Page 2 of Over Her Dead Body

The man by the door crosses to the desk and picks up the bamboo.

I read faster.

There has to be something here besides the three options I have already considered. Something I have dismissed because it doesn’t look useful yet. I make myself keep looking, although my attention wants to return to the bamboo, to the narrow point, to the hand I have so helpfully left where they can reach it.

The man across the desk studies my face, waiting for recognition.

I give him none.

“Tell me where it is.”

I smile at him. Sometimes men mistake a smile for surrender. I am willing to encourage the error.

“You’ll have to narrow that down. It has been a complicated week.”

He doesn’t smile back. It’s a pity. I have a very good smile, and I would like him to appreciate the effort involved in producing it.

The guard catches my wrist and turns my hand palm down. His grip is firm enough that I know pulling away will require more than I can manage without making him angry.

The tip of the bamboo settles against the edge of my index fingernail.

My pulse beats against his fingers.

“I’m not refusing to help,” I say. “Tell me what you lost.”

The man across the desk says nothing.

I wait for him to answer. Surely there is something he can tell me. One useful detail. I am still trying to imagine a conversation in which I say the right thing and he lets me go.

“Push.”

The bamboo slides beneath my index fingernail.

At first, pressure.

Then the nail lifts.

Pain splits my finger, climbs through my wrist, and locks my elbow. I wrench hard enough to drag the chair sideways. The sound that leaves me is small—impossibly small for something that hurts this much.

Tears blur the desk. My mouth floods with saliva.

The world contracts to the sliver of wood beneath my nail and my pulse hammering against it.

“Tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know.”

The last word breaks apart.

The man across the desk nods.

The man holding my wrist pulls the bamboo free and takes my middle finger.

Then he pushes it beneath that nail.

I scream until there is no air left.

There is no dignity in it. No strategy. Only pain and the certainty that they can keep doing this for as long as they want.