I lie against the cold ceramic, shivering, desperately trying to cover myself.
He storms out and comes back moments later with a bucket. He pours it on me and I shut my eyes, waiting for the feel of water, the feel of liquid to surround me, but thatâs not what comes out.
I scream as I realize what it is.
Sand.
Dry, barren, baked sand.
He empties the bucket onto me as I try to get away, and he hits me so hard that I see darkness.
When I come round, most of my body is submerged, lost beneath the acrid dunes that cover me. He pours another bucket on and then another. I kick out. I try to get free again, and he hits me once more.
Not as hard, but enough to stop my fighting.
When the sand is up to my neck, he stops and just watches me. Iâm gasping. I canât move now even if I wanted to.
I can feel the dryness sucking every bit of moisture out of me. Sucking away every trace of the sea, of the ocean, of what makes me me.
My body is shaking so badly, and all I can see are the tiny grains shaking, reverberating.
My mouth is so dry; my lips are cracked.
I keep taking in air, but there is nothing going in.
Issar walks away, shutting the door, and leaves me alone in this dark, tortuous silence, knowing that there is nothing I can do to escape.
The creature inside me is writhing, twisting. Sheâs in complete and utter agony.
This sand is her death sentence.
The complete opposite of what she is.
I canât even comfort her. I canât say anything to help her. Iâm useless, defenseless. Pathetic.
He comes back after what feels like an eternity, carrying a chair, and he places it opposite me before disappearing again and returning with a jug and a glass.
He sits down, his head tilted to the side, as he watches me. My breathing is labored, and my skin is so dry it feels like itâs peeling off me.
My eyes are shut, but they snap open when I hear the sound of the water being poured from the jug.
I whimper as he sips it slowly, watching my face, watching my distress.
He licks his lips, putting the glass down, and moves on his knees to lean over me. If I could, I would shift away, flinch away, but the sand holds me firm, and Iâm too weak to even attempt it.
He brushes his wet lips against mine, and I canât help it. I pucker up, increasing the contact, desperate for every last trace of hydration.
He smirks, watching. âGive me what I want,â he says.
I shake my head with the smallest of movements.
He sighs, moving the chair right up against the side of the bath, and slowly, loudly he guzzles more water.
I whimper at the sound. My body is screaming for it. I need this more than life itself right now, but he just puts the glass down, careful not to spill a single drop.
He runs his lips back over me. I gasp, hating the feel of it, hating his touch, but desperately, deliriously needing it all the same.
âGive in, and I will give you all the water you could desire.â
I canât even cry. I donât have enough tears left or fluid in my body to waste. I sink further into the sand, further into my agonizing despair.
He snarls, standing up, holding the jug high, and then deliberately, he pours the rest of the contents onto the floor as I watch every drop fall.
He leaves me then.
While I stare longingly at the pool that is so close and yet unbearably far to reach.
***
He doesnât come back the rest of the day.
He leaves me to my dark, dry torture, and by the next morning, I am so close to death I can barely breathe. It feels like someone has clamped their hand around my throat, squeezed the life out of me.
I have nothing left now.
Iâm little more than a shell, an orifice, and my soul is shriveling up inside.
If I die like this, I will not return to the ocean.
I will never see my family, never become one with the sea.
I will be trapped, caught in the air, and lost forever in an eternity of pain.
My soul weeps for what I will never have. For my family that I will never see again. For the water that I will never feel.
This man is condemning me to a torture, a death so far worse than anything his knives and his whips could inflict on me.
I donât want to die like this. I donât want to suffer in this horrific pain forever.
My breath is labored. Short. I can hear the high-pitched wheeze with every intake I make.
I hear footsteps, and I canât focus. I canât make my eyes work.
Someone grabs my face, pulling it roughly to look at, and then there is shouting.
Iâm being yanked out of the sand, and I know itâs Issar whoâs carrying me. It feels like some perverse reversal of when Helos saved me from drowning.
Only this man created this situation; this man has been suffocating me for days.
I gasp as the air makes contact with my skin, but it isnât enough. Iâm too far gone. Too far lost in the agony of what he has done.
âSave her,â Issar shouts to whoever is in the room, but the man doesnât reply.
They donât know what to do. They donât know how to save me.
Issar is snarling. He knows he has gone too far. That heâs caused this and heâs the only one to blame.
He smashes something, and I flinch only slightly at the sound. A whimper escapes my lips, and he turns, grabbing my body to him.
âTell me,â he growls. âTell me how to save you.â
I whimper again because I donât want to speak. I donât want to tell him, but if I donât, if I keep silent, I will be stuck like this forever. In agony.
And I will never see my family again.
âSalt water,â I gasp so quietly I barely hear it, but I know he does.
Suddenly, heâs yelling, carrying me from this room into another.
He dumps me in the bath, turning the taps on, and the water splutters as it pours out. I shudder, feeling the scalding hot from one tap and the freezing cold from the other.
There isnât enough water to have any effect yet, and without salt, this will do nothing to save me.
Someone walks in and Issar grabs whatever he is carrying and pours it into the bath, covering me with its contents.
I gasp as my body recognizes it.
Salt.
Bad salt, old salt, not even sea salt, but it might be enough.
The tub slowly fills, and I shift, letting the crystals that lie across my body mix with it.
Issar is there, standing over me. His presence looms like some awful shadowy beast watching my lack of movement.
I lie half-conscious for what feels like days.
My eyes are shut. My body is trembling, flitting from jolts of pain as it slowly rehydrates. I canât stop whimpering. Every time the noise escapes, I swear it will be the last time, but then I make another, and another.
Issar is here the whole time. He can hear it, hear what heâs done, and I know he is getting some kind of pleasure from it, and it makes me sick.
But as my body rehydrates, I realize what I have done.
Issar knows my secret now.
He knows exactly how to torture me, how to hurt me, how to inflict the worst, most unimaginable pain, and then, right at the moment where I can take no more, he knows that the salt water will revive me.
That it will sustain me.
That I canât die.
I gulp, because, in a way, I have signed a death sentence.
Mine and for the creature inside me.