“Yeah,” he said, closing his eyes for a second. “We’re in Russia.”
“You certain?”
“I looked when we were being brought here from the truck.”
We both turned our heads when Vincenzo started rattling his chains. His eyes were shut tight, and it almost seemed like he was convulsing.
“You get upset, your blood pumps faster, moving the drug through your system quicker,” my old man said. “It heightens the hallucinations.”
“Like snake venom,” I said.
“About as bad, but death seems to come slower.”
Vincenzo. The words had come from his mouth. He was slumped over, but the convulsions had stopped.
My old man’s chains started to rattle, and he started making noises—noises I could barely stand. It was like someone was torturing him. My chains started rattling in unison with his, because I was fighting them as hard as I could to get to him.
“Calm yourself,” Vincenzo said in Italian. “He’ll ride it out. We all have been. But you must stay calm, or you will start seeing things yourself. It takes over your mind and creates monsters from the shadows. Straight from your blood.”
I felt like Oscar. Helpless. Fucking helpless to stop a nightmare. A minute or so later, it seemed to pass, and he let his head hang until he had enough strength to lift it.
Maybe because of the noises from my old man, Oscar started again.
Two guards came to the cell. The fire lit only a portion of their faces. They were both grinning.
One of them spoke in Russian. The other one laughed.
“Fucking pussy,” he said in broken English.
I started to laugh with them. When they realized I was laughing, they stopped. I did, too.
“You say that from the other side of those bars,” I said. “To chained men.”
“What does that make them?” Vincenzo said, looking at me.
“Fucking pussies,” we said together.
It was a toss-up if ego was going to make them cross the line and come into the cell with us. If they did, better chance of something happening in our favor. Or maybe they would just kill us.
Ego won out, and they stepped inside. The one who spoke in broken English hit me so hard across the face that blood from my lip exploded out.
“That all you got?” I smiled at him, then ran my tongue over my teeth, tasting blood.
“Of course it is,” Vincenzo said. “It is the only way they can catch us. With chains on.”
The one who spoke only Russian hit my old man, making him swing a bit. But a grin lit up his face. It was at odds with how hooded his eyes were.
“No wonder your woman left you,” he said. “She has a pussy. She doesn’t want to date one.”
Vincenzo sucked in his laughter with a gust of air when the one who spoke broken English punched him in the gut. They kept taking turns beating us until numerous spots burned with sweat. That was how I knew where they landed a blow that cracked skin. The drug not only made me feel delusional, but almost numb.
They went to leave, thinking they had beat the sarcasm out of us, when I cleared my throat.
“How about one of you unchain me and we’ll go toe to toe. You can even keep these on.” I rattled the ones on my wrist. “Doesn’t say much about your strength when you can only hit chained targets.”
“Do not do that to them,” Vincenzo ground out. He’d taken a hard hit. He spat out blood. It lined the spaces between his teeth. “They will not be able to hide from Bykov when he sees the marks.”
“Yeah,” my old man said, sizing them up. “He’ll know why women always leave them then.”
