The Gift

Chapter 57

Wisty

IT BEGINS with the waxing. Helga takes the hot substance and sticky fabric strips and starts ripping the eighth-of-an-inch-long precious regrowth right from my skull. Okay, it's my scalp, but it feels like my skull.

Note to self: Never make torture suggestions to captors. They have plenty of their own creative ideas.

As in, testing my response to sudden, random eardrum-breaking air-raid sirens. Or to lights that strobe really slowly so my eyes nearly adjust to the darkness and then-flash-I'm blinded by an eye-exploding random pulse of pure white light. It's truly the stuff that migraine headaches are made of.

"If this were an interrogation," I tell them, "I'd have given you your answers long ago. So what are the questions? I repeat, what do you want from me?"

"Give us your Gift," Gigi demands. "That would be sufficient."

"No way!" I wouldn't do that even if I knew how.

While Gigi executes the experimentation, Hans and Helga hold me in place as needed. Their three white-suited compatriots are now sitting in a row of chairs in front of me with their notebooks, watching as if I'm the season finale of their favorite TV show. The only thing missing is the popcorn.

Next they're delivering hot steam into my face and nostrils like a facial from hell. Suffocation by dragon breath. Give me waterboarding any day.

Then they demonstrate an acute pinching technique that takes six hands-Helga's, Hans's, and Gigi's-and if that sounds like child's play, think again. It's like being attacked by fire ants with road rage.

"Give us your Gift!"

"WhmmaMMMMMphhhhhh!"

I forgot to mention-they seem to need to try everything twice: once with duct tape on my mouth/eyes/hands, and once without. This time, it is with duct tape.

Then there is the force-feeding of unmentionables (I can't even write it without serious gagging). Let's just say I would rather be biting off live bat heads.

What ends up being the worst part, you ask?

If you have an aversion to dismemberment, don't read any further. (Okay, that pretty much includes everyone.) While my limbs remain intact, someone else's apparently haven't.

They bring Drummer Boy's hands. On a platter.

I know from his insignia ring. They force me to hold those hands, and, by God, they are real.

I used to think that the New Order had banned all art, but I now realize I was wrong: The fine art of human torture is alive and well here.