Weeks. It has been what feels like weeks to her since Sherry saw the black cat that she hoped would be her savior, until it vanished into the shadows and abandoned her. Together with her hope. The promise of escape that she saw in it is now just another phantom limb that aches with its heart-wrenching absence.
The last time she saw the cat, the heart-shaped pendant was gone off its collar. Someone has received the note that she has tucked inside it. Someone has seen the desperate plea written in her own blood on a tatter of her favourite dress. Someone knows what is happening.
Whoever they are, they have a scrape of her truth. But the truth doesn't always bring rescue, and Sherry should know. Hasn't she known many times that what she published in her magazine was a lie? But the truth is bound to die and will never spread, when the hands that are holding it aren't willing to give it away.
Sherry´s once seemingly perfect life has been stolen from her. The basement is her world now, with its damp concrete walls, the acrid smell of mildew, and the ever-present gaze of her tormentor. He is always watching. Through the cameras that he set up after her attempt to break free. She can feel the prickling awareness on the back of her neck, like a phantom touch on her heated skin.
His surveillance system is a network of unseen eyes and ears, and a constant companion who is silently laughing at her failed attempt to overpower him. She should never have tried. It was a mistake that she will not repeat. At least not until she knows more about him.
There he is, right outside the door. A second goes by and it creaks open, as if its hinges scream in protest, as he enters. The grace, and quiet confidence with which he moves towards her terrify her just as much as they infuriate her. The scent of the wide open space that is the sea, which once reminded her of freedom, has grown sickening to her. It will forever make her think of this subterranean prison ever since she smelled it on his hands.
No word, only loud breaths, before his head gestures at the monstrous contraption of leather straps and gleaming metal that he brought in only yesterday. Sherry's eyes haven't been to leave it ever since he installed it in the harsh glare of a single spotlight. Her mind has not ceased picturing herself inside it. Now it is going to happen, and the pictures that she has seen in her head will become an experience of unimaginable pain.
Her heart hammers against her ribs. Its frantic beat echoes against the encroaching darkness, when he drags her onto the monster under the spotlight. He ties her up. Wordlessly he tightens the straps until they cut off her circulation, and her once perfect skin turns mottled. The spotlight sears into her eyes. She cannot see clearly, and it is impossible to focus. Or to think.
She hears his frightening whistle. He is warming up and getting into the mood to ask her another question, so she is sure. He has been asking one per day, never randomly, she is convinced. His questions feel like a targeted interrogation that is precisely aimed at the deepest recesses of her soul. He wants to hear about her regrets, about her beliefs, and about the foundations upon which she has built her life, the pretense of an existence.
His one and only goal is to make her feel small.
She is a bonsai tree to him, the roots of which he wires, and the shoots of which he prunes.
The basement that he holds her in is the container he grows her in. It is only equipped with enough soil for her to grow into exactly the shape that he desires.
"What is your greatest regret?" was his question yesterday, asked in a low, nearly soothing voice, but even his murmur would be laced with an undertone of triumph.
Her punishment came quickly, when she refused to answer. A jolt of electricity after which her body started convulsing, and so it kept on doing even after he left.
Despite her silence, she has been thinking about the answer ever since he asked her. With a disheartening result. She regrets everything. Her marriage, and her cold relationship to her children, friends and parents. But what she regrets the most is the magazine she has built, and the lack of courage that she has shown by giving up her own integrity, unburden her publications of truth, and letting them be used to spread whatever was convenient for the powerful. She is glad that she hasn't told him any of it. It would only have made him think that he got her where he wanted her to be. She won't answer today's question either. No matter what it will be.
"What differs right and wrong?" she hears it all at once. "Who is to decide what is wrong and right? And to you, which of them is the truth?"
She forces herself to meet his gaze. The blinding light, however, makes it impossible for her. She can only guess what look he has on his face. Can only guess what answer he wants to hear, and what he will do to her if she refuses to play along with his twisted guessing game.
She has promised herself that she will not ever answer. She doesn't want him to feel like he has power over her. But promises she has never kept. Not those she made her parents, and neither did she ever keep those which she gave the sources that she exploited for her magazine. Blinded by the spotlight above her, she fails to keep the one she made herself, as well. She answers. Too afraid she is of the punishment she will receive if she refuses.
