The Antique

by Peter Fang

  Ake stared at Elise meticulously for a long while, then commented with a chilling voice, “I don’t see anything special about you. We have never sliced open one of you, nor did we dare. However, the queen gave us the permission, so I am just dying to find out what a blood child looks like inside. I think I will cut out the piece of your skin around the poem as a memento—it’s such a nice Haiku.” Ake recited the poem on her arm:

  I’m my own demon

  I worship it with my life

  It devours my soul

  “Tell me, Elise, am I the demon that will devour your soul?” Ake smiled as he savored the possibility. He was feeling the onset of an erection just thinking about the torture that was about to start.

  Elise faced Ake and realized that Ake and Craig were twins, but she still didn’t know who this Queen was, but it didn’t matter. She needed to find a way to get out of this place. She could feel the handcuffs were made of metal (a good sign), so she could potentially wiggle her hands out if she could dislocate her wrists and thumbs. She knew it was easier said than done, but she had to try, and she needed more time.

  “You should start with my teeth, then work your way down to my fingers, and the toes. Finally, you can cut me open, take out the innards, but not the heart, or the liver, because I will bleed out first,” Elise suggested, almost like a doctor planning a dissection of a carcass. The suggestion surprised Craig and Ake and left them almost speechless.

  Craig finally commented, “Are you––some type of nurse or doctor? Sounds like you know what you are talking about.”

  Elise tried to dislocate her thumbs, but it was harder than she thought with her hands behind her back. She finally popped her left thumb and then worked on her right.

  “You need to avoid the Hepatic arteries in the liver. If you sever that I will be dead in minutes—same as the femoral arteries; I always leave that alone and start with the profunda femoris arteries so it bleeds slower.” She managed to dislocate the right thumb, but when she tried to pull on her hands, the handcuffs were still too tight. Shit. She pulled hard, but her hands wouldn’t slip through––her hands were too swollen; she was running out of time.

  “That is truly interesting; how do you know that unless you are a medical professional? You have done this before? I wish we had more time to learn about your past, but time’s up.” Ake was intrigued about Elise's background, but his urge to mutilate his subject was too strong. He signaled Craig and they inched closer to Elise.

  Finley was still talking to Ansen on the phone’s speaker inside his car. He had made several unfruitful loops around downtown, trying to pick up Elise's signal. They had already ruled out equipment malfunction because her phone was recovered and was working. The good thing was, Elise had two trackers on her. One was in her phone, and the other was on her clothes. He and Ansen had already contacted the escort service and learned that Elise never made the call; all of the indication pointed to a blown cover. Finley tried not to focus on what could have happened to Elise, but he and Ansen were running out of ideas. They had really lost her.

  “What are we going to do?” Ansen asked, but his question was met with silence. “I can’t believe we could have lost her. What happened to her?”

  “I’m sorry, Ansen. The important thing is, we need to call it in.”

  “You don’t understand…” Ansen tried to control his breathing. “There’s no calling it in. We are on our own, remember?”

  “Okay. I’m going to go to Craig’s house and check it out,” Finley said calmly.

  “It’s worth a try.” He felt a cold sweat dripping down his face.

  “Ansen?” A female’s voice suddenly rose behind Ansen's back, startling him. Ansen recognized it instantly as Maria. He turned and looked at her absently, then forced out a smile and held out an index finger to tell her to wait.

  Maria nodded back at him, then backed away, but she was starting to feel annoyed. She knew that she should not feel that way, but she couldn’t help it. She leaned back against the wall and waited. She even tried to pick up some of the conversation from Ansen and read his face, but there was nothing obvious. She didn’t need her new ability to tell that Ansen was under tremendous duress, but she could not read what the conversation was about. For some odd reason, Maria could not use her new ability to feel the contour of Ansen's thoughts. She waited for several more minutes, then decided that it was better for her to go back to the ballroom. She hand-signaled Ansen, then pointed herself towards the ballroom.

