Page 9

Monsters

Rumi

Crack!

I will escape.

Crack!

I will escape.

The whip set the pace like a metronome for her mantra.

And the searing spike of pain that accompanied each lash created a chorus harmonizing with her heartbeat, a thousand voices singing the refrain in unison—I will escape.

Gone were the insults and verbal abuse and relentless buckets of water.

He had changed tactics, graduating to more forceful measures, when those first few hadn’t gotten him results.

And since he’d discovered that her body repaired itself quickly, Sullivan had doubled down on her mistreatment.

With each new attempt to gain her cooperation, she wondered just how far he was willing to go to get whatever it was that he wanted from her.

This was a new place, that much was certain.

The new prison.

Yet another bleak cell—cold grey stone from floor to ceiling and heavy black bars locking her inside.

But this time Rumi had no bed and only a paper-thin blanket.

They’d brought her to a large room after her meager meal, with a dirt floor and a chair against the stone wall.

Only a single door opened into the room, but it was enough to see daylight just outside. Her new battle arena. This dank, musty place brought with it a whole host of torturous ideas for Sullivan, apparently. The putrid excuse for a man had done away with following whatever rules he’d had at the other prison. Here it was his word as law. And she was trussed up like a pig for slaughter. It was the first time there had been so much blood.

She had handled what seemed like weeks of his punishments, though he did not state any reasons beyond her disobedience.

None at all.

Surely if this were actually about her supposed crimes, he would say so.

But he did not seem interested in any of that.

Could it really be that her kidnapping, imprisonment, and what now amounted to torture—all of it—was but an insidious ploy to acquire knowledge about and access to Ti’la? These people…they were depraved, they were monsters, and what they were capable of was more terrifying that Rumi ever could have imagined.

Days on end with music blaring from a sonophone outside her cell.

She sang along with it, singing her own words.

Words from home.

Songs of her people.

Wrapped in the magic of memory, she pretended she was with her mother who was braiding her hair and playfully whispering in her ear.

Crack!

I will escape.

The nights locked in a room so cold that she could see her breath had become her favorite.

The air numbed the pain, chasing her constant companion into a corner of her thoughts, instead of screaming in agony every time Rumi moved.

The pain was silent when it was cold.

Rumi would pretend she had stayed out in the jungle too late past sunset when the humid air turned cold.

That’s where her mind turned now.

To her beloved home.

She roamed the fields of wildflowers dappled in sunlight that barely escaped the dense emerald canopy above, dotting the ground with gold.

Bird calls echoed through her mind, guiding her home.

Her bare feet squished into the pliant soil, the dirt cool against her toes—

Crack!

I will escape.

They will not break me.

Her skin was so hot that the blood trickling down her back cooled the burning sensations.

Rumi’s fingers had long gone numb, the bite of the rope that held her hands high over her head cutting and rubbing into her wrists.

But she would get out. Somehow.

Crack! A hiss slid through her teeth, her back arching.

He will not break me.

“Surely you’ve had enough for today,”

said the monster, and the boredom dripping from his words made her cringe.

He leaned over her and the scent of his sour sweat, coated with the dry coppery essence of blood, filled her nose.

His reek burned holes through her eyelids, twisting her stomach.

Her life blood, spilt by his monstrous hand.

“Cry.

Whimper. I don’t care how you speak, so long as you give me the answers I’m after.”

He slipped a leather band around her neck, his rough, cracked fingers brushing the matted hair away from her spine.

Rumi had convinced herself that he was actually scared to touch her.

Maybe that was her own delusion leading her to believe she had some sort of power left.

He pulled the band tighter against her throat.

He twisted his thick digits, the leather pressing against her trachea, tightening under her ears until the blood hammered in her head and demanded release.

Stars swam in front of her eyes and darkness began to press into her vision.

With all her strength, she reared back and kicked, her heel striking the bastard’s shin.

He cursed.

A white flash exploded behind her forehead, leaving her head throbbing and the world swaying.

He’d dropped the band and his hands were nested in her tangled hair in a fury.

So much for her theory.

He drove her head into the brick wall a second time.

Rumi blinked against the blackness, trying to keep steady as the stone walls leaned toward her.

She knew better than to antagonize Sullivan.

Commander Sullivan, she sneered inside, that was what the guards were calling him now.

She refused, of course.

He wasn’t her commander. He was a bully, a sadist, a thug. They had transferred him, all right. Her too, apparently. Why had they agreed to such things?

“You are still in control, Arryvian.”

Crack!

A whimper wriggled up her throat as the lash suddenly split her skin.

Sweat dripped down her forehead and stung her eyes.

Maybe those were tears.

It was hard to tell.

“You know what you need to do to make it stop.”

The whip bit into her flesh again and she imagined the anger that poured from the leather and into her skin as an acidic liquid hatred dripping from the braided lash and burning the open wound.

If not anger or hatred of her race, why else would he beat her so? Her mind whirled with the possibilities and she shuddered from more than just the blow of the lash.

One day, he would find her heart and split it in two.

As if she were a jongo fruit.

She flinched as she imagined it.

That wicked, tacky leather coil slicing her through the jongo-fruit heart she so desperately kept hidden inside her ribs.

She could hear his heavy breathing between her wheezes, feel his determination in every strike he laid on the sticky ruin of her body.

She refused to answer. Refused to speak to him at all, despite knowing it served to frustrate him further. It only made these punishments significantly more brutal. One day maybe she’d succeed in making him lose his temper and anger would make his head explode. Crazed giggles bubbled through her lips at the thought of his fat head bursting into a million bits.

“Lift her!”

He commanded from behind her.

A guard with hazel eyes glued to the floor approached.

He looked familiar.

Maybe her mind was broken, but there was a slight apology in the way he lifted her shackles from the hook above her.

He tried to catch her body as it crumbled under her own weight.

His hands were gentle and warm, but she flinched anyway. He set her in the chair and she slumped over.

Her blood plunked on the ground.

She heard each fat drop.

Today was the worst day yet.

The bloodiest.

Blood was in her mouth.

In the air.

On the ground.

“Sir.”

That sounded like the nice one.

HazelEyes.

She couldn’t be sure with her eyes squeezed shut.

“What is it, soldier?”

Sullivan asked coolly.

“Look, sir.”

A heavy hush filled the air.

She didn’t know what they were looking at, too exhausted to even open her eyes, but the sound of her blood dripping to the floor drummed in her ears through the silence.

“Now that is interesting.”

Her ears twitched and she grinned to herself.

He’d stopped whipping her.

She didn’t break.

She didn’t know what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter.

She’d kept a secret he was so desperately seeking.

She hadn’t broken.

She was victorious, at least until the whip fell once more.

Unbreakable.

Unyielding.

She would win this battle of minds yet.

Dry, hoarse laughter cackled from her lips, sparkling through the stone room like bits of starlight.

“Take her to her cell,”

said Sullivan contemplatively, fully ignoring her.

HazelEyes approached her from the side and scooped her up.

Rumi couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped her lips as she fell into his arms.

Icy-hot pain radiated up her back and she curled into him, hating herself for doing it, but seeking the warmth and meager safety his arms provided.

Then the pain became too much for her broken body to bear and sweet darkness cradled her into oblivion.