Fox Wilde - Variant Exchange - A Punk Rock Spy Fiction Novel

The man grabbed Lena’s arm roughly, squeezing the artery right below her armpit. Weakness seized her instantly as pain flared. He half-led, half-dragged her over to where the bright white wall was and stood her next to the chair, before promptly kicking it over.

“This is the wall for liars, Lena,” the man menaced at her, saying her name in a hate-filled tone. “Stare at the lying wall, Lena. Stare at it… do not close your eyes, Lena! Do not even blink, Lena! If you blink, there will be consequences, Lena!”

She thought it was a simple, silly thing he had asked her to do—for the first thirty seconds, that is. But as the seconds ticked on, the white wall began to hurt her eyes. It was so bright—so bright, in fact, that her eyes began to water. She blinked on instinct, both to knock a few of the excess tears lose and to apply the teardrops to where they actually needed to be on the rest of her precious eyeballs.

‘ Whack!’

A bright flash of pain spread across the back of Lena’s thighs, right below her buttocks. It was as if someone had cut her with a red-hot knife, piercing through clothing and skin alike. She instantly recoiled, grabbing her poor legs and prancing stupidly in place. Seconds later the welt became a glow, spreading into a five-alarm fire across her lower extremities.

“ Stare at the wall!” the man screamed at her. “Do not look away! Do not blink! Do not blink!”

Lena’s eyes began to water once again, but for a completely different reason this time. A headache was beginning to spread from the sides of her temples down to her lower jaw. She squeezed her jaw so tightly that she wondered if she would crush a tooth. As she stared at the bright wall, seconds became minutes. Her eyes blurred and burned, as her tears were replaced by the unbearable dryness of her deprived sockets. “ Oh god … how could it possibly get worse than this?!” she screamed inside her aching skull.

A few minutes of silence and a few minutes of staring finally saw the pain in her legs subside to a dull echo. Then, after a few more minutes, Lena heard the familiar sound of a match striking rough paper, accompanied by the faint yet comforting sound of paper burning away. “My, that’s wonderful…” the man spoke behind her as a familiar smell crept into her nose. This symphony of smell married sweetly with a rush of smoke that made her eyes burn all the worse.

“You know, Lena, nothing really satisfies like a cigarette does.” he said, his tone dripping with self-indulgence. “In stressful times like these, when I am trapped inside the walls of this building, with so much work ahead of me, it helps to take a few puffs. It really helps to take the edge off.”

Almost instantly, Lena’s skin began to itch, as the blood inside her veins began to throb a desperate need for the precious nicotine—overwhelming her senses. She hadn’t even thought about cigarettes once since entering this terrible place—but now that she had been reminded of the smell, a cigarette was the only thing she wanted in the whole world. The minutes ticked on, her eyes continued to burn, and the itch in her blood became a tickle. Then the tickle became rough sandpaper scraping against every part of her. God… she felt thirsty for a cigarette. She literally felt thirsty … she hadn’t had a smoke in so long; but now all she could think about was culling the pins and needles in her veins and satisfying this desperate need that was begging for relief.

“Would you like a cigarette?” the man spoke sweetly, after lighting a second one.

This was a trick. She didn’t know much about this terrible man standing behind her, but she knew that much. She knew this was a trick—it had to be. And yet, she wanted one so bad… it had to be worth the risk. After all, he was asking which meant he was offering. So, technically answering for one was the correct course of action. Yes, yes… of course this was the correct thing to do—trying to satiate those awful pins and needles was only a secondary concern. She congratulated herself on making the right choice and decided to agree. “Oh god, I can almost taste it.” she winced.

“Y-yes… yes, Sir.”

“Mind your manners, Lena,” the man spoke, in an almost fatherly tone. “If you want something, you need to ask politely for it.”

“Sir…” Lena began weakly, “May I please have a cigarette, Sir?”

“Of course, Lena! I would love to share a cigarette with you!”

With this, he promptly lit a cigarette, and placed the business end in her mouth. Almost instantly, the rush of sweet forgiveness and mercy from the great gods above overwhelmed her. Her head began to spin, and her heart began to race as she slowly drew on the sweetest, most deliciously satisfying drag of her life. “God, this is sooo good … ” she thought to herself, completely ignoring the smoke wafting into her eyes. It hurt—terribly even—but god, it was worth every second.

“Do me a favor, Lena. Raise your arms.” the man spoke in the same fatherly tone. She did, but he quickly corrected her, “No, no… raise them to your sides, right about shoulder-height. Yes… that’s it. Really get a good stretch!”

After Lena stretched her arms out, the man reached around her and yanked the cigarette out of her mouth, promptly replacing it in the fingers of one of her outstretched arms.

“What was I thinking, Lena?” the man said in a tone of mock embarrassment. “You are a child! You are too young for cigarettes! But lucky for me, you are not too young to hold my cigarettes for me.” With this, the man yanked the cigarette out of her fingers, took a long, nearly pornographic drag on it, and then placed it back in her fingers. “Keep your arms up, young Lena! If you lower them, even an inch, I shall have to be cross with you!”

Lena realized then how much worse it could be than it was before. Her eyes burned, her blood was beginning to itch again, and she was angry with herself for trusting the cruel trick he had just played on her. She raged inside at her own stupidity and the sheer insolence of this man making her hold his cigarette—it was almost unbearable.

An hour later she was still staring at the wall, holding her arms out for his cigarettes. The burning in her eyes was altogether dwarfed by the achy, throbby pain in her shoulders and back as she struggled to keep her arms raised. She had made the mistake of letting them lower just a tiny bit, and this infraction was once again met with the scream of slicing pain across the back of her legs.

She was being assaulted on all five senses, along with a few she didn’t know that she had. Her eyes were blinded by the smoke and the wall, and the resulting headache was intolerable. The rest of her body hurt equally from the terrible sting in her legs, to the mounting pressure on her shoulders, and the phantom pain from not knowing what her captor had in store for her as he stood so close behind her. Her nose smelled the smoke, and the longing for just one more drag only intensified. She was consumed with pain, fear and longing; dying from outside in to inside out. “This is hell… I am in hell … this is what it is to burn alive…”

She tried to distract herself with thoughts of something else—anything else—but her brain screamed so many messages of imminent danger she couldn’t fathom even the smallest concern. She thought she might begin hyperventilating soon if she couldn’t figure a way out of here, but she knew she was stuck—she was so very stuck—right here, whether she liked it or not. She was the property of the State—a mere plaything.

“Lena…” the man spoke after what seemed like an hour of silence, with an utterly filthy tone in his voice, “What are you?”