Sasha giggled into a fit of laughter. “Stop it, jigglepotamus. You’re just rattling off the same silly excuses every salad-dodger has ever exploited to stress eat herself into a diabetic co—”
Sasha didn’t get to finish. Hewlett lashed out, cracking her across the face with a brutal backhand, but the recipient only took it in stride.
“That was way better,” Sasha declared, spitting out a wad of blood, “but something’s still missing. Maybe it’s muscle. Yeah…that’s it. All mass and no ass.”
That was when the incessant abuse turned the key, flipped the switch, devolving Carrie Hewlett into a primal, inhuman body of rage. Her face turned crimson, her breathing became shallow, and her fists balled into white slabs of hate. She struck Sasha once, then twice, then again, countering over and over with multiple blows.
Her wrists bound and cuffed to the chair at the small of her back, Sasha had no way to defend, no option other than to absorb each strike as it came. The assault was relentless, ceasing only when her attacker reached exhaustion and Sasha began to see stars. Everything became a darkened blur from there. Voices became murmurs and muffled slurs. She couldn’t discern if she was passing out or breathing her last breaths.
Hewlett backed away, wiping the blood from her tormenter’s battered lips, cheeks and eyes from her knuckles. She turned and banged on the steel entry door. “Guards! Help! Let me out of here! Now!”
The sound of boots smacking the tile floor came next. The door pried open, and two uniformed men strode in.
“Jesus, what the hell happened in here?” asked the first.
His partner’s eyes went wide at the sight of Sasha’s face. “Forget that—what happened to her?”
Guard number one uncuffed Sasha from the chair and dragged her limp body upright. “Let’s get her back to the hole before someone sees her like this.”
Officer Hewlett, who had held at the doorway, swung back in. “No! No way! That woman assaulted me! And that means it’s straight to the Annex for her!”
“Assaulted you?” the second guard snapped. “How could she? She’s been bound to the chair the whole time.”
“She verbally assaulted me! And one form of assault is the same as the other.”
“Eh, I don’t know about that,” guard number one said, looking over the damage done.
His partner agreed. “Yeah, I think we might need a supervisor to make that call.”
“You can do that after you take her,” Hewlett whined. “Right now, I am the ranking, and I say she goes there. So make it happen! Kicking and screaming if need be!”
Sasha didn’t remember the ride to get there. Two men dragged her from a vehicle and forced her into a cold, humid void, setting her down onto a hard surface just before removing her blindfold. As her swollen eyes adjusted to the outdoor light peering through the doorway, she could tell now that she’d been relocated inside a rectangular metal structure of some kind, perhaps a container. A minute later, both men took their leave without another word, closing the door behind them, confining her to the darkness.
“Great. That’s just great,” she spat, the drying blood on her lips causing them to stick together. “So much for my five-star accommodations at Motel Six.”
Her head pounded, and her face hurt like crazy. It stung to blink, move her lips, elevate or stretch her cheeks. The metallic flavor of blood lingered in her mouth. Sasha swallowed a few times to silence the tinnitus in her ears and, hopefully, adjust to the noise level of the cavern in which she’d been placed. She scratched a fingernail on the floor, then the wall inches from her back. Both surfaces felt like old corroded steel or iron.
Sasha thought she heard breathing or panting. Maybe she wasn’t alone in this box. “Um, is someone else here?”
There wasn’t an immediate reply, but the breathing sound continued. Then someone cleared her throat and gruffly whisper-shouted, “Shh! Keep quiet, whoever you are! If you make too much noise, they’ll hear you and come back! And if they come back, we’ll both be in a gigantic world of shit, and I don’t want to be in a gigantic world of shit. So kindly keep quiet.”
“Damn. Sorry, it’s my first time here, so I didn’t know,” Sasha said, muffling her voice. “How about if we whisper? Is whispering okay?”
“Sure, I guess. Just don’t do a lot of it.” A pause. “Why does your voice sound funny? Sounds like you have something stuck in your mouth. Are you chewing gum?”
“Nope, no gum, just the ones barely holding my teeth in. My lips are busted pretty good, though, and my mouth hurts like a bastard. Maybe that’s it.”
“How did you mess yourself up like that? Did you fall?”
Sasha sniggered at the question’s satire. “No. A verbal misunderstanding took place at my interrogation today.”
“Did you say interrogation?”
“I did.”
“Who did you have the mix-up with?”
“Officer Hewlett.”
“You mean Carrie Hewlett? She used to run the main desk at senior quarters. What was she interrogating you for?”
“It’s a long story, sweetie.”
“Don’t call me sweetie,” the voice quipped. “You don’t know me. You’ve never even met me until a minute ago. I don’t recall you ever buying me coffee, and we’ve never gone on a date, so you don’t get to call me sweetie.”
“Okay, goddamn. Enhance your calm. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I am calm. Just don’t call me sweetie. And don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, either.”
Sasha didn’t say anything.
“So are you going to tell me? Obviously, you don’t have to, but I’d really like to know.”
“Maybe we should get to know each other a little better first,” suggested Sasha, her lips stinging her. “I don’t want
