Chapter 1: Foreplay

“Forget what you know about torture. This isn’t Wing Chi, you won’t be killing anyone with a thousand cuts, this isn’t the Iron Maiden, you won’t be throwing anyone in a box and listening to how they bleed until they feel like telling you what you need to know. You’re not here to simulate drowning by water boarding someone who clearly isn’t afraid to die!” Jared said, his passion already bordering on zealous.

“You are not barbarians and this is the modern age, with modern tools!” he brought out a vial of colourless, odourless, and tasteless fluid. “I do not envy the positions you are in and I do not underestimate the toll it has taken, inflicting pain on another human being even as a necessity act to prevent the loss of life on a larger scale is unacceptable”, he looked around the assorted group of men and women, all military, all specialised, all ready and willing to sacrifice both body and mind for the future wellbeing of their country.

“And without your objection I would like to hand you the single, greatest tool I can offer. It’s parent drug is called “Sandman’s Promise”, for a anyone who’s ever heard of “Enter Sandman” by “Metallica”, I recommend you don’t get ahead of yourselves”, he said with a light chuckle, as some in the crowd smirked at the dark humour. “This, however, is its more refined variant “Traitors Dream”, unlike the parent drug it is made to boost your subject’s metabolism, to heal more than your standard papercut”, he said wryly “it’s made to allow you’re subject to last longer under punishing, physical conditions. Where natural stamina and adrenaline fail, this”, he held the small vial in between his index finger and thumb before all of them “has been made so that round the clock interrogations on the same subject will not only be a possible, but ultimately”, he said in a matter of fact tone “running like clockwork, if that is your hearts deepest desire”, he said staring down the crowd, noticing some of them swallowed hard, “but I hope it doesn’t come to that”.

“The whole point of me coming here and introducing this chemical is not purely for dramatics”, he said with a warm smile. “No, a new tool requires new “orientation” for lack of a better word. I’m here to help you explore a route of interrogation like you’ve never seen before. By the end of this “debut” you’ll hate me, you’ll hate yourselves but not a single one of you will want to return to way things were before and the simple answer for that ... is because your human beings, you have hearts to break and minds to crush. This...”, he hinted again toward the vial in his hand “won’t remove you from the equation, only invite you to involve yourselves more than ever”, with no small amount of glee before dialling it back and taking on a more business like tone.

“The drug is undetectable to the human senses, but until further development into an aerosolized version, requires ingestion. The first signs will become apparent when you notice a glassy eyed look. Offer instructions, they will follow them, but for those you feel are too strong of will, those who until this point have resisted way beyond the norm ... well,” Jared’s smile grew wider, “that’s when we introduce the real magic.”

He pocketed “Traitors Dream” and took out a second vial, filled with a liquid that was equally colourless. “If the “Dream” was the parent drugs cousin. This little one...” he said holding it up to the light, is the crazy uncle you never talk about ... a just in case you never want to use, like a pistol with the suppressor already attached before you even pick it up, you don’t want to mess with the intention behind this one hell ... I almost wish I never came up with the damn thing to be fair”, he said almost regretfully, which made some in the crowd shift uncomfortably. “But as the great philosopher said, necessity is the mother of invention, and sometimes the devil whispers the sweetest solutions”.

“Ergo its name “The Devils Pulpit”, he said solemnly, as he looked back at them. “Now, let us begin”, he said with an eager expression of concentration on his face that could have split bricks.

He was called Rashid, it ironically meant “rightly guided”. As they strapped him down to a wooden chair not unlike those used to carry out capital punishment by running anywhere from 200 to 5000 volts through a warm human body until it really began to cook like it was the fourth of July and you could swear someone had a barbecue on within smelling distance, as Jared watched them prep him.

They fastened both feet to the legs of the chair, which itself was bolted to the concrete beneath him in the underground, well lit room, kept bright by four vertical posts topped with barred lamps giving off a warm, yellow composure of light.

His hands were tied securely behind the chairs back with similar restraints as those used on his feet to its legs, composed of a black leather. The chair itself had been modified to have no armrests, as the leather like material seemed to tighten naturally around his ankles and wrists as he struggled naturally against his restraints. He was blindfolded unable to see a thing, otherwise the figure sitting in front of him, facing him, would have clearly forced a reaction from him. Jared began, just a few steps away from both of them. “Rashid, I’d like to show you a new way of torture”, his tone solemn, concentrated to the full awareness of his subject.

“Do not expect anything you’ve rightly endured before to be anything exceptional compared to this, I’m afraid this is not that kind of torture. He took off the blindfold obscuring his vision, before him in a steel chair no more than a foot away, her left foot resting mere inches from his groin between his outspread legs was his wife Farah and yet it wasn’t.

