“You bastard!” Amber howled. She was sobbing. She was actually sobbing. “You bastard, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll rip your—”

The third finger was smashed and Amber lost her words to the screams that were being ripped from her throat. The fourth followed. Then the fifth. Finally, the corpses released their hold on her. She tried to retract her arm, tried to clutch it close to her, but to do so it’d have had to pass through the tangle of corpses. She held it in mid-air while she cried and struggled to breathe.

Then the corpses moved again. They had her left hand in their grip.

“No!” she screamed, trying to keep it underneath her, jammed between her chest and the cheap upholstery. But now they were turning her, turning her on to her back, and as her left arm was being pulled out of the tangle her right arm was being pulled in, and her broken fingers jolted and sent fresh waves of pain straight into her thoughts, blinding them, freezing them, slicing through them and leaving them in tatters. When the wave crested and her thoughts became her own once more, her face was pressed tight into someone’s torso, and she could feel the surface of the table beneath her left palm and Mauk’s grip on her thumb, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

The hammer found its target and she gasped.

It found its next target. And the next one. And now she was screaming once more, but it didn’t change anything, because she only had two fingers that weren’t broken and Mauk quickly reduced that to one. Amber fought the urge to puke. If she puked, she’d choke on her own vomit.

“And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, all the way home,” said Mauk, and smashed her little finger.

While she screamed, the corpses climbed off her. One by one, the weight lessened, and she could turn her head now, and breathe in lungfuls of air to help her cry. Someone – Mauk, probably – had her hands in his. His skin was rough. Calloused. She barely felt the handcuffs slide around her wrists. The last corpse climbed off her and she sat up.

“There,” Mauk said. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

She ran her forearm over her eyes – that movement alone was enough to bring fresh tears – then blinked at him as he sat there, smiling.

“I didn’t wanna have to do that,” he said. “But I’m a cautious fellow. I see that you have sharp teeth, too. Let’s do each other a favour, okay? You try not to bite me, and I won’t smash each and every one of those pearly whites. I’d hate to have to ruin your beautiful smile. It is beautiful, ain’t it? I bet it is. Smile for me. Go on. Just a little smile.”