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They pull me up and throw me onto the concrete floor.
I gasp for air.
Turtleneck cocks his head, “Are you going to talk now?”
I cough and sputter in reply.
He steps closer, looming over me. “Either you tell us what we want to know, or we’ll keep doing this until you do.”
“Or until you drown,” Man Bun adds.
I don’t think I can take any more of this torture. Drowning is far worse in real life than it looks in movies. Another round and I might break. And if they start roughing me up the way James Bond gets roughed up, then I’ll definitely break. I’ll tell them about Joseph. If he’s still in Europe, it may get him killed.
Hey, at least I won’t have to live with that on my conscience!The chances that these men will let me walk out that door are pretty slim.
Through the terror that fills me, I realize that the situation I’m in totally qualifies for the term I recently learned.
“Ca…” I begin, but I can’t finish the word, because I need to cough again.
“What?” Man Bun slaps me. “What did you say?”
Pain explodes across my face. “Caco…” I cough some more.
“What? Who? Repeat!”
“Caco… topia,” I finally manage.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means ‘deep shit.’”
“That, I can guarantee, hon,” Turtleneck coos. “If you keep going like this, then cacotopia is what you’ll have.”
Still chuckling, he backhands me on the side of the head, hard enough to make my ears ring. I gasp in pain.
Man Bun cackles.
Turtleneck’s phone rings in his pocket. Whipping it out, he glances at the screen.
“Who is it?” Man Bun asks.
“The boss.” Into the phone, he says, “Sir, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
“Shall I dunk her some more without you?” Man Bun asks while leering at me.
Turtleneck gestures no.
“When I’m back,” he says to me, “we’ll try something different, more fun. For us, that is, not for you. For you it’ll be much worse than drowning. And the damage will be much more serious too.”
“I know what you have in mind!” Rubbing his hands, Man Bun bounds over to a workbench in a dark corner of the room.
I hadn’t noticed it before. It holds all manner of scary tools including knives, saws, and pliers. My teeth begin to chatter from what they have in store for me. I clench them to keep my jaw still.
Man Bun shifts his gaze from the table to me and back to Turtleneck. “I think she’ll talk.”
“She’ll sing, my friend,” Turtleneck says, striding to the door. “It would be a pity to ruin a beautiful woman.”
Any hope I’d had to live through this because they’d kept their masks on so that I wouldn’t ID them later fritters like sand through a crack. Not just any crack, mind you, but a deep rift gaping wide and curving inward.