Her body language spoke of an untoward confidence and calmness bordering on arrogance that seemed utterly wrong and out of place here, in this den of torturers and sadists, as she looked at him with a mix of subtle dismissal and rapt attention, almost as if she were subtlety beneath him, yet intriguing like a fly captured between the space of a glass cup and table counter, whirling around within, as she watched it struggle. The natural beauty of her face perfectly captured within her hijab as the sense of familiarity ended there. Her typical robes in keeping with her respect for her Islamic faith had been replaced with a more eye-catching parody of soft sable black with a falling neck line way below the enticing curves of her natural bust as it dipped just below her chest exposing more flesh than he would have ever expected her to be comfortable with in public, as beautiful caramel skin, matched with a her desirable figure made her an instant distraction in this dull room.

“Farah, unlike you does not have a choice, but unlike you Rashid, she has the luxury of never remembering anything of what happens in this room”, he explained, as he held up a vial in his hands, a clear liquid stirring within. “This is your torture Rashid never knowing unless we let you if we’ve given you the same memory altering drug we’ve given to her. It’s colourless, odourless, tasteless, they could have dunked your head in it and you would have mistaken it for simple water”, he said with as much as a sincere look and tone of voice as he could muster.

“The only difference”, he added “was that the version we fed her was a mixture called “Traitors Dream”, let that sink in”, he said earnestly. “By the end of this, she’ll have betrayed every expectation, every principle, every part of her character you know, love and have of her and she won’t remember a thing. So you have two choices”, he said holding his index and middle finger out in front of him in a V-shape for dramatic touch. “Forfeit, right now, tell the men and women behind the fortified glass and CCTV cameras what they need from you. Confirm its validity beyond the shadow of a doubt or push this devil and hope he did in fact drug you unknowingly before you ever stepped into this room with him”, he smiled, his face twisting in an awesome grin that could have unnerved all but the most braced soul and Rashid was one of them as he stared into it unflinching.

He removed his mouth gag carefully, made of the same material as the leathery bindings on his wrists and ankles. Purely so he wouldn’t interrupt more than anything at first, with no need for it now, as Jared took a steel chair similar to the one Farah was sitting on herself and reversed it, as he sat with his weight set against the backrest, arms folded on the curving top of its back. His head rested where his hands met over eachother, his face showing off a clear expression of boredom verging in drowsiness as he asked “Well?”, giving him a moment to answer as internally he admired the man’s stoic form of determination that seemed chiselled in to every facet of himself, from the damp, curled lengths of his shoulder length hair dripping from a recent water boarding attempt at extracting information from him, to the faint but discernible scars crossing his upper body left bare for the sake of the interrogation he had planned should he decline his offer. He clearly kept in shape, informed he by monitoring guards of his constant physical exercises he put himself through like a physical reminder to himself almost, that the only control over his body and it’s reactions, ultimately his destiny, lay in his own hands not theirs.

The fact that he’d been captured after fleeing Lebanon after a recent bombing attempt, botched in its inception, forcing him to flee to an undisclosed location here in the states, which the government anti-terrorist task force had raided, and recovered him alive from, along with several members of the same terrorist cell notwithstanding, his destiny ever so precariously hung now on a razors edge, depending on what he said next, as he shifted his view between Jared, his wife then back to him, absorbing the real possibility that whatever this drug was, it could in fact affect memory and even more, if the acts he intended his wife to commit were so gruesome, even within the confines of this apparent “black site” they held him in, she was better off forgetting.

Rashid felt his throat tighten with anger and fear for what she was about to go through. His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged animal desperate to break free. He knew he couldn’t save her from this, not now, but he could save her from remembering. He took a deep breath and spoke with a calmness that belied the chaos raging within him, “I will tell you what you need to know, just do not harm her”.

“Shame”, Jared said simply, deflated somewhat as he looked over his shoulder at the one-way mirrored glass, where a host of uniformed men and women observed and noted the interactions. “Are you sure?”, he said beckoning him to reconsider “they will release your wife and once they make sure your information pans out they’ll likely charge you officially and put you to trial”, he offered “all rather boring, but that’s the rough process of events as I’ve been authorized to know them”, he said already bored with the finality of it as two uniformed men and women entered the room readying to move Rashid to a new holding area for face to face questioning. In truth Jared was just here to convince them, through fear of the vilest acts imaginable, capable of being purported in this room, reminded himself, as they marched Rashid away, that they had an alternative to him and his method, he wished to brandish eagerly as the first to give it a test run “in the field” as it were. “You’ll be questioned”, he said simply with a solemn face “for my sake give them nothing, force them to send you back here with no recourse but to accept my new way of torture”, he said smiling like he knew the future not just his or Rashid’s in what would be a trial and error process, but every other inmates held in this undisclosed prison, officially marked as a hole thrown into a bigger one and buried when no one was looking, in any official or unofficial book alike that the government kept it’s soiled secrets in. He was just happy to test out his new product. FDA approval these days was the real nightmare he needed a mind altering drug to cure himself from, he mused. But thankfully there were very big interests in very high places who wanted a better solution, a better war on terror and everything that followed, who would gouge the eyes out of anyone from the FDA or any other drug regulatory agency or commission that so much as sneezed in his direction he knew, as he poised himself for his next session.

