Crocodile Farm

4.

The men leave him, whimpering, in the corner of the cell, to check himself over for breakages. Although he has been beaten and kicked in the stomach and chest, his hands bent back and his fingers jarred, it is the skin across his face which hurts the most, from that first blow. Perhaps it was because it was still unexpected then; he really thought that they would not use brutality, that all he had to do was go along with what they wanted, and they would release him. He touches it, gingerly, his fingers feeling the pulpy swell of his flesh, the tender mass of it.

  He knows now that he has no hope of release. They will hurt him and terrorise him until they can extract everything he knows; until the contents of his brain are emptied into their hands. He has no hope against them, and certainly no hope that they might obey the rule of law. He's pretty sure this is illegal, or would be if anyone knew about it, but they are operating outside the law. They don't care about his rights. He has no rights. (Rights are, as he was taught in school, an American concept anyway).

  After a couple of hours Neckless returns with a tray of food. He is starving and goes to wolf it down, using his hands, but his throat is too dry, he can't swallow, it's not fair. He gags and retches and looks up at Neckless, who shrugs without pity and throws him a bottle of water.

  The lid cannot come off fast enough. The water is the most glorious thing he has ever tasted. He glugs it down, has to force himself to save some for later. His throat finally working again, he shovels in some of the disgusting-looking food. If he pauses between gulps he is aware of a sticky sweetness amid the chunks of too-tough meat;pineapple, maybe? Why would anyone put pineapple with pork? He eat sit anyway.

  His throat is so dry he can barely swallow, even after the water, but he manages somehow, and then Neckless retrieves the tray and tosses him another bottle of water – if they had such an abundant supply why has it taken them so long to get some for him? - and leaves him alone again.

  He knows it must be getting close to evening; he can feel it in his skin and bones, rather than seeing any change in the light. That will mean he has been here almost twenty-four hours. He was sleeping for some of that – possibly ten, or even twelve hours – and he still has no memory of actually being taken.

  The man in the suit was talking about drugs when he first said that things were "as it should be", and that he was sedated. How else to explain the memory loss and the weird non-hangover?

  They asked him, over and over, what he knew of Crocodile Farm. Up until this point, he had not thought it was a real place, just a vomited-up product of his fucked-up dreams, like last night's man with teeth for eyes or the woman who rose from the fire, the subject of his first song. And every time he told them that he knew nothing, which was the truth, but every time he said it and they beat him again or kicked his ribs or wrenched his hands behind his back, he found it harder and harder to even believe himself.

Suit didn't seem content to let Neckless do the beating. He might have pretended to be on Elliott's side at first, a congenial good-cop to Neckless's silent foreboding presence, but that all vanished once they started using force. He was very happy to join in, seemed at home with the violence. Elliott hopes that they are keeping Belle here – and Taz,and Darcy – for leverage, rather than to inflict on her the same kind of injuries which he has received. Since that first time, when she was hidden behind the door, he has not heard her voice, not seen her face, but he knows they would not have released her without getting what they want.

  He feels sick, and pathetic. The sticky meat juice has dried in the corners of his lips and there isn't enough water in the bottle to quench his thirst; there could never be enough water to quench his thirst; his thirst is that of a man lost in the desert. He has become nothing as much as just a dry throat, all-consuming, all-absorbing, disgusting. He wants to curl up in the corner again, but instead he forces himself to crawl onto the bench, the pain in his ribs and face and hands singing, and he puts his head in his fingers, tenderly, like he's holding someone else's baby, and he tries to get himself to think. He's a smart boy, reads a lot of books, paints a lot, makes a lot of music. He's always understood anything he could put his mind to; Belle always said it was his magical quality.

  "Everyone has a magical quality," she'd said, as they sat out in the communal concrete mess they called a yard, out the back of the scorching 1960s block they first moved into in Ashfield.

  "What's yours, then?" he'd asked, throwing a mangy tennis ball so Dolphin, their golden-coated mutt, leaped after it.

  "Keeping my head down," she'd grinned, and it was a joke but it was also true. She was good at flying under the radar, while Elliott sought out the limelight.

  Was. Sought. He is already thinking of his life in the past tense, which can't be a good sign. Dolphin must be sad, and lonely now, waiting for them to come home, with no one to feed her.

  In the cold cell Elliott wraps his arms around himself and tries to picture his house, the tiny room he has to himself, with its single bed and chest of drawers salvaged from the side of the road. Tries to picture Dolphin, sprawled out on his bed for a tummy rub, or leaping into the air at the prospect of a trip to the park. But he can't conjure them up, in this place, his memories have faded like his dreams.