She was alone in the dark. She stood on her toes when she could no longer bear the agony of hanging, and hung from her wrists when she could no longer bear the torture of trying to stand.
Every ninth heartbeat a single drop of water dripped onto her skin from the damp ceiling. Sometimes it hit her shoulder and ran down through the valley between her breasts. Sometimes it her cheek and ran down her neck. And sometimes she tried to catch it with her tongue. It was never enough to slake her thirst.
She felt the rats brush up against her bare feet. They sniffed at her ankles. She knew they were drawn to the heat of her body, her blood and her bones, but they wouldn’t feast while she was alive. Every inch of her skin crawled. Every ounce of her flesh burned. She shifted her weight and kicked out at the curious rat. The kick lacked any strength, but it was enough to send the rat scurrying away again.
There was a bucket in the corner. The rats liked to sniff around that, too. They made her wait for it, adding humiliation to the torture, bringing the bucket once a day, once every two days-it was hard to tell in the dark. They wanted her to degrade herself and then to have to hang in her own feces and urine. It was another step to robbing her of her humanity. She refused to give them the satisfaction. She didn’t care if they made her crouch naked over a pot and laughed. She made them fight for every little victory they won, that way she didn’t just give up and let those little victories become big victories. That bucket was her key to salvation. There as some leeway on the chain depending upon how her captors secured it against the wall. There was enough play for her to squat with her hands by her side for support, which meant, if the chain was played out to its longest, there was enough room for her to bring her hands down to her waist while standing, and almost all the way to the floor when she crouched.
Orla heard other sounds then. Footsteps in the darkness.
He was coming back.
She closed her eyes, steeling herself. Her first instinct was fear. Fear would get her killed. She needed to survive. That was the only thing she needed. Uzzi Sokol and his friends could rape and torture her, she would survive. Her body could take the abuse. So could her mind. They could try to break her, she was strong. They could demean her, beat her, spit at her, lash her, they could do all of that. She had suffered worse. There was nothing they could do to her that hadn’t been done before. That was the truth of Israel. There was no torment the country could inflict upon her that it hadn’t done already.
She heard the rattle of keys, and the door opened. The tiniest slither of light spilled into the cell. Her eyes had become so accustomed to the sensory deprivation of the dark that even that was enough to burn them. She twisted, trying to see her torturer. He was dressed head-to-toe in black, a hood over his face like an executioner. He had a pistol in his right hand, a Jericho 941. It was a standard issue Israeli security services handgun known as a Baby Eagle. She felt her breathing change, suddenly shallow and short. If she didn’t get control of herself, she was going to hyperventilate. She struggled to slow the frantic rise and fall of her chest, to catch her breath.
He walked toward her, each footstep deliberately slow and measured. They were deafening in the silence.
“I told you I’d come back,” Sokol said. She felt his rancid breath against the nape of her neck. She knew it was him despite the hood. His voice was imprinted on her soul. She closed her eyes. She felt his hand touch her. She didn’t flinch. Somehow his breath was worse than his touch. Orla stifled the urge to twist away as his hand cupped her breast and pulled her toward him. She knew better than to move. He would only hit her if she did. So she let him touch her despite the revulsion she felt at his hands. “I would never deny you your time in the spotlight. You’re going to shine. I’m going to make you a movie star, like Marilyn, bigger even. By the end of today everyone will know your name. Would you like that, Orla? Would you like to be a star?”
He came in close, sloppily so, but he still had the sense to keep his gun hand away from her. She tasted his fetid breath in the back of her throat as she inhaled it. It stank of stale cigarettes. He let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck then caressed all the way down the ladder of her spine bone by bone to the soft swell of her buttocks. He hooked a foot around her ankle and forced her legs apart. There was nothing sexual about it. Sokol was showing her he had all of the power now.
Unbalanced, Orla stumbled slightly to the left, allowing his cold fingers to touch her. She winced despite herself.
“Did you miss me?”
She didn’t say a word.
He stepped back and slapped her hard across the face.
“I asked you a question, woman. Didn’t your mother teach you anything? When I ask you a question, you answer me. It isn’t difficult. Let’s try again. Did you miss me?”
She said nothing.
He backhanded her again, straight across the face. She turned her cheek with the blow. It made her eyes water.
“One more time. Did you miss me?”
Her mouth was painfully dry, but she managed to work up enough saliva to spit in Sokol’s face. The wad of phlegm hit the black hood. He didn’t wipe it away.
“You disappoint me, Orla. Such a pointless thing to do.” He leaned in again, close enough that the saliva smeared across her cheek. He was anything but gentle as he reached back between her legs. “Why should I care about a little bodily fluid when I can do this? It doesn’t make any sense, Orla. I thought you were a smart girl.”
It was a brutal invasion.
She arched her back and twisted her head, but there was nowhere she could go, nowhere she could hide from his vile touch. But she had no intention of hiding. She wanted him to come in closer. She needed his lust to rise. She needed him to forget about power. Her mind went cold, as though part of her soul detached elf and another creature, a harder one, took over to save her from the horror of what was happening. This other her waited for the single moment of sloppiness when his lust outweighed his sense.
It would come.
It had to.
Her life depended upon it.
She twisted around on the chains so she could look into his hooded face. His eyes were the only part of him she could see through the hood. They were wide. His breathing was shallow. She tried to hold his gaze, to draw him into hers, but couldn’t bear the intensity of his eyes as they stared into her. She moved her lips as though to say something. He wanted to hear. She knew he would. That was why there were no words. She wanted him in closer.
He turned his back on her and walked away, taunting her. She counted his footsteps. Six. Eight was the magic number. Eight would take him to the brace on the wall where her chain was tied off. Eight would mean he thought he was in control.
He came back to her and slapped her hard across the face.
Her pain brought a smile from him.
“You don’t want to make me angry, Orla,” Sokol said. She hated the sound of his voice. She finished the line in her head: You wouldn’t like me when I am angry. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him. Sokol needed to think she was broken. She focused on that instead. She had survived before. She had survived worse. She would live through this.
Uzzi Sokol wouldn’t.
She promised herself that much.
He turned his back on her. He walked away. Seven steps. She counted each of them, willing him to take the eighth, willing him to release the chain so it played out another four feet. Four feet meant she would live.
He didn’t. He walked slowly back to her, tracing the muzzle of the Jericho from her cheek, slowly down her neck, following the artery that pulsed beneath the skin, over her collarbone and down around the swell of her breast. The metal was cold.
“Why are you doing this?” she said, barely a whisper.
Sokol’s hand stopped moving. He looked at her as though he had forgotten she could speak. “Because I can,” he said, and it was as simple as that. “Because in a few minutes the others are going to join us. They’re going to drag you into the center of the room, and they are going to cut your head off with a sword while the world watches on the internet. Until then you are still beautiful. And if I can make your last few minutes pleasurable, then what is the crime in that?”
She wanted to claw his eyes out. Instead she said, “Thank you.”
