by Amy Lord
‘Ah, you’re awake. I’m so pleased.’
A chill shuddered across my skin as my stepfather’s disembodied voice washed over me. Squinting against the glare that consumed the room, I tried to figure out where I was. I lay on a narrow bed in the centre of a cell, a row of strip lights directly above me. My arms and legs were cuffed and fastened to the bed; another strap circled my waist. I flexed my fingers, testing the leather. It didn’t give.
Cold air rippled along my legs. I managed to lift my head enough to see that I was no longer wearing my own clothes. Instead, someone had dressed me in a plain hospital gown; I could feel the ties at the back digging into my flesh, the rough scrape of a woollen blanket against the exposed skin where the material didn’t meet. I wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Panic hit me once more as I pictured what had happened. Images assailed me; the smell of bullets burning filled my nostrils. Was it only yesterday?
I wondered. I had no way of knowing how long I’d been lying here. I couldn’t rely on anyone to tell me the truth.
Tears slid from the corner of my eye as I thought about Simon. I worried about Caleb and the others and if they’d managed to get away. I could only hope they would come back for me. But this time, the guards would be expecting them. They would know that the tunnels had been used to access the building. My tears intensified.
The major’s voice echoed once more through the speakers. ‘Don’t cry my dear; we’ve got so many fun things planned for you today. You wouldn’t want to miss them, would you?’
I strained against the restraints, my eyes darting around the room. There was a long, low window cut into the wall, much like the one that had been in the cell where we found Elizabeth. I tried to catch sight of the major on the other side of the glass, but there was nothing but my own reflection. I couldn’t bear to look at myself.
I lay down in defeat, imagining the twist of his mouth as he smirked, watching me from behind the mirror. I wondered if he would be alone, or if there would be others there with him, planning the best way to torture me.
I forced the terror somewhere deep down inside myself; it was the only way to keep from crying out. I tried to set my mind free, wandering outside somewhere, away from thoughts of what the next few hours might hold for me. I pictured Simon’s face, tried to remember the feel of his arms around me. But images of his dead body kept intruding and I felt sure I’d soon be joining him.
*
It felt like forever until the major came for me. I lay there alone in that white room, feeling eyes crawl across me, eyes that were hidden behind reflective glass. Exhaustion flooded my veins, an after-effect of the drugs that were still hazy in my bloodstream, but the glare of the overhead light wouldn’t allow me to sleep.
Despite all the waiting, I wasn’t ready when the key clanged in the lock and the heavy door swung open. To my surprise, Will was the first one to enter the room, his eyes fixed on the floor. The major appeared close behind, almost casual without his uniform jacket, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The muscles in his forearms flexed as he closed the door behind them. I caught a glimpse of a guard standing outside the room, automatic rifle clutched in both hands.
Without speaking, the major crossed the room, somewhere behind me. I couldn’t twist my head back far enough to see what he was doing and the angle in the mirror wasn’t right. Will loitered in the corner of the room, trying his best not to look at me.
There was a scraping sound and the major reappeared in my line of vision, dragging a metal chair behind him. He positioned it carefully: close enough to the bed so that he could reach out and touch me, but far enough away that I had to turn my head awkwardly to see him.
With a heavy sigh, he settled himself into the chair, hands resting on his thighs, feet stretched out towards me. I stared straight ahead. I would not be the first to speak.
He smiled at me. ‘I always knew you were rebellious, Clara. When we first met, you looked at me like you hated me. I suppose you still do.’
I couldn’t help it; my face must have betrayed my surprise. It seemed to please him. He smiled in that knowing way that always infuriated me so intensely.
‘You thought you were so clever, but everything you ever thought… it was written across your face. Why do you think I sent you away to school? I couldn’t stand to look at all that resentment for another moment. It was bad enough by then, having to look at your mother every day.’
In the corner, my brother’s face twitched, but he didn’t say anything. I scowled at the major, jamming my lips together. His amusement only grew. ‘You’re so like her, you know.’
I tried to hold onto my anger, to stop it from escaping. I bit my lip until the taste of iron filled my mouth. All the while he smirked at me, until I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘I’m nothing like her!’
His eyes sparkled. ‘Oh you don’t see it, but it’s obvious to everyone else. You have that same stubborn, destructive streak. The only difference is, she’s never managed to find a constructive outlet for her pain, so she drowns it in drink. She’s made herself a victim by wallowing in her own misery. Of course, she’s responsible enough for it. She told me all about the conversation you had about how she annulled her marriage to your father.’
He stood up and moved slowly towards the wall. I followed his movements out of the corner of my eye.
‘I expected you to blame me, but it seems you’ve more sense, after all. You can see the part she played in it. For all the things I did to your father, and I don’t deny them, she was responsible for the annulment.’
I listened as he spoke, my jaw clenched tightly shut. A vein pulsed beside my eye, causing it to twitch. I blinked hard, trying to make it stop. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me.
‘She always loved him, you know. Even after we were married. I often think that’s what drove her to drink, despite everything else. Her guilt. She abandoned your father, even though she loved him so intensely. She certainly never loved me that way.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Oh she made a good show of it. It’s ironic really, considering she never made it as an actress. Our relationship was her grand performance. And she did it all for you.’
