The angel of Death

2 min to read

I woke up abruptly. Frozen, on that chair, as the chains had not been unfastened yet.

I tried to open my eyelids, but one only did, yet incompletely.

I was naked. A feeling by memory. And I was dirty, covered in my own sweat, blood and urine. At least this is what I could tell from the remaining skin and capillaries.           

It was the man who had started first. With the blowtorch. He had switched it on and blown it on the chains which were holding me, tight around my body, legs and arms, as twisted around a trunk. I’m sure I screamed out loud.

While the pain was throbbing inside my ears, he had started asking questions, which clearly showed he knew whom I had seen and what I had said.

I was looking at him, shocked. If he already knew, why torture me? Yet, he was waiting for an answer, it was like I had to acknowledge my vileness, my betrayal.

He had started hitting me. Kicks and blows everywhere, from everywhere. And time had become countless, ephemeral.

When she got out of the shadow, I started crying

The man had set apart: as a guard, watching over to make sure I couldn’t hurt her

I didn’t feel his moves, I didn’t even feel the pain: I was too overwhelmed by the remorse for what I had caused to the Clan. Hopeless, I confessed everything to the Angel of Death

Then I fainted.

Aware of being allowed to survive, I tried to look down, searching for the leg I couldn’t feel. It was there, still and necrotic. I asked myself if the hand was in the same condition, as I couldn’t feel it either

I startled when the woman dropped a bucket, next to me. I hadn’t heard her yet, and I got awake by her arriving

She didn’t look at me and threw a sponge inside the bucket, to start cleaning me.

I took a glance of her: grey clothes, dark hair done up in a headscarf, as to protect it from dust. She looked like a teenager, a servant of the ownership.

«Is my hand dark?» I managed to ask her

She didn’t look at me but denied with a nod

I didn’t dare asking if it was still there, although I knew it wasn’t, deep down.

Twenty-five years old, of whom ten inside the Daire, and I had finally lost everything for a luxury car

«Will she come back to kill me?» hope was throbbing in my chest

So she looked at me, with the flawless look of a young to an adult and said: «You are already dead.»