  Ansen held his hand over the phone and apologized to her. “Sorry, honey, the situation is worse than I thought. I’m trying to salvage the transaction. I will tell you about it when I’m done.”

  Maria suddenly felt the presence of the girl, Elise. The feeling shocked Maria. She looked around her to see if Elise was next to her, but there was no one except her own shadow. Then she felt it again; this time, her heart was racing, and she could feel the blood rushing to her head, making her dizzy. Her heart was beating faster. She got jolted again, and Maria was feeling Elise's thoughts and emotions. It wasn’t very clear, but she could tell that Elise was under extreme stress, fear, and anger. It almost felt like she was next to her. She then felt the searing pain of something sharp peeling her right hand’s index finger’s nail.

  Maria let out a shrill scream. She grabbed her right hand’s index finger, kneeled down, and pressed it under her left arm, but it didn’t help. Soon another finger on her right hand felt the same pain. She jumped, then rolled on the ground.

  Ansen and several other people in the hallway came running towards Maria to try to help; when they saw Maria on the floor, her eyes were looking at the ceiling, and her body was convulsing.

  “Maria! Can you hear me? Maria!” Ansen put his arms around Maria, feeling her stiff body twitching violently. She was behaving like she was experiencing a seizure. “Please call 9-1-1!” Ansen called out to the people around him. He looked around and couldn’t remember where he dropped his phone. A minute ago, he was talking to Finley, but in a panic, he forgot where he left the phone.

  A man in a tux called 9-1-1, and one of the building administrators came running with a walkie-talkie in his hand. “Is she epileptic?”

  “I don’t know. She never had this problem before,” Ansen replied as he tried to wake up Maria with one of her hand.

  “Sir, it’s better to put her down. Make sure she doesn’t hit her head.”

  “Her lips are turning blue. She’s not breathing!” Ansen yelled, almost in desperation. “Maria! Relax, breathe!” Maria’s body continued to convulse, and the intensity was not letting up. Her head and body bobbed back and forth, stretching and contracting like a wounded animal.

  “She’s bleeding!” someone in the crowd cried. There was a stream of blood dripping from Elise's mouth.

  “Shit! She’s biting her tongue. You have to put something between her teeth!” the building administrator yelled.

  Someone from the crowd pushed people aside. An old gentleman in his sixties kneeled next to Ansen and Maria. “I’m a physician. Let me take a look.” He observed Maria’s mouth for a few seconds, before Maria’s twisting body pushed him aside. “She’s not biting her tongue. She probably bit the inside of her mouth. There’s not much we can do right now. Just make sure she doesn’t hurt herself more.”

  “I don’t understand; she never had a seizure before. There was no history of it.” Ansen looked at Maria, watching her carefully as she continued to convulse; her hands were wrapped tightly under his arms, like in pain. Ansen then noticed that her jaws were knotted like a rock and there was no sign of her breathing. “She is not breathing! She is not breathing! Is she going into cardiac arrest?” He turned to look at the doctor and caught a morbidly concerned look on the old man’s face. The doctor did not reply.

  “Maria! Can you hear me?” Ansen yelled. He put his ear next to Maria’s mouth to listen for signs of breathing, but all he heard was a creepy sigh, almost inhuman. He felt there was somethi
ng inside of Maria that was talking, but it was not anything a human could understand. “She’s breathing,” Ansen reported to the doctor. “I am worried that she is going into cardiac arrest.” Ansen was hesitating whether to perform CPR on Maria.

  The old doctor shook his head. “If she was having a heart attack, she wouldn’t be shaking like this. This really looks like a seizure. We can cause more harm than good right now until the seizure passes. Let’s just wait and observe until the paramedics get here.”

  Maria didn’t know how much time had passed. When she opened her eyes, she saw herself in a strange room. The place was cold and she sensed the presence of blood right away. She looked around and saw herself lying on the ground and lying next to a pair of large boots. She then realized that someone was standing right next to her. No, kneeling next to her. There was a bloody pliers dangling next to her head, with something that looked like a human nail clinched in the pliers’ mouth. She felt herself breathing hard, and the painful throbbing sensation emanating from her hand behind her back. Then she heard a strange voice speak.