I couldn’t help it; my eyes flickered to his face. ‘Don’t look so surprised, Clara. She must have told you. I was the only way to keep you safe.’ He gave a burst of laughter. ‘If only she could see us here, now. What would she say? Who do you think she would blame first?’
I forced myself to stay silent, even as his words raced through my mind. Behind him, Will was fighting with his own emotions as he listened intently to everything his father said. I’d never considered what my dad must be to him: some ghostly figure skirting the edges of our lives, like a fairy-tale warning of what might happen if you misbehaved. I wondered if he’d ever thought of our mother that way – as someone else’s wife, with this whole alternate life that existed long before he ever did. Perhaps he felt as unwanted as his father did.
It was silent for a long time.
‘I suppose we’ll never know,’ the major said softly. He turned to face the glass and made a sharp movement with his right hand, dragging a finger across his throat. Then he left the room. Will followed, throwing me a quick glance over his shoulder.
They turned out the lights and left me there in darkness.
*
I didn’t see them again for some time. Each time the door opened, I expected to see the major and felt almost disappointed when some anonymous soldier entered the room instead.
But when he did reappear, I knew immediately that something was wrong. His face was grey, a fine sheen of sweat on his skin. There was a dark stain on his shirt that frightened me.
He came storming into the room, breathing heavily. I felt the intensity of his stare as it settled on me. If I’d felt vulnerable before, it was nothing beside this.
‘I hope you’re happy.’ His words cut across the room and I was too afraid to reply. But I couldn’t look away. Something awful woke deep in m
y stomach. As I waited for him to continue, my sense of time – already stretched and distorted – threatened to snap completely.
He was in a frenzy and I was afraid of him, of what he was about to say. I swallowed hard.
‘After you were captured, an arrest team was sent out to speak to your mother, without my knowledge. The association with you and your father counted against her, even more than her relationship with me. The regime never forgets.’
He began to pace and I noticed a tremor in his hands. The fear in my gut intensified. He wasn’t in control here.
‘They were actually quite delicate with her. She was asked to accompany them to headquarters; as it was early in the day, they gave her a few moments to go upstairs and dress. Instead, she went into the safe and took my gun. While they waited downstairs, she shot herself in the head.’
A faint gurgle of pain curdled on my lips. My fists tightened and the bite of broken nails cut into my palms. But he wasn’t finished.
‘Of course, your mother has never fired a gun in her life. Frankly, I’m surprised she managed to take the safety catch off. Unfortunately, it seems she wavered at the last moment and her hand slipped. The bullet destroyed her face, but she isn’t dead. The arrest team were able to transport her to hospital. She’s on a ventilator. She’ll die, but it may be a slow process.’
He sucked in a breath. ‘I’ve been to the house. It looks like a fucking abattoir.’
The coldness of his words was like a slap to the face. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to force away the images that threatened to overwhelm me. I had no one left.
Thirty-eight
The next day, they took me into another room, a bag over my head as I was dragged from my bed and hauled out into the corridor. My legs were weak and I couldn’t make them work properly, my feet scrambling uselessly to keep up.
I was jostled through a narrow doorway, a guard gripping each arm tightly, my hands cuffed in front of me. A third soldier ripped the bag from my head and I blinked, the light blinding. I was in a room with white tiled walls and a bare concrete floor. This room had no observation panels. There were no cameras. No one would see what happened here.
A thick metal hook hung from the ceiling. It was the only thing in the room. They pulled me towards it and another guard came in carrying a heavy chain. He slung it over the hook, pulling it down and attaching it to my handcuffs. His arms straining, he heaved on the chain, dragging my hands skyward. The breath left my body abruptly as I was pulled upwards until my toes were scraping the floor, unable to find purchase. My shoulders were wrenched unnaturally as the chain forced the joints back too far. There was an ominous popping sound and a wave of pain rushed through me.
And they left. I hung there, like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse, unable to stop my feet from rasping across the concrete, over and over, panic suffocating me. I couldn’t breathe.
They left me there. They left me there for so long that I became delirious. My head lolled against my arms, my body spinning softly, first one way and then the other. As the room spun around me the shadows lengthened and grew unnatural.
The air in the white room was stifling. My underarms were soaked in sweat; I could smell it, pungent and sour. Sweat leached from my forehead; my lips grew dry and cracked. My tongue felt swollen and furry in my mouth. I tried to plead for water but my words were too slurred to make sense. I tried to remember the last time I ate something, but the moment eluded me.
Eventually I began to cry, a low desperate moan, my mouth hanging open, chest shuddering. My thighs grew warm as I pissed myself.
The lights cut out. For a brief moment I wondered if I had gone blind. I wondered if I was already dead.
*
I came to in a spray of ice-cold water. It lashed against my face, like needles against my skin. It soaked the thin gown and left me trembling, the force making my body spin, fresh agony jolting every joint, every muscle. But still I gulped at the water desperately, trying to angle my head to catch it in my mouth. I couldn’t see who wielded the hose, the pressure forcing my burning eyes to close.
