A Wife for the Torturer

by Daniella Wright

  As I maneuvered myself backwards to rest against the farthest wall, I noticed the slightest of movements to my left. I turned to take in the sight of two men, both about twice my age, with their chests still rising and falling with stuttered breaths. One of them was missing a couple of limbs and the other appeared to be bleeding from a thousand different wounds, but they were both still alive.

  I cleared my throat. “Hey,” I hissed.

  My eyes flickered to the doorway, wondering when Zik would return and force me to go through the same horrors that these people had. Biting my lip, I dared to whisper just a little bit louder. “Psst. Hey!”

  But, neither of the men answered.

  It became clear to me that they were both deeply unconscious, slipping in between the dreamlike realms that our minds often forced us into, over dealing with the terror of reality.

  I shook my head and then closed my eyes, letting the back of my head drop against the cold wall behind me. All ten of us had been through a global war that destroyed nearly everything we knew. All ten of us had toughened and hardened under the pressure of desperation and famine. All ten of us had dreams of seeing home again, of wishing we could turn back time and at least tell what few loved ones we had left goodbye.

  I hated myself. I hated that, while I had been skipping around the ship training to be a bad girl insurgent with the Rogues and flirting with a dragon Prince, my people, who were the only pieces of home I had left, were being torn apart and murdered right underneath my nose. And I’d known about it. I’d been fully aware that Zik was doing terrible things on the Rogues’ airship, and that he had paid good money to be able to do it.

  I couldn’t believe I’d allowed it to happen. I had no idea what I could have done; after all, I was vastly outnumbered. Maybe Markus would have helped me, but even he was no match for a dozen Rogues and a handful of other psycho criminals.

  Some things were out of your control, but that didn’t mean that they were easier to digest. Easier to understand. Easier to accept. I was powerless to have put a stop to Zik’s evil before it began, that much was clear and obvious and true to me even in my current mental state, but I still yearned for a chance to erase it all from history.

  A small glimmer of hope sparked deep inside me suddenly.

  Our timeline, the one that the ten of us humans had been ripped from, was scheduled to be destroyed by the Time Agents in less than a week. When that happened, every single person on the planet would be erased. No one would remember them. It would be like they had never existed in the first place. That same thing would happen to all of these people, excluding me due to my time lost status. There was a tiny flicker of hope that, not long from now, these poor people sprawled out around this disturbing torture chamber would not exist anymore. Their pain and suffering would be erased alongside them.

  Sure, it wasn’t particularly cheerful or pleasant, but it was better than this kind of ending. Swept away, burned to meaningless ash, and tossed away with the garbage once the Rogues landed at their headquarters and began preparing the ship for another dark tourism trip.

  My eyes scanned the room, looking for something very specific. I hoped I wouldn’t find it. Prayed, even, that the Rogues were not as disgusting as I feared they were.

  Unfortunately, my prayers were not answered. In the corner of the room, perfectly diagonal from where I sat, was the small, almost imperceptible black hole in the ceiling where I knew a security camera sat. The presence of that small device caused my blood to boil and I had to fight back the urge to scream again, only this time in pure, unadulterated rage.

  The Rogues knew every detail of what happened in this room. They’d even been able to watch it happen, like some kind of sick entertainment being performed just for them. I doubted Loretta would willingly watch Zik cause humans agony and abuse, but Lee… I had a feeling that Lee probably tuned into this specific security camera every once in a while for his sociopathic fix of sadism.

  Every violent thought I’d ever had for Lee multiplied tenfold in that moment. I made the decision, right there in that haunted room, that when I saw him again, I would let every shred of darkness within me take over completely and tear him apart. I’d use all of Zik’s monstrous tools against him. I’d watch him scream.

  I wanted to put an end to him. Forever.

  The thought surprised me. I’d never, not once in my life, ever felt like I wanted to kill another person. It almost caused me to understand Markus’ motivations for leaving me that morning in favor of assassinating his family members. He was driven by something so strong and overwhelming that he simply couldn’t resist the temptation to become the darkness.