A mister Fahad if he wasn’t mistaken, as they fastened his legs and feet exactly as they had done Rashid’s, his heavily built frame allot more stout than though, bearing similarly dealt scars crossing eachother over his chest and bloated middle.

He was blindfolded unable to see a thing, otherwise the figure sitting in front of him, facing him, would have clearly forced a reaction from him. Jared began, just a few steps away from both of them. “Fahad, I’d like to show you a new way of torture”, his tone solemn, concentrated to the full awareness of his subject.

“Do not expect anything you’ve rightly endured before to be anything exceptional compared to this, I’m afraid this is not that kind of torture”, he began, word for word what he’d told Rashid, word for word what he’d tell the next subject and the next.

They were always drugged, always instructed to believe that Farah was their wife, as she was instructed to believe they were each her doting husband, herself a member of the same terrorist cell they had uncovered. Any memory of her being subdued and essentially repurposed by them boxed off in the back of their minds like a fly buzzing around in back of the room, unnoticeable by most until you began to wonder how it got there in the otherwise shrouded atmosphere of silence and anticipation.

He almost laughed out loud this was so cruel, as he subjected him to the same questioning, made him the same unwitting participant in an experiment no one outside himself or the military personnel knew the working truth of, as they adjusted and prodded scenarios, identifying plot holes the human mind could eventually stumble upon or even suss outright. But in each case though they left it entirely in the hands of the prisoner, the reality and illusion of choice was made by those with power over those without. Even if he had to crush every one of their souls personally in his hand, he’d make sure they all fell screaming back to reality within twelve hours wondering why they were no longer being tortured, questioned or generally harassed, only to get the scare of their lives when they were eventually put trial and forced to watch authenticated video footage of themselves giving information on the who’s, where’s and why’s. Undeniable in its own right, even with all the protestations that followed. Obviously they’d tailor the separate face to face videos if they accepted his offer and took questioning over the evils he hinted at in his new art form of torture, in case of any mention of their “wives” ever tried to rear its head.

He focussed though on the game at hand as Farah sat before her “husband” Fahad, the blindfold had been taken off. The unquestionable realization that his “wife” was sitting before him in the form of Farah due to mind altering drugs influence, weighing heavily on his decision as his brow furrowed in concentration likely imagining all the terrible acts he could put her to, with no resistance and no way to remember what kind of possible carnal acts Jared could inflict on her unwitting body, let alone what any other warm blooded man or even woman within the observation area behind the one-way mirrored screen could afflict her seductive specimen with. Hell Jared would offer to drug those incapable of doing so with a clean conscience with the “Dream” just to alleviate their worst fears of how far he’d push them to go in service of their country, he thought, smiling to himself. He did promise them twenty-four hour interrogation cycles after all, he thought, smiling inwardly like the devil himself.

“What say you then Fahad, do you capitulate? And seek to answer all the questions deemed appropriate by the personnel governing these walls or ... make my day interesting? I beg you though, don’t make your famous last words boring, surprise me”, he asked with a gentle tone and a smile that could have sawn a snake in half, with how jagged his threatening promise was.

Fahad, his eyes wide in shock and horror at what he saw in front of him, his mind racing with a mix of disbelief and anger, took a moment to collect himself. “I will not betray my brothers!” He shouted, his voice echoing through the cold, sterile room.

Jared faced the reflective mirror for a moment his back to Fahad, at first Fahad thought a moment of regret or even lack of composure had forced him to turn away, the first crack in the torturers mask, before Jared’s fist struck upwards into the air energetically as he almost screamed more enthusiastically than he could hope to contain “we got one!”, his tone and developing body language almost manic with energy as he turned suddenly towards Fahad in a sudden glee. “Thank you Fahad, I’ll be honest I did not outright think you could have pulled through but I am so thankful you have the stones to do more than posture, it’s always refreshing”, he said seemingly not knowing what to do with himself and his sudden eagerness running through his shaking hands to proceed.