Page 57 of Decimation

“You don’t even know her name,” she says, and there is something like wonder in her voice, something like horror. “You have her, and you don’t even know her name.”

“Then tell me.”

“No.”

She says it simply. Quietly. As if it’s the easiest word in the world, as if she has a right to deny me.

“No,” she repeats. “I won’t help you. I won’t give you anything you can use against my daughter. I’ve spent years protecting her from men like you. I’m not going to stop now.”

I expected this. I would have been disappointed if she’d broken immediately. There’s no satisfaction in breaking something that’s already shattered.

I stand up from the chair and walk to the small table I had placed against the wall before I came down. On it, arranged with the precision of a surgeon’s instruments, are father’s tools. Mine now.

I didn’t bring many. I don’t need many.

The first one I pick up is simple; a thin blade, curved slightly at the tip. I hold it up to the torchlight, letting her see it.

“Do you know what this is used for?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer.

“It’s called a flensing knife. Traditionally used by whalers to strip blubber from the carcass, but it has other applications.” I turn it over in my hand, watching the light play across the metal. “The curve allows for precision. You can separate skin from muscle with almost surgical accuracy. If you’re careful. If you’re patient.”

I am both.

I walk back to her, the knife held loosely at my side. She’s watching me now, her eyes tracking my movements with the desperate attention of prey.

“I’m going to ask you again,” I say. “Tell me her name.”

“Go to hell.”

I smile. It’s not a kind smile. It’s not meant to be.

“I’ve already been there,” I tell her. “I spent years in a room just like this one, chained to a wall just like that one, while my brother’s wife did things to me that would make you vomit if I described them. I’ve been drugged, violated, and broken in ways you cannot possibly imagine. And I survived. I crawled out of that hell, and I made myself into something that cannot be hurt anymore.”

I reach out and take a handful of her hair, pulling her head back until her throat is exposed.

“So when I tell you that I will do whatever is necessary to get what I want, I need you to understand that I mean it. I need you to understand that there is no line I will not cross, no depth I will not sink to, no horror I will not inflict. Because I have already endured worse than anything I could do to you.”

I release her hair and step back.

“Now. Tell me her name.”

She spits at me.

The saliva lands on my cheek, warm and wet. I wipe it away with the back of my hand, and for a moment, just a moment, I feel something that might be anger.

But anger is useless. Anger is a weakness, a loss of control. I learned that in the metaphysical desert of this place, in the days and nights I spent alone with nothing but my rage for company. I learned to set it aside, to transform it into something colder and more useful.

I learned to become a weapon.

“All right,” I say. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

The first cut is always the most important.

It sets the tone, it establishes the parameters of what is to come. It tells the subject, in no uncertain terms, that you are absolutely fucking serious.

I make the first cut along her forearm, a thin, precise line that opens her skin like the seam of a garment. Blood wells up immediately, dark and rich in the torchlight. She gasps, more from surprise than pain, and I watch her face as the sensation registers.