  Markus.

  I sighed heavily.

  However, any thoughts of that foolish Prince that were about to intrude upon my mind were cut off by the quick opening and closing of the door to the chamber. Zik slipped inside. He was alone, of course, though I couldn’t shake the eye of the security camera watching from the other side of the room. Maybe Lee was tuning in right at this very moment. Maybe he could see me here, about to become one of Zik’s victims, and was simply shrugging it off. He had algorithms and inventions to get him more time lost Rogue recruits, after all. I wasn’t that non-expendable. Maybe Zik had even gone to him and paid him an even higher sum than his original invoice just for the opportunity to steal me from my bedroom and drag me away.

  I wouldn’t put it past Lee to give in to monetary incentives over all else. He was a greedy monster.

  “Hello, pretty,” Zik murmured, stepping closer. The single fluorescent light that flickered on the ceiling cast a sickly glow on his pale skin and I flinched, pressing myself back into the wall, wishing I could sink into it and escape from this hell.

  I knew what I had to do to prolong my chances of survival.

  Zik wasn’t the type of predator who fighting back against would be productive or effective. In fact, resisting him would probably only egg him on even more. A torturer, after all, enjoyed the visible suffering and pain. It was why they tortured before killing; if they simply wanted to kill people, they’d just be murderers and be done with it quickly.

  I had a high pain tolerance. I wondered how much of this demon’s torturing I could withstand, and for how long, before I could manage to figure out a way to escape.

  I didn’t bother saying a single word to him. In fact, I remained completely stoic and expressionless as Zik approached, more ropes in hand.

  My mouth remained shut tight, my eyes unblinking, and my limbs perfectly stiff as Zik worked, a small but proud smirk on his face. He was happy with himself for capturing me. He’d finally managed to ensnare the tenth victim that had been promised to him since the beginning. All was well and balanced in his world, even while mine completely fell apart.

  Zik didn’t engage in conversation as he tightened the ropes around my wrist and then looped the knot through an iron ring affixed to the wall above my head, forcing my hands above me. He bound my ankles together as well. I almost expected him to gag me, too, but then I realized that the sound of my screams would probably bring some kind of pleasure to him.

  I wanted to throw up.

  But I had to stay strong. I had to be smart. I had to keep my cool and let my survival instincts take over. If I could simply have faith in my ability to stay alive, I knew that I would make it through this. I wasn’t ready to die, especially at the hands of a savage like Zik.

  So I continued to feign surrender, knowing that catching him off guard would be the only way to get out of this. If I could convince him that I was weak and defenseless, he wouldn’t expect me to fight back with all the strength that I knew I had inside me.

  I wondered if the other nine people had fought back, at least in the beginning. Knowing where they came from, it was a given. The first to die had been the luckiest, and I felt another sad pang in my chest for the two men in the corner who still struggled with their half-lives, having watched their companions be destroyed in front of them, witnessing all t
he horrible things that would soon be done to them.

  Goosebumps erupted on my skin as Zik finished tying me up and walked across the room to a metal tray strewn with bloody torture devices.

  You can do this, Ellen, I thought to myself. You can survive.

  You have to.

  Chapter 19

  Survival

  Ellen

  I couldn’t deny it: I was so afraid that I was shaking in my bones.

  Though I wasn’t exactly a stranger to pain, I didn’t particularly look forward to it.

  On the other side of the room, Zik was busying himself with a particularly disturbing object. I wondered if he had something especially awful in mind for me, as a way to punish me for evading him in the beginning, though we both knew that I hadn’t had much to do with it. After all, Lee had been the one to deny Zik his tenth victim, not me. But I supposed Zik wasn’t that picky when it came to revenge.

  I watched quietly, dread growing in the pit of my stomach, while Zik took a small rag and began cleaning a long, thin blade. I didn’t want to think too hard about what he wanted to do with it, and instead focused on what I could do to escape, and if the device would be helpful in formulating a plan of defense once it came near me.

