c h a p t e r  3 : 

Kate didn't let him sleep that first night, he was already losing track of time. She injected him with some sort of amphetamine and then left for hours. Gaspard's heart raced and he could do nothing but stare at the white ceiling and feel the pulse throb in his neck and his tethered hands shake. The blood had dried on his chest and now itched. He was in excruciating pain every time he inhaled, but it's the itching that is making him crazy.

He tried for a while to keep track of time by counting, but his mind drifted and he lost the thread of numbers. Judging by the stink of the corpse on the floor beside him, he had been here for at least twenty-four hours. But more than that, he can't say. So Gaspard stares. And blinks. And breathes. And waits.

He did not hear her come in, but suddenly she is there, smiling beside him. She caressed his hair, which was wet with sweat. "It's time for your medicine, love," she cooed. With a swift motion, she tore the tape off his mouth.

She was gentle as she pushed a funnel into his throat, but it still made him gag. He fought it, jerking his head from side to side, trying to lift himself on his elbows, but she knotted her fist in his hair and held his head firmly in place. "Now, now," she scolded.

She had a handful of pills and dropped them down his throat one by one. He gagged and tried to spit them out, but she extracted the funnel, pressed his jaw shut, and rubbed his throat with her hand, forcing him to swallow them like a dog.

"What are they?" he croaked.

"You don't get to talk yet," she said. She smoothed another piece of gray tape over his mouth. He was almost thankful. What is there to say?

"What do you want to do today?" she asked.

Gaspard stared at the ceiling, his eyes burn for sleep.

"Look at me," she said between clenched teeth.

He did.

"What do you want to do today?"

He raised his eyebrows in an expression of ambivalence.

"More ... fun?"

He can't stop himself from flinching. Fun, that was what she called this. The torture of carving into his skin, repeating so it would not heal, leaving him with blood-ink-tattoos.

Kate beamed. He could tell his pain pleases her. "They're looking for you," she said in a singsong voice. "But they're not going to find you."

Wherever they are, she is reading the paper, watching the news, he thought.

She put her face next to his so he can see her smooth ivory skin, and huge pupils. "I want you to think about what we're going to send them," she said matter-of-factly. She ran her fingertips lightly along the skin of his arm, his wrist. "Hand, foot, that sort of thing. Something nice to let them know we're thinking of them. I'm going to let you pick it out."

Gaspard closed his eyes. He is not here. This was not happening. He tried frantically to conjure a face, any face, on the black canvas of his eyelids. But all he could see was her. He tried to see someone else, red-hair. It still remained blonde. Dark skin, dark as night ... ivory leaked over the female face. It always melted back into a form of her.

"Look at me," Kate ordered.

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. Freckles. Plump round body. Anything—

"Look at me," she said again, her voice airless.

He cursed her mentally, the tape holding it all in.

She stabbed him just under his left rib cage. He howled and wrenched in pain and his eyes flew open instinctively. She held his head firmly by a fistful of hair and bent over him so that her breasts are inches above his chest and she twisted the scalpel farther into his flesh.

"I don't like to be ignored," she said in a voice just above a whisper. "Understood?"

He nodded, straining against her hand.

"Good." She pulled the scalpel out and dropped it on the instrument tray.