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visible sides by instruments of torment.
    A very bright light shone down upon me and a very bad smell engulfed me. And I could not move my hands to my nose and I became very afeared.
    And-
    Slap!
    Someone caught me a massive wallop across my mouthparts that shook my brains and loosened my teeth. And slap! it went once again.
    ‘Ooh!’ I cried, ‘stop hitting me. Mercy. Please stop.’
    And a fellow appeared in my line of vision and grinned into my face.
    ‘So,’ he said. And it sounded like Zo. ‘Zo, our little communist awakes. Did you sleep well after your swim?’
    ‘My swim?’ I said. And I shivered as I said it.
    ‘Ill-advised to leap into rivers when you cannot swim. If we hadn’t pulled you out, you might well have come to harm.’
    ‘Well, thank you very much,’ I said. ‘Very kind of you. Sorry to have taken up your valuable time. If you would just give me my clothes, I will be off about my business.’
    ‘Business. Yes.’ And this fellow grinned some more. Although rather too close for my liking and in a manner that I felt lacked for a certain warmth. ‘You have work, yes?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘And I will be late back from my lunch.’
    ‘Right.’ And now the fellow’s head bobbed from side to side and he straightened up and away from me. I got a better look at him then, although I did not exactly take to what I saw.
    He was small and somewhat slender, with shaven head, broken nose, monocle and duelling scar. His all-black uniform looked very expensive and made to measure. And was ornamented here and there by silver fixtures and fittings beset with eagle and death’s-head motifs. This I assumed to be a high-ranking fellow. And one with whom playing ‘silly buggers’ would not be best advised.
    Not that I was in any mood to play ‘silly buggers’. I was so scared that I almost-
    ‘I need the toilet,’ I said. ‘Sorry, sir, but I do.’
    ‘Time enough,’ said he, ‘when you have answered all of my questions.’
    ‘Anything, sir,’ I said. ‘You ask, I answer. Anything at all.’
    ‘Is good,’ he said. And now he drew a chair into my line of vision. A rather comfy-looking chair, with a nice cushion on it and everything. And he dropped into this chair, carefully pulling up the knees of his trousers and straightening the creases.
    ‘Very nice riding boots,’ I observed. As I tried, without success, to cross my legs. ‘I really do need the toilet. Oh dear.’
    From an upper pocket the fellow took a notebook and silver pen. It was a biro, and he clicked it with his thumb.
    ‘Name?’ said he. And I told him my name.
    ‘Address?’ And I told him that too.
    ‘Occupation?’ I paused.
    ‘Occupation?’
    ‘Well…’ And I paused once again.
    ‘Well?’ said the fellow. ‘What is “well”? Is it “well” as in “wellpoisoner”, perhaps?’
    ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It is not that.’
    ‘No.’ And the fellow leaned forwards, raised his biro, examined its tip and then drove it down with a fearsome force right into my right kneecap.
    And the pain! And I howled! And I howled and I howled and I wept. And I begged too, I will tell you.
    ‘Stop,’ I begged and I wept as I begged. ‘Please stop. Oh my God, that hurts, pull it out, please pull it out.’
    But he ground it around before he slowly pulled it out.
    ‘Unemployed,’ said the fellow, as he wiped my blood from his biro onto my leg, then shook his head and tutted.
    And I shook from top to toe, and then I peed myself.
     
    The fellow asked me many things on that terrible afternoon and I must have told him many things, although most of them were probably gibberish, because I would have told him anything at all in order that he stop inflicting pain upon me.
    But he did not stop and the things that he did to me got worse and worse and worse.
    And then it became apparent to me that I was not going to leave this awful room alive. I was going to die there in agony. That was all that was left for me.
    And I do recall the