The Prisoner Project

TWELVE

"I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt,"

- Albert Fish

TWELVE

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK. The clock chimed behind me. It sounded to me like a proverbial clock, ticking down the amount of seconds before I lost control. Before the ultimatum that life had given me had expired. I was irrevocably frustrated.

I tucked my hands underneath my thighs to prevent me from revealing my emotions, or punching the glass. It was truly a battle of the two. I watched him like a hawk yet I remained silent. Not moving my lips, or my eyes. The only sound one could hear from me was my breathing.

"Did you know that someone commits suicide every forty seconds?" He said quietly, as though he had asked me my thoughts on the gloomy weather.

His eyes were dark, leading me to places I had only ever been in my nightmares. His hair was longer, draping across his forehead and mirroring his inner angst. He might have looked patient but the tick of his jaw and the drumming of his fingers revealed his annoyance.

I stayed still. My anger, fear, and frustration from the weekend was building up to a crescendo. I knew this wasn't the time to explode, because he would burn my anger with the force of his. He would kill me.

"Aria." He gritted out. My name came out like a bitter taste in his mouth. "About 6 people just died while you were sat here in fucking silence."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Your silence is disrespectful. You're not only wasting time. You're wasting lives."

His lips were pulled into a grimace and his eyes were seemingly bigger, more readable than ever before. I glanced at his hands, still freshly bruised but not as badly as the last time I had seen him. Dragging my ardent eyes back to his chiselled face, I put on a face of impassivity.

That was the only response he got.

Boring his gaze right back at me, I felt anxious. His eyes still terrified me. The silence drew closer for a minute, and then pulled apart like pulled raw pork.

He leaned closer to the glass and flicked it. Then tapped it with an index finger. "One stuck a lit stick of dynamite in his shirt pocket. Blasted his guts through his heart."

I snapped my head up in horror. What?

He withdrew his hand and lifted two fingers. "One tied one end of a rope round her neck and the other end around a tree. She got into her car and stepped on the gas."

He wouldn't stop until I talked. This was horrible.

"One took a long, warm, bath in petrol and gaslighted himself from the inside." He drawled, toying with the bruised third finger that poked out to join the slender two.

Feeling sick, I twisted away from him. My initial plan was to not say a single word to him the entire meeting, and then speak to Frank afterwards. For some reason, Frank had stood me up last night.

Watching Banshee slide his fourrh finger up slowly, I gulped. If I opened my mouth, I'd ask him about the letters. I didn't want to ask him yet until I had spoken to Frank. I wanted to catch him off guard.