Jessie woke up to see the man taking photos of her. She didn’t even try to hide herself from him, she was too tired, too sore to move. Her ankles were so painful, the shackles had rubbed most of her skin away, and she could actually see her ankle bones poking through now. It was so disgusting to look at. The metal rings that held her in place were covered with dried blood and hardened lumps of her skin, a constant reminder of her predicament.

The man was laughing to himself, as if he was party to some private joke. Jessie had lost most of her fight – it was pointless trying to convince him of anything. He had already told her the worst – that he was going to let her die. She believed him. He was too fucking unbalanced to lie to her. He was on a mission, that much was evident; he lived on another planet, on another wavelength.

Now she was starving and in such agony she might welcome death at some point in the near future; anything had to be better than living like this. He had even taken the bucket from her, so she couldn’t even open her bowels or have a pee with ease. She had been reduced to using the concrete floor. But what else could she do? She was limited by the shackles and, as her dad used to say, even a dog doesn’t shit in its own basket. The less food her body got, the more she seemed to need to evacuate her bowels. It was like water, just diarrhoea, but it was very painful for her. And humiliating.

She wasn’t sure how long it would be before it would be too difficult for her to move. Then she would have no choice but to lay in her own filth.

She wanted to cry again, but she didn’t think she had any tears left. She opened the bottle of water – he still made sure she had that at least – and she drank it straight down, welcoming the oblivion of the drugged liquid. The sores on her ankles were infected, and she could smell her own rotting flesh. It was so disgusting, it even overshadowed her body odour, though the smell of faeces was overpowering.

The man himself didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss; he didn’t wrinkle his nose, or register the stench surrounding her. Jessie decided that he just wasn’t interested enough to care. Like he kept telling her, this wasn’t about her. It was as if he didn’t even see her most of the time.

The man stepped closer to her, smiling inanely.

‘Do you remember that quiz show that was on years ago? When people had to guess the price of things? It was a really good show.’

Jessie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t remember it. Probably before my time.’