CHAPTER 17
Barely two seconds have elapsed since the last grain of black sand emptied from the upper bulb of the hourglass when the door unlocks and swings open.
Aashif stands in the doorway smiling.
It is the first time Ethan has seen him without a hood, and it strikes him that this does not look like a man who is capable of doing the things to Ethan he has promised he will do.
His face is clean-shaven with only the faintest peppering of stubble.
Hair black and midlength and greased back.
“Which of your parents was white?” Ethan asks.
“My mother was British.” Aashif steps into the room. At the desk, he stops and stares down at the sheet of paper. Points to it. “I trust it is not blank on the other side.” He turns it over, studies it for a moment, and shakes his head as his eyes rise to Ethan’s. “You were to write down something that made me happy. Did you not understand my instructions?”
“Your English is fine. I understood.”
“Then maybe you do not believe I will do what I have said.”
“No, I believe you.”
“What then? Why did you not write something?”
“But I did.”
“In invisible ink?”
Now Ethan smiles. It takes everything within his power to stifle the tremor that keeps threatening to move through his hands.
He holds up his left.
“I wrote this,” he says, showing the tattoo he carved into his palm with the tip of the ballpoint pen—dark blue and sloppy, his hand still bleeding in places. But given the time constraints and the circumstance, it was the best he could do. He says, “I know that soon I will be screaming. In terrible pain. Every time you wonder what I’m thinking, even though I may not be able to speak, you can just look at my hand and take those two words to heart. It’s an American saying. I trust you understand its full meaning?”
“You have no idea,” Aashif whispers, and for the first time, Ethan registers unchecked emotion in the man’s eyes. Through the fear, he makes himself catalog the satisfaction of having broken this monster’s cool, knowing it may be his only moment of victory in this brutal transaction.
“Actually, I do,” Ethan says. “You will torture me, break me, and eventually murder me. I know exactly what’s coming. I just have one request.”
This elicits a subtle smile.
“What?”
“Quit telling me how much of a stud you are, you piece of shit. Whip it out and show me.”
* * *
All day, Aashif shows him.
* * *
Some hours later, Ethan snaps back to consciousness.
Aashif sets the bottle of smelling salts on the table beside the knives.
“Welcome back. Have you seen yourself?” the man asks him.
Ethan has lost all concept of how long he’s been down here in the brown-walled room without windows that smells of death and rancid blood.
“Look at your leg.” Aashif’s face is beaded with sweat. “I said look at your leg.”
When Ethan refuses, Aashif reaches his bloody fingers into an earthenware vessel, comes out with a handful of salt.
He flings it at Ethan’s leg.
Screams through the ball gag.
Agony.
Unconsciousness.