  I thought about what I had learned about Zik from the Rogues during my training. I knew that he hadn’t cared much about the specifics of the timeline he kidnapped humans from, only that they were all relatively healthy adults.

  At least he didn’t torture children.

  Maybe, given that fact, he wasn’t completely evil after all, but I groaned internally at the thought as it crossed my mind. There I went again, looking for the light in an incurably dark person. I had to stop doing that and stop making a fool of myself. Markus’ face flashed in my mind briefly, almost fleetingly, but I forced it away. I had to focus on the incredibly important task in front of me, not on the dragon Prince I’d thought I loved.

  Zik finished cleaning his weapon and then fiddled with a switch on the bottom of it. Immediately wishing I wasn’t watching, or that I couldn’t witness it with my own eyes, I watched as the thin blade whirred to life and began to spin rapidly. Clearly, it was not merely a knife, but a drill. A drill designed specifically, I was sure, for human flesh and bone. I imagined it was probably the type of tool that was highly important and crucial for surgeons and doctors, but in Zik’s hands, it was nothing but the work of the devil himself.

  As he approached, the tool gripped casually in his hand by his side, I quickly went through my options before I turned into a slice of human swiss cheese.

  For a human, I was strong. Zik had only bound my hands and ankles, not my legs or torso. Either he was becoming a little sloppy, he underestimated my ability to fight back or he was, in general, a lazy torturer. Realistically, it was a combination of all three of those things. But, if that was the case, how did nine people not manage to fight back and kill Zik?

  The door was only able to opened by a special electronic keycard that Zik had, so I knew that the nine others had probably figured out they wouldn’t be able to get out of the room, even if they did manage to stop Zik from attacking them. Of course, once the Rogues saw such a thing happen on the security cameras, they would step in to protect the criminal who invested a large sum of cash into the venture.

  That didn’t seem like the viable option.

  No, I could see in the redness of Zik’s eyes, the creases around his mouth, the sagging cheeks, and his drooping shoulders that he was exhausted. It had taken a lot of energy out of him to torture so many people in such a short amount of time. He was tired, but he couldn’t resist his dark urges. He couldn’t deny his desire to destroy one more person: me. But the effort it required for him to accomplish this one last task was costing him every ounce of vitality within him.

  Hope flared in my chest as I realized this was a weakness I could exploit for my own gain.

  Zik knelt down before me, and I remained still. I forced my eyelids to flutter closed slightly, feigning the weakness that had lingered in the aftermath of the drugging.

  With a grunt, Zik aimed the drill at my forehead and I froze. So, it would be a quick death, then. Right into the brain. The lights would go out almost immediately; the pain shouldn’t last long.

  However, I wasn’t giving in.

  I stared down the point of the drill as it came closer and closer to my face, the loud whir of the machine echoing inside my head.

  At the very last second, I tucked my knees into my chest and thrust upwards, knocking into Zik’s elbows and causing him to jerk the drill upwards. It was a risky maneuver that could have earned me a drill in the forearm or hand, but, thankfully, the drill plunged into the tangle of rope that bound my wrists and shredded it to pieces.

  Instantly free, I slammed my hands into Zik’s arms and knocked the drill out of his hands. It skittered across the floor. With a growl that, frighteningly, barely sounded human, Zik lunged for his precious torture device, but I kicked out and managed to dig my heels into the backs of his knees. Zik collapsed onto the concrete floor next to one of the bodies, but he didn’t offer it a single glance.

  Instead, he glared at me. Obviously, he did not get a kick out of his victims fighting back.

  I nearly screamed and shrank away at the venom in his look, but did my best to remain clear-headed. I knew I didn’t have time to reach down and untie my ankles, so I stayed on the floor and rolled to the drill that still whirred and vibrated cruelly nearby. It was the closest weapon; my only hope for survival.

