“… finally coming to…” a deep voice whispered in a distant dark corner of the room. So dark you could barely breathe, he tried to move his eyelids in an attempt to see where he had managed to get himself this time, all in vain. He was blindfolded. But it was dark in that room… if it was a room at all he thought. In all honesty he had no idea…
He slowly started to remember fragments of more lit moments before this one as his clarity of mind was coming back to him painfully slow. He thought this was no good time for a sluggish mind stream. He remembered his laptop opened on the solid wooden desk in his study. He remembered the bluish electric shadow of a light it cast on the walls… had he been working? Yes. He remembered the deep fragrance of the cherry cigar and the liquid fire of his whisky. Ah, what he wouldn’t give to have a taste of each of those, feel how the mixture filled him up, making him feel the deep quiet it usually provided him when his thoughts were troubled. Troubled, yes. He could now not recall why he had been troubled. Nor did it matter. Not for his current state of being.
Shifting his limbs on the cold floor he could feel … restrained. His hands had been tied behind his back, his legs tied together at the ankles. How much it hurt him, how it stopped the circulation in his extremities. He could also feel some dull pain in odd places all over his body… bruises no doubt. He really had not been handled with care at all.
“Don’t worry too much yet, mister Serrat” the deep voice said with a hint of sarcasm. “You will not be leaving here for a while…”
Moving his head backwards, the young man opened his mouth and drew in a breath heavily… finally uttering “Wh – ere am… I?” his ribcage struggling to mold to the needs of this young man into words that required answers.
A flash of remembrance sent another bolt of pain through his entire body… Two men wearing back… much taller than himself… the prickling pain of a needle that pierced his skin… falling to the ground and losing his sight slowly as the fog of the drug settled in over him.
“Please… I have done …nothing..to you.” he struggled desperately to whisper in the hope that he would be heard. Perhaps even taken pity on. No.
“-You-? Done –nothing-? Mister Serrat, you really have your mind clouded. Even if I admit to you telling the truth now, your fate is in the hands of my superior.” And saying that he frowned and stood up. The young man could hear the sound of his footsteps approaching… his breath turned uneven as his every fiber was invaded at a maddening speed with fear. Primal fear. The footsteps stopped at a small distance from his head. He pressed his lips together as he felt with his being that more pain was about to bite into his very soul.
The man with the deep voice lowered his body next to him and curled his fingers in his black hair. Tightening his grip, the man yanked his head from the floor and whispered in an even deeper voice… “You will pay, you know. And soon. Have patience, …your highness.” You could hear the malefic grin on his face that was pulsating in his whispers even more with every drop of irony. It flowed like poison on the skin of this cheeks and forehead and smeared the young man making him feel dirty with desperation.
He had been a protected as a child. Now, alone in this world, he was called the “prince of dusk”. His eyes always told the story of dusk. Dying light, making room for darkness in his soul…and even more definetly, in his current situation…
…his head was let to drop down on the cold floor once more… he moaned in pain. Waiting.
