Haven: Book Seven of "The Liminality"

Chapter 10 - Captive

Urszula wrestled the man with the fringed jacket into her flat and slammed the door behind her. He was wiry, but not particularly strong. An elbow bent behind his back was plenty to control him. She took note of his susceptibility to pain, but she could also tell that he was probing for an opportunity to turn the tables on her. Just little things like stepping on her foot, shifting his weight to knock her off balance. The little black Walther she fetched with one hand from the junk drawer put a stop to that.

His sudden passivity when faced with a gun surprised her somewhat. Agents of the after lands didn't always care about what happened to their mortal shells. They knew where their soul was headed next and were fine with it. If they need to, they could come back. This one seemed to care about spilling his blood and she found that curious. This one was not too keen to fail at whatever mission he was sent to complete.

With one hand she pulled off his shoulder bag and used strapping tape to secure him to one of the fancy chairs in the dining room. Not satisfied, she fetch some wire coat hangers from the closet to affix his ankles to the chair legs.

"Am I not cooperating?" he said. "The tape alone would have sufficed."

"I see the look in your eye. I am not taking chances."

"Do you even know who I am?"

"I have a pretty good idea."

"Then you should understand that we will have company very shortly."

She was pretty sure he was bluffing.

"That's fine. I have plenty of tape and coat hangers for everyone. We can have ourselves a party."

He forced a smirk, trying to assert an air of calm disdain, but Urszula had a good sense for when people are nervous. This man felt some uncertainty as to what would come next. Maybe his friends wouldn't be coming to his rescue quite as quickly as he made it seem. She and Jan could not have been high priority targets.

There was a box of matches by the candleholders on the table. She struck a match, lit the candles and brought the still burning match, not close enough to burn him but close enough to his face for him to feel the heat.

"So tell me, who do you work for?"

"I work for me."

She rifled through the contents of his small canvas shoulder bag. According to the identity card in his wallet, he was a Swiss citizen named Lothar Wittenberg. It also held a set of keys and a cigarette lighter but several objects in the bag defied identification. A small gray stone had a white line encircling it and a thumb-shaped depression on one side. A blunt stylus shaped like a pen but with no means of transferring ink. Most interesting, though, was a notepad bearing some unrecognizable script.

"What language is this?"

"My own. It's shorthand."

"What are you writing?"

"Poems."

"Oh, come now. I know what you are. We don't need to resort to torture, do we?"

"Everyone knows that torture is useless. Victims tell their torturers whatever they think they want to hear. So what do you want to hear? That I work for Satan? Okay, I work for Satan. That I work for God? Then, okay I work for God."

"Ooh! That sounds like fun! I love having my suspicions confirmed! Let's get the torture started!"

The man worried.

"What I'm saying is, you don't have to. I'll tell you the truth. Just ask."

"You mean to tell me that you are a self-employed poet?"