on keeping calm. Counting to ten, I slowly opened my eyes. I was met with a dark, black wall.
Taking another breath, I counted a second set of ten and cautiously rolled onto my other side. I studied my surroundings: black walls, black ceilings. No amount of counting could calm me as I realized what type of room I was in.
My lips parted to release a shocked gasp as my wide eyes drank in the contraptions in the room. I could barely understand what they were, but I saw chains hanging from the walls, the ropes suspended from wooden blocks in the ceiling, and there was a metal bed, a crucifix, and masses and masses of other machines littering the black tiled floor. They looked like medieval torture devices, and bile rose in my throat as I lay on the floor of what appeared to be a large metal cage. Thick bars imprisoned me on all sides.
I closed my eyes again and wrapped my coat around my freezing body. The temperature in this torture chamber was colder than outside. If I couldn’t have seen the room under the red dimmed lights, I’d assume I was in a freezer of some description.
I shuffled my body back into the farthest corner when footsteps began approaching from what looked to be a narrow hallway to my left. My body shook with a mixture of cold and fear, and my eyes never left that direction.
I held my breath as the footsteps closed in. Then he appeared. I assumed it was the same man who captured me. My attention remained on the floor, on his bare feet. I did not dare look up. His feet were rough, but I could see by the shape of his legs underneath his black sweatpants that he was huge. The sweatpants were loose, but I could see the definition of his thighs; they were thick and muscled.
The room was deathly silent, my warm breath misting before me due to the low temperature in the room. I could hear his breathing as he stood beside the cage. Heavy breathing, slow, a low rasp in its sound. I kept my head down, waiting for what he would do next. But he didn’t move.
Minutes and minutes passed in strained silence. I kept huddled in my corner, and he stayed exactly where he was, next to my cage. His feet were pointing in, and even without lifting my head I knew that he was staring at me. I could feel the weight of his intense glare bearing down.
The longer we stayed still, the more the dank coldness seeped into my bones. My lips became numb and my teeth began to chatter, the clattering of their touch sounding deafening in this dimly lit hell.
Then he moved.
It was simply a flicker of a movement, but it was enough to make me stiffen in anticipation of what he would do next. Was he just going to kill me? Was he going to take me into the mouth of the chamber and torture me? My head ached as my mind raced with the fear of what was about to transpire.
The sound of metal clanging against metal forced me to look up. I instantly regretted what I had done. It was what he wanted. He’d wanted me to break.
A calloused hand was holding a black metal rod, a metal rod that was pressed against a metal bar of the cage. I froze as my eyes stayed on that metal rod as it focused on that hand. It was large and scarred, and my gaze traveled up the muscled bare arm holding the rod like it was an extension of his arm. His skin was fair in tone, the complete opposite of mine, but it was covered in a mass of dark tattoos. They were muddled writings etched in black ink. They appeared to be a swirling, disorganized list of names brandished on his skin.
I swallowed, my mouth becoming incredibly dry. I tried to make out the names, and when I did my stomach dropped again. Most were Eastern European: Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian. But what scared me most was the appearance of the Georgian.
Georgian.
My pulse pounded in my neck so fast I was sure it was protruding out of my skin. Georgian, I thought again. My mind raced with what these names meant. Were they people he had killed? Were they people he knew? Were they the people he worked for?
The rod suddenly moved. My eyes couldn’t help but follow