51: Larissa Biel rolled over on the cold concrete, her legs pulled to her chest. From the corner of her eye, she saw a puddle of vomit beside her head, flecked with red. She had lost count of how many times she threw up in the past few hours. Her throat hurt terribly. She couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t speak.
She’d thrown up some of the glass. She saw that too, sparkling among the bits of red and yellow. But her stomach ached something fierce, so she knew she had not gotten it all.
After she swallowed the glass, the instructor had grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the freezer, then forced her head inside. She hadn’t been prepared for water, and it filled her nose and throat, her coughing causing her to suck in more.
“Drink!” he shouted.
She couldn’t breathe.
He wouldn’t let her breathe.
The water burned at her eyes, tasted of the ocean. She tried to spit the salt water out, but he forced her mouth shut and pinched her nose until she swallowed. He repeated this three more times before the vomiting began. Then he tossed her back to the ground in the cage and locked the gate.
Larissa had not felt the glass going down, but the shards came up like razor blades, and when she cried out, it hurt even more.
The instructor watched her now.
He sat a few feet away on the concrete floor outside her cage, his dark eyes fixed. She heard him breathing, deep, ragged breaths. He held his right hand in his left; the fingers twitched.
A moan escaped Larissa’s lips, and she rolled over again. She couldn’t face those eyes.
“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell,” the instructor whispered behind her in a voice so low, at first she wasn’t sure she heard him at all. After a few seconds of silence, he repeated the words, the s in soul dragging out with the hiss of a venomous snake.
Her stomach clenched and she tried to cry out, but the pain in her throat stifled the sound before it escaped, turning it into a muffled wheeze.
Larissa focused on the glass.
She didn’t want the glass to come up. She wanted it to cut right through her stomach and into her other organs. She wanted the glass to end this. She would swallow more if she could.
The pain meant she was still alive. When the pain stopped, she would find peace. The pain didn’t stop, though. She felt a burn at her belly like a hot knife from inside. Larissa clenched her knees and let out a silent scream.
Behind her, a cell phone rang.
A distant voice on the other end of the line, not on speaker but loud enough to hear. “Swallowing glass may not prove to be fatal. She may still see.”
The instructor let out a watery sigh. “She’s damaged, she’s been compromised. She can’t see. She’ll never see.”
“You need to try.”
“I need another.”
The basement dropped into silence again as the call ended.
The instructor let out an angry grunt.
Quiet.
Still.
Dark.
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,” the instructor said, inches from her ear.
Larissa jumped, pain burning in her belly.
He was right behind her. She hadn’t heard him come into the cage.
Did she pass out?
How long?
She felt his hot breath on her neck. Smelled the stink of it.
She must have thrown up again, but she had no memory of it. Her hair was sticky.
Larissa turned to face him, the pain unbearable.
The cage was empty. The basement empty.
Alone.
The corner of the green quilt was bunched up under her head.
The house creaked around her, otherwise silent as a tomb.