Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Thirty: Hopelessness

After what I'm sure was the longest period of rest I've had in my life, I was awoken with a slap to my face.

My wilted head veered off with whiplash. Before my sight had even cleared, I was aware of the heated prickling on my rouged cheek. I could feel the echo of bony fingers resounding on my face. "Mother... Fuck!" I spat, giving an injured whine.

Brought back to the land of the woken, my head lulled back into the hard back of a chair. Squinting with bleary eyes, I looked down at my arms and legs. I was secured to a metal chair by inbuilt leather straps at my wrists and ankles, and the chair was secured to the floor with concrete.

Around me were four grey walls; just like everywhere in the damned red room facility. Above me, a single bulb blinked and buzzed, dangling from the ceiling without any kind of lampshade. The light was dingy and didn't reach the cobwebbed corners of the dank room.

Cold air kissed my skin, and I became aware of the sound of dripping.

Finally, I directed my attention to the owner of the hand that had battered my face. Drowned in his shadow, I was met by the dimly lit complexion of Aleksander Lukin.

"And what do you call this?" He asked, waving a diamond ring under my nose, a fleering look on his face.

My eyes flicked down to my hand - lacking in a ring - and back up to his daggers glare.

"I don't know..." I lied through my teeth, breathing harshly, still half asleep.

"Guess again..." He stepped back a couple steps and smiled at someone behind me.

All of a sudden I was drowned by a deluge of water. Ice cold, probably imported from a nearby river or lake. I gasped and guttered on the water that entered my mouth an nostrils. Thrashing and gasping, I finally paid attention.

He threw the ring in a nondescript direction, eyesight obscured by water and the room drowned in darkness, I could keep track of the precious object. I only heard it tinkle as it hit the floor an was gobbled up by the dark recesses of the bland room.

"You've done nothing but fail!" His hand lashed my opposite cheek and my head flailed off to the other side. My head bashed into the back of the chair as he whacked it to one side. The water only served to worsen the blow, amplifying the density of the beating. I managed to repress my expression of pain to only a whimper and bit my lip. "But disobey!" I recovered, centralising my head and allowing gravity to naturally rearrange my hair. "You've never been any good!" My other cheek stung from the collision and my forehead throbbed as a bruise started to bubble up under the skin. "This is the last straw. You're the last of your division."

I could feel the hatred brewing in my stomach, the anger sizzling under my skin and the vengeance awakening in my nerve endings.

With nothing to lose, I verbally retaliated.

"What have I done?!" I rasped, still groggy from the chloroform that hadn't left my system. "My parents died in an arson attack, and it was your people who lit the bonfire under them!" I struggled in the seat until I could throw myself forwards as I spewed verbal abuse. "Seven!" My voice crackled in my throat. "I was seven when you ripped me from the only man I could call family! You lashed me!" Almost demonstratively, Aleksander slapped me across my face again, and I chomped down on my tongue accidentally as he did so. Groaning in pain, I summoned as much saliva as I could and spat out a glob of blood and spit on his face. "-beat me until I was your bitch! Until I was too terrified to talk..." And once I admitted to that fear, the quiver began to re-enter my voice and my eyes welled up with tears; the anger transmuting into sadness. "Too agonised to stand..." I rattled at the bonds securing my ankles to the chair. "I lost myself, my right to live a full life, to age, to have thoughts and feelings were forbidden! I was drop kicked into an adult world of murder, of torture and mind games!" And in all of my vitriol, pathos bled through, in the form of furious tears. "You tore my womanhood from me, my womb extracted from me! I slaughtered innocents! I fucked filthy men! And I killed my companions!" finally having dabbed the globule of spit and it's residual dripping line off his face with his silk hanky, he slapped me around again. I remained indignantly poised, glaring him down and taking the beating flawlessly. "When I found love, you washed his mind until it was a disintegrating sponge. Until he didn't remember me. He used me! Abused me!" I writhed in the bindings hatefully. "The first sign of true love..! My fiancé... You killed him! You killed Alexi... You killed him in cold blood!" I began to blub, bleating out a helpless sob. "The first man I truly loved, slaughtered the man I truly love..."