In Times of War

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

   Boots stomp outside the room where I’m being held. My heart starts to beat out of my chest because I can tell that the heavy footsteps belong to a large man. I had a gut feeling that I was about to meet the head of this organization, the head honcho, the chief lunatic in charge, the famous Zacharias.

    As usual, my gut wasn’t wrong. The man who enters the room is huge. His muscles had muscles, his arms were tattooed and he wore a black shirt that matched his greasy hair. His eyes were just as black. His tanned skin was marred with scars. He shuts the door behind him and walks over to me, his heavy boots making a lot of noise as he moved. I watch him carefully as he walks around the chair examining me like a cut of meat he was considering buying. He picks up a handful of my hair and looks at it, then drops it with a grunt. He drags the point of the knife in his hand down my cheek, cutting a small scratch, and drags the gag out of my mouth.

“Eh, you’re decent but I still don’t know what that boy sees in you. You’re not all that pretty, just a little twig, too. My six-year-old could probably pick you up.”

“How could someone like you possibly have a child? No one could possibly love you enough to have a child with you.” I spit back.

   “You don’t have to love someone to have a kid with them,” he chuckles. I wrinkle my nose and feel pity for the poor woman that had to bear his child. “Oh, I forgot. You’re one of those Christian, go to church every Sunday, Bible-readin’, moral people. Yuck.”

“There is nothing yuck about the Word of God, or being a Christian.” I defend.

“Whatever you want to think, think it while you can.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, with my eyebrow quirking up.

“I mean that I’m gonna kill you.” He says casually, as if he’s discussing baseball scores. My heart almost stops and my breath catches in my throat. I try not to let him see that I’m scared; I don’t think it works.

“W-why would you do that?”

“Because it’s fun,” he states simply. “And because it might finally get Anthony to realize that you don’t mess with me. You were starting to get on my nerves anyway.”

“How could I possibly be getting on your nerves already? I’ve known you for maybe five minutes. Usually it takes at least seven for me to annoy people that much.” I say, sarcasm oozing from my voice.

   “Oh, I’ve known you for months. Ever since that night in the alley, by the way that was Carl that your boyfriend knocked out, I’ve had people following you. All your do-gooder activities make me sick. Helping little, old ladies cross the street, feeding the poor, and all that stupid romantic tension between you and Anthony. Blah, disgusting. He’s the whole reason you’re here, too. If he hadn’t gone and stolen money from me and started skipping payments, you wouldn’t have to be here right now. But, there’s no reason we can’t enjoy our time together…” He grins evilly and pulls the gag back into my mouth.

   He begins the process of asking me stupid, rhetorical questions and taunting me even though he knows I can’t answer because of the gag in my mouth. When he doesn’t get an answer from me he makes a cut somewhere on my body with the knife, gradually getting larger as we go along, or slapping and punching and kicking. He taunts me with the fact that he’s going to kill me and that I’m actually part of a larger plot. He laughs when he realizes that he hasn’t informed me of this larger plot. He smirks at my discomfort at not knowing everything.