He parked his old sedan three streets away, put on an overcoat and baseball cap, then walked the rest of the way, past derelict housing blocks and shuttered shops scrawled with graffiti.
He reached the razor-wire fence and pushed through a small gap at the side into a grassy alley between two buildings. He walked through to a wide patch of scrubland that was once the backyard of a clothing business that had long ago closed down.
Several stray dogs appeared from each corner of the square, eager-eyed and barking. The man took out his bag of meat, which consisted of cheap scraps that he collected from the meat market. The dogs ran towards him, yapping and jumping, saliva dripping and swinging from their jowls. There were about sixteen strays of all types. He took out handfuls of fatty meat and tossed them around the yard.
The dogs were his homemade security force. He’d started to feed them a few months back, after he’d found the abandoned garage on one of his tours of duty. He knew that a lock-up without additional security would not last in that part of Brooklyn, so he’d spent the time trying to get the dogs to see the garage as their place and defend it. No one would try to get past a pack of wild dogs. Not even gangbangers.
He got to the door of the garage and unlocked each of the three padlocks. The dogs surrounded him, yelping and circling tight around his legs.
He pushed open the door and flicked on the light. The dogs ran in all around him and their barking filled the room and echoed against the tin roof. He threw more meat down and filled three bowls with water.
He sat in a battered armchair and started feeding some of them by hand. They fed furiously, angrily, gulping down the lumps of fat and gristle with excited glee. They were a pack, a team, but underneath that organization, they were out for themselves. If one of them got injured, they’d tear the animal to shreds.
The man stood up and went back to the door. He threw the remaining lumps of meat into the yard and watched them tear out of the room. He slammed the door shut and breathed excitedly. Around the room, there were several scaffolding poles that leaned against the walls, and bags of sand and cement piled in corners. Outside the garage door stood a large pallet of bricks. He’d brought about four dozen bricks into the room and had started to mark out two internal walls along the floor, coming out from the back wall. He’d been planning on a building project for a while now, but was waiting for the right kind of girl. It was going to be a room within a room, a very special room. One he’d dreamed of his whole life.
The large brick garage had been empty for years. A piece of derelict real estate in a part of town no one wanted to live in. He had a new door fixed, new bolts and padlocks. He’d bricked up the one small window. Across the garage was a second door which once upon a time housed a bathroom. The cistern and sink had been smashed. He’d cleared the room out and sealed it up as best he could.
He took a metal plate from a shelf next to the door. Removed a piece of dry bread and a small piece of cheese from a tin, and put them on the plate. He then poured some water from a bottle into a metal cup. He placed both at the bottom of the door where there was a hinged flap.
He stood at the door, knocked twice and pulled back a small slot that he’d cut in the wood. He stooped and stared into the room at the bundle lying on the floor.
‘Stand,’ he ordered. The prisoner did as he requested. He did not listen to her when she spoke or cried. He had taught himself to believe it was another language. The language of lies. She stood and turned her back to the door. He moved his hands through the slot and unbuckled her wrists and then her mouth restraint. Then he shut the slot and pushed the metal plate through the hinged flap with his foot.
A few seconds later, a bedpan was pushed out. He picked it up, took it outside the door and threw the contents on the ground. The dogs ran at the sewage as if it were more food.
As she was eating, he started to undress and place his clothes in a wooden trunk. From the trunk he took out another set of clothes. He was going hunting again. He dressed in his hunting uniform, slowly adding each item of clothing that he’d carefully sourced over the years. He pressed his hair flat to his head and looked at himself in a jarred fragment of mirror. His eyes flinched at the sight of his own dark hair and olive skin. He moved his gaze quickly to the uniform to stem the self-loathing that flooded within him at the sight of his own features. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, letting the whole effect grow in his mind and now feeling excited by the transformation.
He walked to the cell and knocked. He kicked the clean bedpan through the hinged flap. A moment later, the empty plate and cup appeared at the bottom of the door. He knocked again, opened the slot and the prisoner stood again and turned. He stared into the tiny cell, and opened the door.
Every day, it was the only interaction he allowed himself with the prisoner. Distance was important.
He walked the girl out into the room, where she picked up the tin of boot polish from the table and a rag and knelt at his feet. She started to polish his boots as he stared down at her.
‘That is good, Abigail. You are behaving well today.’
‘I hope you’re pleased with me,’ she said. ‘I try to please you.’
He pulled back and looked down at his boots. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now stand. I need to inspect your cell.’
Abby moved away as he leaned into her cell and checked the door hinges and the mattress.
‘I recognized your cologne. I’ve smelled it before. I just can’t think where.’
‘I’ve been close to you a number of times, Abigail. I came close to taking you but each time something got in the way.’
The memories suddenly clicked.
‘The man in the dark. You pushed into me.’ She felt a shiver of fear, then anger, a fury that she couldn’t control. She picked up a brick started towards him.
He heard the movement behind him and turned. The girl was running towards him. He was shocked for a moment. A brick hit him hard on the side of the head. He stumbled backwards into the cell, his hand grabbing on to the door frame. She smashed the brick down on his hand and he let go, tumbling backwards. She pushed the door shut on him, but he wasn’t unconscious. His boots, bright black and shining, kicked the door open. The girl was hit but did not give up; she approached again with the brick.
He stood up, a trickle of blood over one eye, cradling his left hand. She stared, panting, the brick raised.
‘It’s wrong, what you’re doing. It’s sick and it’s wrong and I want to go home,’ she shouted. ‘I won’t stay here. I won’t!’
He moved towards her. ‘You betrayed the trust I put in you, Abigail.’
‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll smash your filthy head in.’ ‘Will you?’ he said, and closed in on her. The girl raised the brick, but he was expecting that. His arm came across to bat it away, but the brick didn’t move; her body shifted and her left leg rose high in a karate kick and the side of her foot hit his chin. He reeled backwards.
‘Don’t come near me,’ she shouted. Then she stepped towards the door. ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Help!’
‘You will be punished for this, you realize. And I will make your father aware of every moment of your suffering.’ He stepped towards her, his face angry now.
‘Get away from me. You find suffering a turn-on, do you, you sick bastard?’
He moved quickly. She threw the brick at his head; it glanced off his shoulder. She twisted, punched and kicked. But he came too fast and his bulk pushed her back and pressed her against the wall. He held her there, his mouth close to hers.
‘They will find you dead, Abigail. A naked corpse on your father’s doorstep — half-eaten by dogs. But I want to find out how close to death you can go. How slowly I can kill you.’
She was shivering. His hand tightened around her neck. He leaned back and smashed his forehead against her nose. ‘You will not be beautiful any more.’
He gritted his teeth. He shoved her hard into the chair, took out a knife and started to chop away at her hair as she wept and screamed. She stared into the shard of a mirror leaning against the wall. The girl she knew, the girl everyone knew, was disappearing. All around her, her long brown hair lay discarded on the floor.
‘We will not call you Abby any more.’
‘What?’
‘You are an experiment now, not a person. We will call you 144002.’
‘Fuck you,’ she spat.
He breathed, his hand so tight around her arm that he could feel the bone.
