Page 111 of The Darkness is Calling

I take off my jacket with deliberate care, placing it neatly over the third chair.

“Can I play too?”

My brother is like small child, but with the intent of a murderer.

“Of course. But not now.”

“Anyway, right now I want to eat.”

“If you want to touch them, you don’t eat chocolate,” I tell him while rolling up the sleeves of my black shirt, over which I keep the dark vest.

“That’s not fair!” He complains, deeply displeased.

I lift one shoulder carelessly, which makes him sulk, but he also pull a chocolate bar from the breast pocket of his jacket and unwrap it in front of me.

And in front of the two idiots tied to chairs, who are probably half faint from hunger.

Because that is the whole plan: to torture them by attacking their most vital needs.

“Fortunately for me, I’m just as happy watching as I am participating,” he smirks, with a small implication, biting into the caramel-and-chocolate bar.

“Your choice,” I tell him and take the pliers he had left in his lap, turning back toward my toys.

Watching them sit there, exposed like two offerings brought before a king, the voices whisper to me.

They want revenge, because these two, together with their already dead friends, kept me from reaching dusha moya. And even if they start talking, I will continue mutilating them until my rage calms and the voices go quiet.

“We’ll start with simple questions.”

“Favorite color,” Sasha adds loudly and enthusiastically from behind me.

“Good question. Sasha, you get a point.”

“Yes!” he exclaims, and I don’t need to look at him to know he is flaunting his little victory in front of the others.

“One of the most painful methods of torture is tearing out fingernails,” I address the men in front of me. “It produces a pain that remains just as agonizing for hours. Answer the questions, and you get a glass of water or a shoot of vodka, which may numb your senses during our little game.”

I realize they are going to break the moment they look at each other. Whether they know one another or not, that is their problem. What is certain is that, right now, they betray themselves by the fact that neither of them knows exactly what to do and is waiting for the other’s confirmation. So, I need to make at least one of them break, and then the other will start chirping too.

“Honestly, boys, do you really want to die in agony for someone who sent you to be sacrificed on my territory, fully aware you would either be killed or, worse, captured?”

I click my tongue and shake my head with false disappointment.

“So, if you tell me your favorite color, you get the reward.”

Dima pours a dose of alcohol into a small glass, then sets it on the metal table and remains motionless there.

It doesn’t take long before one of them mutters something.

“I didn’t catch that,” I say calmly.

“Blue,” he repeats, clearer this time.

“What kind of blue? Like the sky, or like the sea in Greece?”

More precisely, like my lover’s eyes, but I do not elaborate.

“Like the sea in Greece,” he says, with an unmistakable British accent.