Page 42 of Enemy of the State

“Then you know that it moves so fast that the human eye rarely sees it coming until it’s too late.” He handles the metal weapon with care as he turns it over in his hand.

“Doesn’t everyone know that?” I parry, keeping my voice even. Of all my training, the whips were the worst to endure, and I have the scar to prove that.

He sighs. “No, Lou, not everyone knows that. How doyouknow that?”

I attempt to shrug, but my shoulders are screaming at me, and the attempted movement only further irritates them. “I know things.”

He gives me his back, returning to the table, and replaces the chain whip. The relief I feel is palpable. I loathe to consider the damage that would’ve inflicted on my body. Although, any repose I might’ve experienced is short-lived when he picks up the tightly wound snake whip, that’s aptly named with its tail coming to a point, mirroring that of a viper.

I keep my face a blank mask as he approaches me, but my mind is whirring at top speed as I focus on breathing through my nosesteadily so I don’t make a noise.No, not that one. Put that one back. Turn around and return it to the bin. Don’t touch me with that.

Please.

He can’t read my mind because he unfurls the long whip and drags the single tail up my thigh and to my center. As he dances the twisted nylon over my skin, I start to sweat for reasons wholly unrelated to the heat.

Suddenly, the temperature in the room makes far too much sense, and I’m tempted to smile at this bastard’s creative depravity. When the whips inevitably break the skin, the sweat is going to sting like squeezing lemon juice into a wound. That’s a fresh layer of hell that I’ve already survived and never wanted to experience again.

“Do you know what this one is called?”

I swallow past the dryness in my throat and reply with as much conviviality as I can muster, which isn’t much, “A snake whip.”

When he slithers the whip over its tattooed namesake, I resist the urge to flinch.

To my palpable relief, he retreats to the table once more, and I realize that this is a game with rules I’m not clear on.

Seizing the cow whip, the split tails stick out of the end of its spiral like the forked tongue of a coiled reptile poised to strike, he faces me again. I swallow my apprehension as he circles me, trailing the tails over the small of my naked back.

“And this one?”

“A cow whip.”

A crack resounds half a second before it snaps across my arse. I grunt, absorbing the blow, as I buck in my restraints, my eyes shuttering and my skin stinging. He hits me twice more, and I’m seething by the time he retreats toward the table.

As he reaches for the next whip, I recognize the Russian cousin to the cat o’ nine tails and my eyes latch onto the rawhide embodiment of Medusa as I force my nerves to settle. I don’t miss the rock-hard package he’s carrying between his legs.

The twisted rawhide thongs glide over my inner thighs lightly, making me suck in a breath. It’s the calm before the storm because, in the next second, he cracks the whip and the tails fly, swatting violently against the tender flesh of my spread thighs.

“Recognize this one?”

“Knout,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

The thing about whips is that the small sonic boom that’s created is almost as torturous as the actual whipping itself. You hear the sound just long enough prior to the sting that you can stiffen in anticipation.

I’m a ball of tension when he batters my thighs and moves onto my lower abdomen. His strikes aren’t enough to break the skin, just enough to leave red welts. He circles around behind me, and I close my eyes as he begins to whip the backs of my thighs.

“Talk to me and this stops.”

I can’t do it, though. I can’t shatter under the weight of the pain and memories assaulting me. Besides, I don’t have anything to tell him. The violence wouldn’t end because he wouldn’t believe me, even if every word is true.

I cry out at one particularly painful blow, and he warns, “We’re just getting started, so you may as well get chatty.”

At his warning, I brace myself, and it’s a good thing because when the tails rage against my back, I don’t bother to stop the tears streaming down my cheeks, mixing with the salty perspiration dotting my skin.

He hits me several more times, each time harder, with fewer slots of recovery time between lashings. He’s broken the skin. I know that because I can feel the salty sting as beads of sweat drip into the wound. My body is on fire, and I shriek at his next hit.

I could handle the broken bones, waterboarding, and burning, along with everything else he’s chucked my way. None of it waspleasant, but I managed it. I don’t know if it’s because he’s whippingme so soon after my near breakdown, or if it’s because I trulyloathewhippings, but I’m teetering on the edge of losing control.

As he hits me once more, the scream that leaves me sounds unfamiliar, like I’m attempting to purge myself of the agony.

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