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Geoffry tiredly wondered whether or not he should go home. He thought of the apartment as home now, but he couldn't think of a place he'd rather avoid. The rooms had seemed to shrink as they'd come to symbolize just how little real freedom he had. He'd thought of leaving, of running away, or possibly going to the police and reporting Imastious' attempts to have him kill the target, but he had no resources with which to run away. The police were likewise out. If even a fraction of what Venice and Imastious implied about his past were true, it was much more likely that he'd end up in prison rather than Imastious. Even if they did believe me, I have no idea where they could find the old man.
With an unconscious shrug, Geoffry turned and started back towards his apartment which at least served as a refuge from the sunlight that increasingly seemed too much for his eyes. It can't be normal to struggle so much with changing light levels.
A short time later Geoffry found himself standing before his door, but as he pulled out his keys he realized something was different. There's somebody inside already. No way I could know that, but I do. A flood of possible explanations flowed through Geoffry's mind, but most of them didn't quite fit.
Subtle physical signs maybe? The kinds of things an experienced assassin would notice? Possibly my subconscious is tipping me off to the things I must have noticed as a matter of fact before.
Gripping the katana Venice had left him, Geoffry debated whether or not to confront whoever was inside, only to hear a voice that had taken to haunting his dreams.
“Do come inside Geoffry, we've been waiting for you for quite some time now.”
Carefully swinging the door open, Geoffry saw Imastious sitting casually on the sofa once again. The empty, unblinking eyes watching Geoffry made him feel somehow unclean.
“What do you want?”
For a second Imastious didn't respond, and then faster than Geoffry's eyes could follow, the frail-looking man sprung from the sofa, grabbed him by the throat, and threw him into a wall with unbelievable strength.
“I have made some very unusual allowances for your behavior in light of your situation, in light of the fact that you have no memory of your true place in the world. Those allowances have been excessive. You will show me proper respect, or I'll kill you.”
The vise-like hand holding Geoffry didn't move in the slightest despite his furious efforts to free himself. As Geoffry's vision began to fade, his panic subsided long enough for him to remember the sword hanging, at his side.
Releasing Imastious' wrist with his right hand, Geoffry reached for his weapon, drawing it awkwardly only to find his hand and arm somehow immobilized. Geoffry directed the small tunnel of vision remaining him down towards his arm, expecting to find Imastious' free hand restraining him, but there was nothing visibly stopping him from completing the cut and chopping Imastious' right arm off.
The last thing Geoffry saw before passing out was Imastious' cold eyes staring at the katana with an intensity that was somehow surprising.
**
A sudden blow drew Geoffry back from the abyss in which he had been floating. Apparently he was too slow regaining consciousness, Imastious cuffed him twice more before he was aware enough to croak out a protest.
“I hope that you've been suitably chastised for your impertinence. Unfortunately for you this still leaves the rather larger matter that brought me here in the first place.”
The emotionless voice brought everything back to Geoffry in a rush. He tried to flail, but found he was securely bound with silvery strands of duct tape.
“You see I would be more than happy to leave you in the solitude you have always desired, that you no doubt still desire, if you would simply complete a few small tasks for me from time to time. For one of your skills and disposition, these tasks are trivial, but for whatever reason you find yourself reluctant to complete them in the desired manner and in the proper time frame."
Geoffry turned his head enough to see Imastious once again sitting on the couch, and noticed his katana sitting on the floor where it had apparently fallen. I must have been so oxygen deprived by the time I tried to used it that I couldn't lift it. That's only explanation that begins to make sense.
“Knowing you, and that obstinate streak that you are sometimes possessed of, you're probably digging in preparing to resist to the death because none of this was your idea. This simply won't do. It's time I think to show you that there are much worse things than simply dying.”
Moving with a languid grace that seemed strangely out of place on someone so emaciated, Imastious stood, and slowly walked over to Geoffry with a look of cruel anticipation foremost on his face. A cold hand grasped the younger man's shoulder, and then pulled him around to where he could see the other side of the room.
“I trust you recognize her?”
No, it can't be the woman from the other night, the one from the mugging I stopped! There is no way he could have found her, no way he could have even known about what happened?
Try as he might to deny that it, the terrified dark brown eyes staring at Geoffry were the same ones he remembered. Underneath all of the terror, blood and bruises, the gentle face that had shown so much concern for Geoffry was still very much the same.
“What, no protestations that you don't know her, that she should be freed? I'm favorably impressed, my son. That being the case, let's get started on the work at hand.”
Geoffry would have vocally denied knowing the woman, but his mind hadn't yet finished tracing down the chain of logic that would have led him to do so. He can't really know all of the things he keeps claiming.
It wasn't until Imastious pulled a thin blade from his sleeve that Geoffry realized the bound figure before him was bleeding in several places.
“You see, my son, not only do you live on my sufferance, but all those you would try to help out of some misguided sense of nobility will also die should I wish it.”
The terror in the poor woman's eyes had reached heights that it seemed no sane mind could comprehend. Geoffry felt waves of fear clawing at him from the trembling woman, and it suddenly struck home fully that Imastious had been torturing her, probably for hours while he waited for Geoffry to return.
What followed had the blurry feeling of a dream, of something that had been dredged up out of the darkest corner of Geoffry's subconscious, but at no point did he really believe it was anything other than real. The feeling that the poor woman's emotions were tangible never went away, instead it intensified to the point where even when he closed his eyes in shame, Geoffry was still able to feel the knife cutting into her dark skin.
Imastious paused whenever it seemed that his subject could take no more, allowing her time to calm down slightly before returning to his grisly work. Every time Geoffry became sure the woman's mind would break, Imastious interjected one of his breaks, stringing the spectacle on.
Geoffry thought that nothing could be worse than what he was seeing until Imastious bent down and licked the blood from the nearly lifeless body before him. As disgusting as that was, even more disgusting was the sudden spike of hunger that shot through Geoffry.
I'm not like him. It's some kind of sick byproduct of what's just happened.
When the poor woman finally expired from blood loss a couple of hours later, Imastious had well and truly made his point.
“You see? There really are things worse than death. If you continue to fail I won't hesitate to visit them on anyone who means even the slightest thing to you.”
Geoffry wasn't really surprised when Imastious, blade in hand, turned towards him and began inflicting the same treatment upon him that the old man had been inflicting just moments before on the Latina.
The pain that followed was very real, but Geoffry welcomed it, and fresh tears poured down his face once Imastious finally stopped. There are worse things than dying. Living as the kind of sick monster that longs to kill innocents so I can lap up their blood is one of them.