  “That was just a quick preview to let you know that I’m serious. Next time I’m not just going to take off your fingernails; I’ll start with your beautiful fingertips and I’m going to start grinding them down to your knuckles—one by one. You’d better tell me who you are doing this for now before I cut your tongue out and feed it back to you.”

  Maria thought she was in the middle of a very bad dream, except everything was too real. She tried to look up to face the man with the large boots, but she could not move her head. He saw the man walk away to a surgical table. The tall man’s back was facing her, so she couldn’t make out his face, but she quickly learned everything that Elise knew about the situation. Somehow, Craig was involved. She felt the emotions that Elise was feeling––along with her constant thoughts of Ansen.

  The tall man pulled up a bone grinder and pressed the power button once to let the grinder whine.

  Maria felt her heart racing, and she was going into hyperventilation. She kicked her legs, trying to push herself away from the tall man. The man stopped in front of her and kneeled down. He leveled his eyes with hers and started talking.

  Maria could now see a Kabuki mask staring back at her. She tried to sense what the man was thinking but got nothing. The man held up the grinder and spun the tool in front of her. His voice was altered by some device and it made it even more eerie. The tool whined as the head spun at supersonic speed. He released the power button and the grinder’s claw slowed to a stop. The stainless steel claw’s rosette of blades captured the dim lights in the room like a cluster of diamonds.

  Elise felt someone behind her pull her hands forward and force her arms straight in front of her. She struggled and got one arm open, and then punched one of the guys in the face, almost knocking the face mask off. The guy rustled her arm and tied it down with handcuffs. The other man moved the grinder closer and touched Elise's fingertip.

  Maria felt the searing pain shoot through her body. The pain gave her a surge of dark energy. She leaned back hard and dislocated both of Elise’s wrists. In one quick movement, she pulled Elise’s hands out from the handcuffs, ripping part of her skins off. She looked up and saw the two tall men moving forward to grab her. The guy on the right tried to stab her with the pliers, and the other one came forward with the grinder.

  Maria felt another powerful jolt, and saw Elise's right arm thrust forward at a lightning speed and forced the pliers upward into the man’s jaw. It happened so fast that the tall man didn’t even realize the pliers were knocked out of his hand. His empty hand reached Elise, but she grabbed the fingers and yanked them in a counter-clockwise motion. The man’s body was lifted off the ground by the move and slammed against the other guy’s grinder. The grinder cut into the first guy’s mask. He wailed and dropped to the floor.

  Maria saw Elise stand up slowly and moved towards the second man with the grinder. She reached out and grabbed the man’s mask and ripped it away. The face hiding behind the mask was a terrified Craig. She thrust her hand into the man’s neck, getting a wounded whimper from him. The grip on his throat tightened as he struggled to pull her hand away. His body twisted and struggled but soon went limp. She saw herself turn towards the first man just in time to catch a stab with the pliers. The stab stopped in midair as she drove her bloodied fingers into his forearm. The fingers went clean through. The man screamed in pain and dropped the pliers. She caught the pliers in midair with her foot and drove them into the man’s stomach. A chilling scream came out of the man’s mask as he collapsed to the ground.

  Elise saw her Kel-Tech pistol and her Kizu on the instrument table, so she leaped over and grabbed the handgun. She fired three rounds, hitting Craig in the head with one round, and two in Ake’s chest. Both men dropped to the ground like two big bucks. She grabbed her knife and turned hastily and found her clothes, but her blouse and gown were torn, so she put on her underwear and headed for the stairs. When she reached the top of the stairs, she noticed there was a deadbolt and a heavy-duty lock. She pointed the gun at the lock and fired two rounds to break the lock. She waited for several seconds, listening for motions outside before leaving the room, checking her corners as she left and pointing the pistol in front. Once she cleared the hallway, she saw the front door was heavily fortified with multiple locks and an iron gate. She checked her rounds in the magazine and saw there was only one round left. She turned and faced the large window and fired the round, but the bullet only made a five-inch spidery crack––bulletproof glass.