When they shut the water off, I was bereft. Thirst clawed at my throat, making me gasp. The gown was plastered to my skin, cold and heavy. I began to shiver violently, my teeth clattering together so hard I thought they would break.
I slipped into unconsciousness.
*
I woke to a needle in my arm. I groaned and tried to make out the face of the man plunging this syringe into my flesh, but his features swam before me, dissembling. He seemed alien, his eyes huge and black in the smooth grey of his face.
My vision cleared and it was a doctor with a mask over his face, identity void. He looked me in the eye and fear rattled along my spine; he was studying me. I imagined him pulling a scalpel from his pristine lab coat and drawing it across my chest in a vicious Y, peeling back the layers of meat until there was only bone and viscera.
My heart began to race, the blood thundering in my ears. A strange crackling sound filled the room; it was my breathing. It didn’t even sound human.
His eyes shifted and slid, his face melting. I went into the light.
*
I was naked strapped to a table, the metal cold beneath my trembling limbs. My eyes were wrenched open; I couldn’t blink. I stared into the strip lights, purple stains writhing across my retinas. Hysteria brought the memory of reading A Clockwork Orange late at night, trying to force my eyes to stay open as I flicked through the pages beneath the covers, a torch in hand. A crazed laugh exploded from my lips.
Shapes moved above me and I felt the bite of steel, cutting deeper.
I screamed, falling into blackness.
Thirty-nine
The light hurt. I opened my eyes reluctantly, from a dream I couldn’t remember. My whole life was a dream. This room was the nightmare.
I was slumped in a chair, my hands and feet shackled to a metal ring buried in the floor. Someone had dressed me in the hospital gown; I could feel the scrape of the chair against my back.
Will was sitting in a chair beside me. His face shone with tears. When he saw that I was awake, he reached out and took my hand.
‘Mama…’ the word was ripped from me.
His voice broke. ‘She’s dead.’
The bottom fell out of my heart.
‘When?’
He glanced away. ‘A few days ago.’
I began to cry. ‘Did you see her? Was she… do you think she was in pain?’
A shadow passed over his face. ‘She never woke up, after…’
It was too horrible to think about, but we did anyway, sitting together in silence, our hands gripped tight. We’d never been close, but he was my brother. Whatever had happened, I knew he loved our mother as much as I did.
Before he left, he hugged me. He hugged me and said goodbye. I think that scared me the most.
*
I fell in and out of sleep, close to giving up. When I next woke, the major was watching me.
I gave a start, jerking back in the chair, chains rattling. Seeing me awake, the corners of his mouth twitched.
‘Ah, you’re back with us, in the land of the living.’ He smirked, but his eyes were cold.
‘Why didn’t you tell me she was dead? She’s my mother.’
He snorted. ‘You forfeited the right to any information about my wife.’
I didn’t even have the energy to scowl at him. I let my head fall forward, exhausted. I couldn’t feel my fingers; the handcuffs were so tight that the blood had long since stopped circulating.
The major’s dress shoes clicked on the concrete as he began to pace around me.
‘I’m afraid it’s time I asked you some questions. You’ve had enough time now to get used to the way we do things here.’
I pulled my head up slowly and stared at him. He was rolling up his shirt sleeves carefully. ‘The way you do things here. You say it as though it’s something normal, that you can be proud of.’ My voice was weak, but it was
full of anger. Each word brought its own stab of pain. ‘You torture people. There’s nothing but shame in that.’
He began to loosen his tie, pulling gently at the knot. He tugged it up over his head and tossed it to one side of the room.
‘Shame. That’s an interesting word. Is it shameful to serve your country? To root out anarchy and seek to keep the people safe? To stamp out those who would do nothing but harm to others? Is it not shameful to build bombs and shoot men who are simply going about their jobs, protecting people?’
‘Is that what you think I did? Killed someone?’ I tried to shake my head but pain flooded through my body and I inhaled sharply.
The major continued to observe me.
‘I didn’t kill anyone.’
He shrugged. ‘You didn’t pull the trigger, perhaps, or wire a detonator. But if you associate with those that do, you’re as guilty of the crime as they are. Ask your mother, ask Simon, or your student Jerome.’
‘Is that what you tell yourself, to feel better? When you’ve been in here all day torturing someone.’ I began to shake with emotion. ‘When you beat someone, hang them, cut them, make them bleed. Rape them. Is that justified?’
He sighed. ‘I’m not here to discuss morality with you. The simple fact is, you’re a criminal, just like your father and your lover before you.’ He began to pace again. ‘To think that I allowed you to live under my roof for all those years, in my home, with my son. I made sure you were fed, clothed, that you had a good education. I kept your damned mother from drowning herself in a bottle of brandy. And this is how you repay me. You throw it back in my face with this… rebellion. You must know I can’t let you go unpunished.’
Rage swelled in my chest. ‘All you’ve ever done is destroy my life, from the first time you walked into our home and dragged my father away. You destroyed him; you destroyed my mother so badly that the only way she could stand to be married to you was to drink herself half to death. And now you want to destroy me. When will it end?’