While Roxana was cleaning her hand and face, Mr Wang’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, bristling with annoyance, and read the text.
‘Mr Ma is late for the dinner downstairs! Clean yourself up and move it! Some extremely important individuals are being made to wait on your account, you foul little piece of trash!’
Roxana, still weeping and sniffling, took the tissue and dabbed it listlessly around her face. Evidently though, she was not cleaning herself up as quickly as Mr Wang would have liked; he snatched the tissue out of her hands, grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head forcefully back so that he could wipe the mucous and tears off of her face himself, doing this with rough, frantic hands, gritting his teeth and snarling all the while.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ he hissed. ‘Are you trying to make Mr Ma angry? Are you, you clumsy idiot? Hurry up!’
Still gripping her hair tight in his fist, he dragged her behind him as he strode with furious intent along the corridor. When they reached the elevator, he flung Roxana into it so hard that the wind was knocked out of her when she hit the mirrored wall inside. She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath and wheezing while Mr Wang stepped casually inside, pressed the button and stood next to her, straightening out his tie and casually brushing some lint off of his suit jacket as he gazed blankly at his own reflection. After a few seconds they reached the top floor, where the presidential suite was located, and Mr Wang once again dragged Roxana by her hair out of the elevator. Huge, ornately carved mahogany doors stood sentry at the end of the plush-carpeted hall; beyond them Mr Ma was waiting.
‘Hurry up, hurry up!’ Mr Wang growled through rage-clenched teeth as he pulled the girl along while she stumbled, sniffed and sobbed.
Mr Wang wasted no time in throwing open the twelve-foot tall doors, and he entered the room calmly and confidently, his gait exuding subdued power and agile grace. Propped up on silk-covered goose-down pillows, inside an intricately detailed Qing Dynasty canopy bed, was Mr Ma. A terrible scowl of rage on his face contorted his already ugly features into the likeness of a medieval demon, and his tiny black eyes burned with impatient anger in their sunken, purple sockets. He immediately began gesturing in furious sign language at Mr Wang while grunting in anger with his tongueless mouth. Mr Wang bowed and kept his eyes averted as he dragged Roxana into the large, decadent chamber.
‘I apologise most profusely for the delay, sir,’ Mr Wang said in a demure tone, speaking Mandarin now. ‘I tried to get her here as quickly as possible.’
Mr Ma growled wordlessly and gesticulated with angry sign language gestures.
‘Of course sir,’ Mr Wang responded, keeping his head bowed and his eyes averted. ‘I have disgraced myself in failing to perform the task in the allocated time. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of my failure.’
Mr Ma shook his head and continued to glare with hellish wrath at both of them. His liver-spotted hands, resting on the silk blanket that covered his lap and legs, were trembling with unadulterated rage.
Mr Wang leaned over to Roxana and whispered harshly in her ear, switching back to Russian.
‘Despite the Viagra, he has lost his ability to achieve an erection. Understandably, he is very, very upset … and you are going to pay for this.’
Mr Ma again made some sign language gestures, growling and spitting as he did while shaking as if having an epileptic fit, so utterly consumed was he with fury. Mr Wang listened calmly.
‘Very well sir,’ he said after Mr Ma had finished his garbled tirade.
He turned around and shut the two enormous doors, locking them in place with a crossbeam. He then strode over to an antique cabinet in the corner, which, like the canopy bed, was a Qing Dynasty relic, and from it he retrieved a small wooden box. As he walked past Roxana, he hissed a quick, malicious whisper at her.
‘You’re about to take a slow journey to the ninth circle of hell.’
He ducked his head as he entered the subtly lit bed, keeping his head bowed as if performing some arcane ritual as he set the wooden box down and opened it. Strapped inside the container were various antique surgical and dental instruments. Roxana saw the collection of scalpels, hooks, pliers and saws glinting evilly in the light and was unable to suppress a shrieking gasp of soul-shaking horror, and the sight of these instruments of torture caused her legs to buckle beneath her. As Mr Ma began to sift through the various surgical instruments, debating over which one to use first, Mr Wang stalked over to Roxana and grabbed her by her arm.
‘There’s no getting out of this, child. It’s your own fault anyway; if you’d hurried up like I told you to, he would have been content with simply doing what he usually does to you. But now, now you see, you’ve made him upset, and he’s not a nice man when he’s upset. Someone has to pay for this, I’m afraid … and that someone happens to be you.’
‘P-, p-, please,’ Roxana sobbed, struggling weakly against Mr Wang’s steely vice-grip. ‘d-, d-, don’t…’
‘His mind is made up, whore. Trust me, it’ll be easier if you don’t try to resist. He might even show you a bit of mercy and lessen the pain.’
Roxana nodded, her eyes wide with terror and her lower lip quivering as tears streamed down her face.
‘Move!’ Mr Wang snarled.
He started dragging her towards the canopy bed, its tall doors yawning with rabid hunger like the maw of portal to the underworld, freshly opened. And within the gates of damnation the leering devil waited, malevolent in his shroud of wrinkled, paper-thin skin. Roxana stumbled along behind Mr Wang, sobbing loudly as he dragged her ever closer to the edge of the abyss. He shoved her