  Maria felt Elise's body suddenly freeze, and she felt her mind connected with Elise's––it was a familiar feeling, but something long ago, like remembering an old song, the words slowly emerged inside her head.

  Yáo, yáo, yáo––yáo dào wài puó chaó––

  It was one of the Chinese lullabies that Elise used to sing to her to lull Maria to sleep––Sis?

  A bolt of lightning suddenly hit Maria, knocking her unconscious.

  Ansen, the doctor, and several others were holding Maria down as the violent convulsion assaulted her body. They were surprised by the strength of her body––she managed to push all of them off several times as they tried to stabilize her. After ten minutes of violent struggles, her body suddenly went limp. Everyone was exhausted from fighting against her body. Finally, the ambulance came, and they put her in a stretcher and carefully moved her into the ambulance van. Ansen picked up the phone again and reached Finley while he was inside the ambulance. He kept his voice low as the medics attended to Maria.

  “Anything new? Did you pick up anything?” Ansen's voice sounded hoarse.

  There was a slight pause, then came the dejected reply, “I’m sorry Ansen, I got nothing.”

  Ansen felt a pain emanating from his chest. Sickness struck, knowing that in one night, two of the women in his life had suffered. He also knew that his own life would be in danger after tonight. When you fucked up this bad before the man that paid you to do the job, it would not be overlooked. Ansen wanted to say something, but he was exhausted, and he knew Finley was already doing all he could.

  “Ansen, I am going to do a circular sweep of the area in a five-mile radius. I will do this all night if I have to. If there are any signals left on her clothes, I’ll get something. We still think Craig likely took her, so I will check his house first.”

  “Okay…call me when you got something.” Ansen clicked off. Part of him felt he would never see Elise again. If the phone was never found, then they could attribute it to hardware malfunction, but they did find the phone. Ansen took a deep breath; after tonight, it wouldn’t matter. He had to leave town if he wanted to live. He looked over to Maria and saw her pasty skin. Her chest slowly rose and fell. The EKG was beeping in a steady rhythm. There was no indication of the chaos he experienced just fifteen minutes ago. After tonight, I will not see Maria again.

  Finley drove his car around the University Washington district for ten minutes
, then went onto highway and headed north. He was passing Sandpoint Way when he heard a beep on his tracking device. He first thought he was imagining things, but the beeping sound got louder. He pulled the tracking device up and saw the pulse was getting stronger.

  “Oh, shit!” Finley hit the gas and got off at the next exit. He fast-dialed Ansen on the phone to give him news. “Ansen, I got something. I’m heading over there right now.”

  “Where?” Ansen’s voice was loud and raising.

  Finley yelled into his phone, “It’s north from downtown, along the Sandpoint Way. I’ll send you the address once I get a read on her.”

  “Text me as soon as you find her.”

  “Roger.” Finley clicked off the phone and drove as fast as he could towards the beacon. The beacon was nowhere near where Craig lived. The signal was pointing to a cluster of residential area, so this could be where Craig normally took his victims. The place could indeed be filled with traps and definitely motion-sensing security systems. Finley sifted through different scenarios and how he would respond. Whatever it was going to be, he might have to force his way in because the moment Craig saw him, he would know he was there for Elise. Finley continued down Sandpoint Way, and he could see the destination was next to Pontiac Bay. It looked like a house on the water-front. The street was dark with no street lights. His car’s headlight was the only light on the street. As Craig got closer to the destination, he turned off the lights and let his car rolled to a stop next to a row of tall evergreens. He pulled his gun out from under his seat and tucked it away inside his suit. He checked the rearview mirror, then got out of the car and looked at the beacon on his phone. The beacon appeared to be right outside the house but not moving. There was a front gate blocking the entrance to the driveway. Ansen peeked inside, looking for movements, and then he walked around the front of the house, looking for a way in. A cold breeze blew through from the lake, making him more alert.