Wordsmithy #2 (INVITE ONLY) - Page 3

She needed to get away. From these people who held her here. Only two men had come to her till now. The one who terrified her with his stone-like face that never revealed anything. And the other who terrified her with his smiles as he gave her injections and tested her as if he was her doctor.

For the first week after she gained consciousness in that whitewashed room, she had not eaten beyond scraps. The food she had ferreted out, tearing the bread into strips before tossing the pieces out the window. She had endured enough to know to suspect what they put before you. The soup had been easier to dispose of.

Yet as she felt her energy sap away daily, escape seemed ever more remote a possibility. And she would not let them hurt her. Not again. Since then she had tried to eat a little, knowing there might be drugs mixed in it. That she was their guinea pig. Their little puppet. 

Last time, they had kept her in the darkness. Her eyes had been covered with a tight cloth that had cut into her cheeks. The room where they'd kept her was damp and tiny enough where she could feel the edges and corners with her feet despite being tied up. The first thing that darkness had taken from her were her screams. The musty bedroll they'd placed her face down had drowned her cries for help. They'd come for her exactly twice. The first time, she had screamed. They had hurt her in ways she had not thought possible, their laughter taunting her at every sporadic moment of consciousness that had broken through that haze of pain. When they had tossed her back in that cell that served as her prison, she had lain, broken and without knowledge of how much time had passed till they came back. 

Rough hands would feed her water and leave a couple of bread rolls where her tied hands would reach them. The first time she ate the bread, she had passed out. When she woke up, she knew they had drugged her. The fear that had become a part of her ever since they had caught her suddenly seemed beyond her control. The darkness had taken shape, filling her head with terrifying thoughts until she had become a withered mess lying in a pool of urine.

Since then she would eat only bits of the bread. Tear off pieces and then roll them between her thumb and forefinger to make it into a pellet. And then like a medicine, she would eat that poison. 

It had been while running her toe along the edges where the wall met the floor, that she had found her escape. A latch. Hope had battered through the haze of weakness and fear and she had struggled to turn around.

The hand of some power beyond herself had led her out of that hell. She had forgotten her weakness as she ran her hand around the wall. It had been smooth and had she not felt it with her fingers, she would have never known it existed. It had been a trapdoor which her assailants must have been unaware of. Just big enough for her to slip through. Had they known of it, her bindings would have been perhaps made of iron rather than hemp. 

She'd fallen down on damp soil. Straining at the ropes until something gave way, she had managed to free herself and tear off the cloth that had covered her eyes. It had been a basement like room which wore the appearance of abandonment. Spiderwebs and dust motes filled it. And yet there was light. Straining through a pale glass window. That light had led her out of that house and then she had run. Not knowing whether she was running away from danger or heading straight to it.

She had walked till her legs were sore, her feet full of grime and gore and she could no longer put one feet before the other. And just when she thought she had escaped and was finally free, a sudden thwack to the head had left her reeling.

"Ow!" Sanya groaned as she woke up with a jerk, head clasped in her hands.

"Sanya?"

She looked up, dazed and then glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The stone-faced guy stood at the door with a platter of food in his hands. Her breathing relaxed as she realised it had been a nightmare – she had dozed off for a few minutes. The memory of that night often haunted her like this. The recurrence was so frequent, often leaving her thoughts muddled to the extent that she sometimes confused this man and the doctor here with her captors from that incident. As she looked back up, he still stood there, questions lingering in his eyes. She looked away and he walked in, placing the meal tray on the nightstand.

"Eat," he said, that single word was followed by a long silence before he added, "I'll send Rahib to check on you."

And then, in two long strides, he was gone.

He hadn't changed at all, Sanya realised. He was the same stoic man from five years ago – the same assessing gaze with the occasional steely glint in it, the same quiet presence, never a sign of emotion on his face, a man of few words, Zaheer hadn't changed at all.

Zaheer stepped into his workshop. Even as the night wind howled around the house, he had escaped to the well-equipped shed at the bottom of the garden that served as his workshop. There were moments when it felt as if she could almost remember him. As if she knew who he was, who he had been. And then there was the ever-present fear in her eyes that stabbed at his heart. Every time she shrank away from him, he wanted to run away away from her. To not have to face the silent accusation he read in her gaze. 

Picking up the planer and the block of wood he had marked out according to the design, Zaheer al-Bashir began to grind away. As sawdust flew around him, he worked on bringing to shape the design he had made.