"The truth is what's right, of course. It… helps people, and what helps is right. The wrong things hurt them."
The words taste like ashes in her mouth. They are too simplistic, too easy. She wouldn't about it either way. When has she ever been truthful? Unfortunately she is not only wondering about it herself. He is just as well.
"How would you know, Sherry?" His calm voice creeps in on her. "It is not like you have any experience with it. Making me think you do, is a lie, and lies, so you say, hurt you people. Enjoy the experience!"
A jolt. In a low, sustained hum it vibrates through her bones, causing a searing pain that threatens to overwhelm her consciousness. Despite it, she clings to a question of her own: why? She has to understand it. She has to understand him if she wants to stay alive.
"Why are you doing this?" she finally gasps, her words sound ragged and broken. "Do I know you?"
His reaction comes immediately. Violently he recoils as if struck by lightning. A fury that sends a shiver down Sherry´s spine blazes in his eyes.
"You are asking if you know me?" he hisses, and the sea scent that comes off him turns metallic. "You destroyed my entire life, and now you're asking if you know me?"
His words are hammer blows, aimed merely at destruction. It is her destruction that the hammer is aiming for. But who is holding it in their hand?
Sherry searches her memory. She dredges up the ghosts of her past. Lawsuits, controversies, and enemies that she has made throughout her career in publishing, and the ones that she has helped to make.
The glare of the spotlight above her intensifies, and blurs her vision. Then, all at once, out of nowhere, a flickering half-image appears amidst the swirling darkness.
She has him! Her torturer just must be the man who she is thinking of!
He is one of many journalists whose names she slandered. Wiry, intense, with an edgy face and relentless pitbull-eyes that would never let go again, once they bite. Her job, so a determined whisper told her, was to make sure that they would never touch the wrong people again.
Black on white, she remembers the news articles about him that she sent into print. They were filled with accusations and allegations that would end his existence.
Her eyes tear up and she starts gasping.
Why did she do it? And how did she forget about him?
She was encouraged by the whispered promise of success and power. It was during elections, and the whispers that reached her came from high above. They asked her for a smear campaign, which she had by then been known to willingly provide for the right people, and the right price.
She had always known that the stories she published were lies. Maybe that is why she chose to forget it. She chose to forget him, and pushed him back into the darkness of her mind. But now he is back. Right there with her, standing right in front of her, and far above her.
It is just a job, she would justify it to herself back then, so her mind wouldn't ever bring him up again. Every profession has its downsides, and nowadays, the dependency on global politics, its policies, and the needs of the super rich who are by now controlling it, are those of mine.
"Your name," she whispers, as a tear descends her cheek like the setting sun, the horizon. "It is Warner, isn't it?"
What flickers across his face, looks like something that Sherry wouldn't have expected. Almost like relief. He turns the light off. Before she can fully make it out, his hand turns the spotlight off. Instant darkness devours him.
Sherry hears him breathing. Breathing and breathing, as if he were standing right next to her ear, and staring at her.
He probably is. Will he not say anything? In Warner´s voice, a low, but… Thinking about it, Sherry cannot remember what it sounds like, the voice that she was meant to silence.
She tries to concentrate and think of something that would resonate with someone like him, when she realises that she doesn't really know anyone remotely like him. And how could she? She only ever kept people close who could be useful in her making. That is what she has been taught to do. Simply by the way that the world is working nowadays, and if you go against it, you won't ever make it.
When she heard the whispers that made her slander warner, deep down she was afraid. Terrified that her publication would be closed down and slandered, if she weren't to follow suit. She had seen so many others who had experienced it for publishing 'wrong things'. More accurately what they had published was the truth.
Out of self-preservation she had brushed aside her conscience, and told herself that refusing would mean the end of her career, or even worse, the end of her. Now that she is staring into the abyss of what she believes is her own making, she wonders if she feels intensely how wrong she was. Terribly, and irrevocably wrong.
This is revenge, she is sure of it, and the thought sends a fresh wave of terror through her. The truth, if it is the truth, is far more terrifying than her pain. The pain she can endure, but the weight of her guilt might break her.
