By the time the other guard came back to bring, or rather carry, Jason to his cell, his nose was offset from its normal position. This had happened before. Jason was pretty sure it was broken again. The blood continued to stream down his shirt. He tried to hold his head up to stem the tide. His left eye was also swelling shut, which made him dizzy when he tried to walk. He doubted he’d be able to see out of his eye by morning. In all, he thought Ivan held back a little. He’d expected more of him. Something wasn’t right there. Toward the end, Ivan held him up by the shirt to steady him more than to punch him. His eyes betrayed him, from what Jason could see. Finally, the difference came to him.
Ivan didn’t like the torture. He was only doing the job because he had to. They were watching him. Despite that, he was making a good show of things. There was no permanent damage…unless you counted the broken nose. But by this time, Jason just added this to his collection of injuries. He briefly wondered if his sense of smell would also be taken from him along with his hearing and taste. Jeez, that just left feeling and sight.
Strewn paper from the pad littered the floor of the gloomy room when they took him away. One of them had a hangman game, penned in haste and blood-smeared. The lines were crooked for the last two letter spaces. He tried to make them perfect. But Ivan had caught on to his shenanigans in the last seconds and tore his artwork away from him, to land where it now lay on the floor.
Ivan handed Jason over. The guard held Jason up now, steadying him in a standing position. It was getting harder to breathe. He was facing the guard and away from Ivan. They were having a conversation. When Jason glanced at the guard’s face, he mouthed the words, “They don’t call you Ivan the Adopter for nothing.”
Or something like that. The guy had a beard so it wasn’t easy to tell what he was saying. Maybe it was Ivan the Clopper? That would make more sense. Ivan the Clobber-er? Hell, maybe it was Chopper. That would be bad. Ivan the Dropper? This whole lip-reading thing wasn’t a perfect science and his eyes were getting blurry anyway.
He never did really figure it out since the guard was now hustling him to the cell again, shoved him inside and slammed and locked the door with a clang. Jason turned suddenly. He’d heard the clang. There was something about that high-pitched metal strike.
The guard looked at him and tilted his head.
Jason diverted his gaze from the gate to the floor. He shuffled over to the corner of the cell and slid down, tilting his head up in the corner in hopes the bleeding would stop. The last thing he wanted to see was his own blood trailing a river to the drain again. That was his new goal in life. Never let his blood go to waste.