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“My roommate,” Izzy said.
“What about her?” the man asked.
“She’s not here. I don’t know where she is,” Izzy said. She didn’t know why she was telling him these things.
“I want to know where the Book of Doors is,” the man replied.
“The what?”
The man walked over, taking his time. “I want to know where the Book of Doors is,” he repeated. He stood in front of Izzy, towering over where she sat on the couch.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said. The panic was starting to bubble, like a pot heating on the stove. She tried to remain calm, but she had no idea who the man was or what he would do. “Please don’t kill me,” she said, hating how pathetic she sounded.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Barbary said. “I mean, I might enjoy it. But it’s probably not in my interests. You are an asset to me. When I find your roommate, she will want you to be alive, and that is to my advantage. If you are dead, I lose that.”
Izzy absorbed his words, grasping for hope. Her heart was punching her rib cage like a boxer. A distant part of her mind reminded her of the nerves she had always felt before big auditions, how she had been able to suppress those, to give nothing away to anyone she engaged with. She knew she had to use that skill now, to show nothing of what she was feeling inside.
“But it is less important to me if you are whole or not,” the man added. “If you lose a finger, or a limb, or your eyes...” He gestured vaguely at her body parts as he mentioned them. “So it is inyourinterest to keep me happy.”
His words made her want to vomit, and her insides clenched suddenly.
“I don’t know anything,” Izzy said, clasping her hands together in her lap. “I promise.”
The man nodded slowly. “I believe you,” he said. “It’s what you’ve forgotten that I am interested in.”
“I don’t understand,” Izzy said, trying to smile. “I want to help you. I don’t want to die, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
The man sighed. He seemed mildly annoyed, like a man who’d walked to a shop only to find the thing he wanted was out of stock. “I need to know what you have forgotten and if you can’t remember, then I am going to help you.”
“How can I remember what I can’t remember?” she asked, panicking now. “I can’t remember!”
The man put his bag on the floor and opened it. He reached in and pulled out a small notebook. The cover was a crash of purple and green shapes, like someone had tried to paint a migraine.
“This might help,” he said.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Take it,” he said, holding it out to her.
She looked at the book, up to the man’s expressionless face, back to the book again.
“What is it?” she asked, more warily.
“Take it in your hands,” the man instructed, speaking slowly like he was trying to make a stupid person understand something simple. He pulled back his overcoat to reveal the gun in its holster. “Or I will put a bullet in one of your joints.”
Izzy took the book and as soon as she did, she felt her knuckles twinge, a twinge that didn’t stop. It sustained and maintained, a low-volume screech grinding in her fingers. “Ow!” she exclaimed, looking down at the book. What she saw didn’t make sense. The book, or the air around it, seemed to be pulsing, with deep red and green and purple colors emanating from between her hands. It made Izzy think of some sort of bizarre creature from deep in the ocean, flickering colorfully as it pushed itself through dark water. That thought was chased away as she realized the book seemed to be growing heavier and hotter, as the pain pulsed within her in time with the colors she was seeing. “This is the Book of Pain,” the man said. “You can’t drop it until I allow it. The pain you are feeling in your hand will steadily spread until it is in all parts of your body...”
As the man said this Izzy realized the pain was dragging itself up her forearm, like rusty nails being scraped through her veins. “Ow!” she said again, her body trying to flinch away from the book. She was an animal in a trap, and she felt tears bubbling in her eyes. “Make it stop!” she begged. The colors seemed to be pulsing more quickly now.
“Once it is in all parts of your body,” the man continued, his tone completely indifferent to Izzy’s pain, “then it will gradually grow worse and worse until all you are is pain. You will be nothing but a bag of torment. And then your heart will give out.”
Izzy’s shoulder was a ball of spikes, dry and crunchy, rotating against the socket. The book in her hands was so hot and heavy, the strange colors screaming in the air and flickering rapidly on her face.
“Nobody can hold the Book of Pain for long,” the man said, the very sound of his voice agony in Izzy’s ears. He squatted in front of her to watch her face, interested in what was happening.
The pain reached Izzy’s neck and she screamed then, a howl that sounded very far away to her shocked mind. She knew that the man was speaking but she couldn’t understand the words anymore. Tortuous fingers were creeping across her breasts and back, hot pokers burning through her skin. She rocked on the couch. Her bladder gave out and she urinated on herself but was not aware of it. The world was receding under the onslaught of pain.
“Pieces of your memory are sealed off from you,” the man was saying, meaningless words, a foreign language in Izzy’s world of torment. “The torture will open the doors, will reset your mind. I believe this to be true. You will remember, or you will endure until you die.”