She thought it would be her escape ticket to put a name to her tormentor. Now she has, but still fails to understand him. The darkness around her seeps into her soul, and forces her to abandon her last shred of faith in an escape. Then, all at once, a memory starts glowing before her.
She might not get to get away, but hasn't he?
"What do you call yourself, these days?" Her faint voice sneaks towards him, and grows stronger on the way.
She cannot hear him breathe any longer.
Is he surprised, even shocked perhaps that she remembers? Or is thinking about ways to wrestle power?
In the dark, she cannot tell. Before she thinks about it any further, she hears her own voice again.
It will hit him forcefullythis time, so she is hoping.
"I heard that you escaped after you went to jail. Half a year ago, was it? With the help of people you met inside, the tough guys who are known to hang around the harbour all the time. The police haven't seen you ever since. They presume you changed your identity, isn't that right?"
Silence, thick and heavy. Then, a sound from deep in his throat. She is on to him. She knows it, but before she can keep going, she feels his harsh hand punching her in the stomach. Sherry gasps, when her lungs expel the air.
A white-hot brand of pain sears through her. She tries to double over, but the straps prevent her body from protecting itself, and the instinct is left to die in her limbs. Flashes dance behind her eyelids, and a metallic tang fills her mouth. He doesn't hold back anymore. Did he ever?
His hands on her again. Their touches feel nervous. Something has changed in him. She hears the straps opening and dirty crumples to the ground, followed by her body. The rough cement scrapes against her cheek. For a moment, everything is a blurred cacophony of pain, sliced apart by flashes of fear. Only slowly, agonizingly, her vision clears. When she looks up at him, her eyes are burning with a mixture of hatred and a grim determination.
He is standing over her, but remains nothing but a dark silhouette against the little light that filters through the grimy window in his back. Under the mask of fury, his face looks contorted and stays unrecognizable.
"How… do you...?" His unusually raspy and strained voice sends a question towards her that is lingering in the air above her, heavy with menace.
He sounds surprised. Almost off balance. For Sherry, it is a sliver of satisfaction that gives her a new strength. She coughs, and spits out a fleck of blood.
"It doesn't matter how I know," she rasps, and her voice is still weak but sprinkled with defiance. "What matters is that I do know. And now you know that I do."
He comes so close that his shadow engulfes her.
"Perfect little liar, you think we are playing some kind of game down here, don't you? You think you can win."
He crouches down, and his face is inches from hers.
The stench of stale sweat radiates off him, mixed with something else. Something that smells like fear.
"Let me tell you something," he tries to prove her wrong. "What you think you know will not give you any kind of leverage. And you know why?" With his eyes narrowed, he reaches out, and his fingers dig into her arm, when he goes on. "Because before the week is over, you will die."
A pause, in which he is waiting for fear to disfigure her face, but she refuses to react, and he picks up the pace. "After I slice your throat open and watch you, writhing on the ground as your blood seeps out of your twitching body, it will take your organs up to three days to start decomposing. It will take the rats that you hear are living in every corner down here, only seconds to pick up the scent of your approaching death, and a few minutes after they do, they will start to pick you clean while your heart is still beating. And nobody in the world will ever find or get to bury your dead body."
He leans even closer, and his breath feels hot against her ear. "You're going to die, Sherry. There is no denying it. It is not a threat, but a promise, and it will be the realest thing that has ever happened in your life."
He stands up, and looms over her once more.
"Now," he adds in a voice that is frighteningly devoid of every emotion, "let's see if we can make the inevitable process that is your approaching death a little more… painful. I´m open to ideas, if you have contributions."
He turns away, and heads towards a corner of the room. Watching him, Sherry hears her heart pounding in her chest. With chilling certainty, she knows that he isn't bluffing. He meant every word.
The knowledge that she considered her weapon won't be enough against his brute force and the unbridled rage he seems to feel. Just like the truth that he considered his weapon was not enough to keep him from going to jail, after she slandered his name, but became his prison.
The game has changed, and the stakes are higher than ever before. Her life is precariously hanging in the balance, and balancing things has never been her strong suit, either way.