Hope? No, there was no hope left inside him now. Not after so long. Not after what he’d already been through.
Guilt? No. Not that either. He didn’t deserve any of this, even if it was inescapable that his own choices and mistakes had led him to be here.
Fear? At one point, yes. In fact, before fear, there had even been courage, back when his initial fight was still burning strong. His confidence, charisma, arrogance even, had seen him through the first stages of this ordeal. He’d firmly believed back then that there’d be a way out. A way to turn things on his captor. A way to make him pay.
Such optimism was nothing but a blurred memory. Fear had soon taken over, but he wasn’t sure there was even any of that left any more. His tormented mind had moved to a different place altogether. A grim and dark place from where he knew there was no chance of a return.
So what was this emotion that so consumed him now?
He heard the footsteps outside. Hard. Slow. Deliberate. His tired and pain-wracked body instinctively tensed. The throb of his weak heart, which had miraculously kept him going through all of this, ramped up to a soft thud – the most dramatic response it could now muster.
He struggled against the restraints – a thick metal chain, wrapped around his midriff and chest – that dug into his skin and kept his arms pinned to his sides, and also kept him pinned to the metal workbench he was lying on. His legs were similarly tethered, and with the patchwork of open wounds across his flesh he’d long ago realised that the less he moved, the more he was able to push the persistent agony he was in deep into his troubled mind.
What was that? The well in the pit of his stomach.
If not fear then what?
The thick key turned in the lock and the sturdy metal door heaved open with a whoosh of fresh but cold air that sent his hacked skin prickling.
The man walked in and a switch was flipped and the darkened room became bathed in a sinister orange glow.
Could light from a flickering overhead bulb really be sinister? It seemed ridiculous to think so. Yet in this dank and depressing room, he had no doubt it was true, even if it was more to do with what the light illuminated rather than the light itself.
The door closed with a hefty thunk.
His eyes were moving rapidly now, his gaze flicking around the room, looking anywhere but at the man who was slowly taking off his overcoat as if eking out every last millisecond of tension.
He glanced over to the ghoulish array of items on the shelves to his left. The tidbits – souvenirs – were the little that remained of the countless lives that had ended within this room.
Next his eyes settled on the bench across the way, upon which sat the tubes and the vials and jars that had been used to force-feed him after he’d refused to eat for so long. The paltry liquid nourishment had done its job – just – of keeping him alive when he would otherwise have been dead.
Just looking at the equipment made his throat ache. And yet that was nowhere near the worst of it. On the adjacent bench sat the nightmarish collection of metal tools. Instruments that had already been used to inflict the most horrific pain and injuries that he wasn’t sure could ever properly heal. That bench was where his eyes now remained fixed.
The man stepped over to him… Picked up a scalpel that he twisted in his fingers. The tormentor caught the eye of his captive. No words were needed. Both men knew what was coming next.
And that was when he finally put his finger on what the emotion was that now swelled inside him, nearly bursting from every pore.
Desperation.
That was all he had left. More than anything, he was simply desperate for this trauma to be over. Desperate to be given the chance to breathe his last undignified breath. He wanted… no, he needed to die. Today. Here. Now. This had to end.
And so he mustered every ounce of strength to do the only thing he could think of doing.
He begged.
Over and over. He pleaded desperately, horribly. Seconds passed. Minutes? He couldn’t tell, as the garbled words fell from his mouth one after the other.
All to no purpose.
Soon he was spent. He had nothing left to give. Nothing left to say. The man still held his eye. Still held the scalpel between his twisted fingers. His eyes burned brightly in the electric light.
‘No,’ he said. Calm. No amusement, no anger or hostility. Absolute calm and detachment from the hideous actions he’d already undertaken. ‘I’m not even close to finishing with you yet.’
Then he stepped forward, blade in hand.