Free Then She Was Gone by Luca Veste

do.
    He opened another drawer and removed what he needed. He moved back to the bed and smiled as she winced at him lifting her skirt up.
    She wasn’t expecting the first whip of the cane across her. She began to struggle, but couldn’t move more than an inch or two. He brought the cane down again, more forcefully this
time. He closed his eyes as the sound of her screaming into the gag filled the silence.
    He kept going, one hand bringing the cane down over and over, the other hand giving himself pleasure.
    She passed out at some point, her blood now spilled out on the bed and beyond. He took a plastic bag and straddled her back. Jumped up and down a little to bring her back to consciousness.
    When he was done, she was nothing to him. For ninety minutes, she had consumed him, but now, she was just a problem to deal with. He wasn’t sure if she’d recognised him, but he felt
certain that she wasn’t about to talk. He let her off the bed, barely watching as she limped gingerly away from the bedroom.
    ‘Remove the clothes and get dressed. Five hundred. And you don’t talk to anyone or I’ll find you.’
    She sniffed, tears still cascading down her dirty face. She reached with shaking hands for the money he was holding towards her.
    ‘I mean it,’ he said, not letting go of the money. ‘I’ll come looking for you and no one will hear from you again, got it?’
    She nodded, her whole body trembling now. He released the money and watched her leave, a thin smile on his face. He heard the door close and began chuckling softly to himself. He grabbed the
clothes off the floor where she’d left them, placing them in a plastic bag and taking them back to the bedroom. Stopped for a second to take in the bloodstains and results of his work.
    ‘Well done, Sam,’ he said softly to himself. ‘That was a great performance.’
    He heard a knock at the door and frowned. ‘What the fuck does she want now,’ he said, moving towards the door and checking the peephole, but seeing no one there. He opened the door
slowly, then flew backwards as the door was slammed into him. He landed on the floor, instant pain in the bottom of his back. A figure stood over him, a black balaclava covering their head.
    ‘What the fuc–’
    A bolt of electricity entered his body before he could finish his sentence.
    ‘You’re going to follow me out of here. You’ll do as you’re told, or I’ll keep firing this thing at you until you can’t breathe any more. What do you
think?’
    Sam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He was still trying to stop shaking as he lay on the floor. The figure above him wiggled the taser in their hand, soft laughter coming from the
darkness.
    *    *    *
    There was something he hadn’t known about being on the receiving end of brutality.
    You start to wish for an end. Of any kind. Death was beginning to look like a preferable option than what was being done to him. Endless pain, in waves of torture and spilled blood. Mental and
physical. Both as bad as the other.
    He was beginning to rethink his position on the use of these methods against enemies of war. Something he wouldn’t have ever thought possible before then.
    He just wanted it to end.
    Sam believed in God. Worshipped Him in his own particular way. Enough to appeal to a certain section of society but not too much to put off younger people who put less stock in those ideas. He
was a modern Christian. Belief without responsibility.
    Now, he wondered if there was anything out there when this was ended. Wasn’t too sure he cared enough at that moment. He welcomed the idea of darkness. Of emptiness. Of anything but the
bright light shining in his eyes.
    ‘Please . . . please, no more.’
    The words escaped his lips, cracked and swollen, rasping breaths following them. The cackle of laughter surrounded him, high-pitched and echoing.
    ‘When I say it’s done, it’s done.’
    Always the same answer.
    ‘I can’t take anything else,’ he said, his