  As I crawled toward it, I was aware of Zik struggling to his feet, fighting exhaustion as he fumbled for a knife. Just in time, I rolled to the side as he lunged and attempted to plunge it deep into my ribcage, earning only the slightest of cuts across my stomach. I hissed in pain, but managed to get Zik off of me again.

  Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I could think of nothing but survive, survive, survive.

  My hands touched the handle of the drill just as Zik jumped forward with another knife, this one longer and with a serrated edge. Without thinking, I gripped the drill in both hands and twisted out of the way just in time, stabbing the drill into the first bit of Zik I could get a clear shot at.

  His temple.

  The next few moments were a blur.

  I watched, completely numb, as bursts of red blood clouded my vision. I was only vaguely aware that the blood didn’t belong to me. As I struggled to sit up, ankles still tied tightly together, I stared in confusion, almost not understanding the body that fell to the floor in front of me. It went still after only a moment. The drill switched itself off in the chaos.

  The room fell silent.

  Dead. Skull. Brain. Blood. Murdered. Killed.

  Killer.

  A series of scrambled words flew through my mind, but all I managed to formulate at that moment was the fact that I had just killed someone.

  Blood rushed in my ears and I could hear my pulse thudding loudly. My breath started coming faster and harder, and I knew that I was having a panic attack despite the fact that I was sitting so still in front of the corpse I had just created.

  Glancing down at my hands, I noticed that they were not only trembling but covered in scarlet blood. They were the hands of a murderer. The hands that a deeply dark person would have.

  I couldn’t look at Zik. He facial features had been ruined by the drill being stabbed into the side of his head, but the memory of his evil face staring at me from across the ship filled in the blanks as I forced my eyes shut and tried to keep my breathing even.

  I had to get out of here.

  Reaching down, I fumbled at the ropes binding my feet together. Before I could make much progress on the complicated series of knots Zik had created, the door burst open.

  A handful of Rogues flooded in, including Lee and Loretta. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad that I wasn’t going to have to figure my own way out of that horrible chamber of death.

  But Lee had an expression on his face that I�
��d never seen before.

  It wasn’t a smirk. It certainly wasn’t a smile.

  It was a cold glare. The kind of icy, piercing gaze that could freeze all the oceans in the universe.

  I knew then, in that moment, that I wasn’t safe. My struggle for survival wasn’t over yet.

  “Ellen Moore,” hissed Lee, marching forward. His voice was devoid of all the mischievous humor and sarcasm that it usually held. He was livid. “Please tell me you did not just murder one of our good-paying dark tourists.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms up in exasperation and gestured at the room around us. “Only because he was trying to murder me, you psycho!” I spat back.

  Beside Lee, Loretta shifted, eyes scanning down the length of my body as if to check for injuries. Confusion settled on her face, and I realized that it was probably unclear whose blood was whose.

  “Yes,” sniffed Lee, glancing around the chamber with a disinterested look. I almost wished I’d plunged the drill into his skull instead of Zik’s. “Well. I’m afraid you’ll have to be punished for this.”

  I scoffed and reached down again to try to untie my bonds, but a sharp slap across my face from Lee sent me sprawling backward onto the concrete. I screamed instinctually from the harsh, stinging pain and lifted my head to look up at Lee.

  “What the hell?” I asked. Around me, a half dozen Rogues began to close in. They stepped around the bodies that littered the floor as if they were nothing more than stray clutter. In the corner of my eye, I noticed Loretta hanging back by the doorway, watching the exchange with cool, clear eyes.

  “Honestly, dear,” sighed Lee, kneeling down beside me. He reached out to tuck one of my stray curls behind my ear. Overcome by a violent flare of rage, I spat at him. He flinched back, and I caught the barest hint of his trademark smirk before his features melted back into the devilish savagery that was natural to him. “I don’t think you have what it takes to be a Rogue, and you’ve seen too much. How do I know you won’t go running off to the Time Agents and tell them everything you’ve learned here? We’re going to have to kill you.”