Page 58 of Decimation

Pain is a strange thing. It’s not just physical. It’s psychological, emotional, spiritual. The body can endure far more than the mind believes possible. The trick is to find the threshold where the mind begins to crack.

“You know,” I say, making another cut parallel to the first, “I’ve always found it fascinating how much the human body can withstand. The skin is the largest organ, did you know that? It contains millions of nerve endings, all designed to send signals to the brain. Pain signals. Pleasure signals. The line between them is thinner than most people realize.”

I make a third cut, this one deeper. She cries out this time, a sharp sound that echoes off the stone walls.

“Tell me her name.”

“No.”

I work in silence after that.

The flensing knife does exactly what it was designed to do. I separate a strip of skin from her forearm, peeling it back with careful, deliberate movements. The flesh beneath is pink and glistening, dotted with small points of blood where the capillaries have ruptured.

She’s screaming now, her voice raw and desperate, but I don’t stop. I don’t stop until the strip of skin is completely free, hanging from my fingers like a ribbon.

“There,” I say, holding it up for her to see. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

She’s crying. Tears stream down her face, cutting tracks through the grime on her cheeks. Her breaths come in ragged gasps, and her whole body trembles with shock.

But she still doesn’t talk.

I set the skin aside on the table and select my next tool; a small hammer, the kind used for fine metalwork. I weigh it in my hand, feeling the balance of it.

“I’m going to break your fingers now,” I tell her. “One at a time. Starting with the left hand.”

“Please…”

“Tell me her name.”

“I can’t…”

The first finger breaks with a sound like a dry twig snapping. She screams, her body convulsing against the chains, and I wait for the scream to die down before I move to the next one.

“I can do this all night,” I say. “I have nowhere else to be. No one is coming to save you. No one even knows you’re here except for the men who brought you, and they answer to me. This only ends when you give me what I want.”

“Please,” she sobs. “Please, I’m begging you…”

“Then talk.”

The second finger breaks. The third.

“Leeeeandra”

The name bursts out of her, torn from her throat like a confession, like a prayer forced from the lips of a heretic. “Her name is Leandra.”

I stop.

The hammer hovers in the air, suspended above her fourth finger. The word echoes through the stone chamber, reverberating off the walls, sinking into my skin.

Leandra.

I lower the hammer. I set it down on the table with deliberate care, my movements slow, almost reverent.

“Leandra,” I repeat.

The sound of it in my mouth is exquisite. Three syllables, soft and strong at once. It tastes like honey and steel, like something I have been searching for my entire life without knowing it.

“Leandra,” I say again, and this time it is a whisper, a breath, an invocation.