Category: Sudden Fiction in English

Ramirez could barely see through the blood in his eyes. He smelled his own stink, tasted his own blood, everything he ate and drank had gushed out, and when a switch fell down voltage routed his whole being, sending a thousand tiny painful simultaneous stabs to his core, his feet kicking puddles of his own piss and shit; he would scream if he could, but they hadn't sewn back his tongue, as they had promised, so when he tried to curse them all he did so from his barely moving lips on his bluish-red swollen face that hung on a limp neck. All he could do was mumble.

A hand grabbed the hair on the back of Ramirez's head, pulled it up and settled it on the chair's backrest, leaving his jaw to fall open and saliva to ooze out. "Just tell us what we want to know," said the gentle but persuasive voice.

"Ab jub balaaa," Ramirez tried to say.

"We know, we know. You just balance the books, sign the checks," the voice said in a sing-song mockery, "and keep the money in the bank for your distinguished clients. On and on, you've been repeating that since we hauled you in six hours ago." Mirano's hand let the head go and it fell down and sagged to the right. Had it not been for the restraints, Ramirez would have fallen over.

He won't break, this man, Mirano thought, at least not in the time we've been allowed to tease out the clues from him. Mirano whipped back to his Captain, who nodded. The Captain wants to talk. The door swung close behind them.

A match struck and inflamed both cigarettes. Mirano and his Captain inhaled deeply and then winced. The abandoned factory still smelled of rusted metal. The thick air of the evening was stale, just like the hole they're in.

"They have his family, Sir, that's why he is this--"

"We got something."

Mirano threw his lighted cigar and killed the tiny embers with his heel.

"We can't break the encrypted files in his laptop, but there's a pattern we saw, and it might be a clue..."

The door swung open and a raging Mirano grabbed Ramirez by the head. He screamed in the half-dead man's ears, over and over, the same question, till the Captain managed to tear his grip from Ramirez's face.

Mirano sighed and inhaled the smell of puke and blood and piss and fear in the room. He paced frantically as his Captain spoke to the tortured soul: "Just tell us what we want to know." And the Captain's eyes slid from the pulp on the chair to the pacing man who said, almost under his breath, a question that will get them closer to the heart of things.

"What is the missing pulse?"