“You can do this,” I told myself. I gazed into the churning black water, shot through with silver ripples of reflected moon rays, and I stifled a rising tide of revulsion. The ocean seemed to gaze back at me with dark intent.

“You can do this.”

But I never got the opportunity to find out if I really could, for at that moment, something was pulled roughly over my head.

A burlap sack, reeking of old potatoes, jerked tight against my face. I tried to scream, but was stifled by something wet and sour with chemicals pressed over my mouth and nose. As I began to descend into chemically-induced delirium, I felt hands all over me, lifting me, carrying me, dropping me crudely into the seat of some vehicle. Several male voices spoke rapidly in a language which was decidedly not English. Just before consciousness too abandoned me, with my last desperate ounce of discernment, I recognized one of the voices.

The hole where my heart used to be, which moments ago I’d thought incapable of growing any wider, gouged out new depths.

It was Vik.

And then, blackness.

~*~*~*~

I slowly became aware of a foggy form of consciousness. My head was pounding, my whole body ached, and though I was standing upright, I couldn’t move. The bag over my head stank of dirt, potatoes, my own stale breath and whatever had been used to knock me out. The sounds of purposeful activity surrounded me: rapid footsteps, a jumble of voices, brief snatches of indecipherable words. Once or twice I heard the dull scraping of a heavy object pushed across rough floor. Somewhere, a stereo was blaring uptempo flamenco music, as though setting the pace of the unknowable labors performed around me.

As the clouds lifted from my mind, I recognized the cold, heavy weight of chains all over me. I felt firmly affixed to some kind of vertical metal apparatus, my hands locked behind my back and a hunk of metal pressed directly between my shoulder blades, under my upper arms. The position was very unnatural, and very painful.

A brief sweet memory fluttered over me: lying in a gently rocking boat, my eyes softly covered and my hands bound with luxuriant silk. The recollection brought to mind a pair of impossibly green eyes, but they were quickly replaced by a pair of receding red taillights. A low moan escaped my lips.

All the sounds of activity abruptly ceased. I felt many pairs of hostile eyes upon me. The stereo clicked off, and I heard the sharp, deliberate tap tap tap of approaching stilettos. And then, she spoke.

“You’re awake.” It was Ms. Epistola, her voice moist as red velvet cake. The sound of her made me shiver with revulsion.