the labyrinth outside Yves’ room. One of them was familiar, it grew in a high-pitch way that blasted Yves with cold air, wringing out the goose bumps on her body. The Faceless Man was arguing with someone. Yves froze, listening and waiting.
The argument turned to monologue and the Faceless Man’s voice became his pleasure shriek, like a witch burned at a stake. The scream beat its empty fists against the stone walls, dying against them but echoing in a torturous refrain before it could escape.
The scream ended with a single gunshot, masked by the walls. To Yves it sounded like an ice cube dropped in a cold drink – crack.
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