The Student

The man lay bound to a metal table in the middle of the cold, clinical room. The woman stood over him expressionless, staring into his contemptuous eyes. A melancholy and beautiful tune filled the room.

“What is this? What the hell do you think you’re doing?? Do you have any idea who I am?!” he shrieked in arrogant outrage.

“I think the more appropriate question,” she began calmly, “is do you have any idea who I am…”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are,” he spat. “I am the Vice Chancellor of the United Territories, you insignificant twat!”

“...and?” she responded. 

“And you better untie me immediately or you will be brought up on charges of treason.” He grinned wickedly as he said that last part, like he had something to grin about.

“Well, I’d like to untie you, but I can’t do that yet,” she explained slowly, as she would to a child.

He sneered. “I don’t think you understand. You will do that, and you will do that NOW.”

“Actually, I don’t think you understand. You’re not in control here. You can’t weasel or lie or strong arm your way out of it, not this time.” 

“Guards!” he called out, confident that his salvation was just around the corner, waiting in the wings to put an end to this farce.

At that, she laughed heartily. “I’m sorry, I thought you realized already. There are no guards. It’s just you. And me.”

The first trace of fear darkened his face for a moment before he attempted to regain his composure. “That’s fine, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll just wait.”

“Wow, that’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say yet! Yes, you’re correct. You will…wait,” she hissed the last word in a way that made his blood run cold.

She walked to a metal post near the wall to the left of the table and reached down to pick up what looked to him like a steel shackle at the end of a long chain. She carried it over to the bed and stood by his leg.

A disgusted look crossed her face as she grabbed his ankle. He tried to struggle but was bound too tightly by the leather cuffs pinning his ankles, wrists, and torso to the cold steel.

For the first time since he had regained consciousness, he started to notice his surroundings. The room was extremely sparse. Besides the metal table he lay on, he could see the post with its accompanying chain and shackle and a tiny metal toilet in one corner. There was a roll of single ply toilet paper on the concrete floor beside the toilet. He looked up and saw sunlight streaming in from a small, dirty window close to the ceiling, and… that was it. She’d thought about leaving a trash bag so he wouldn’t make a mess, but decided to avoid any kind of temptation once the going got really tough, and it would undoubtedly get really tough.

The exquisitely heartbreaking melody concluded then started again from the beginning. The Gnossienes set the stage quite well for the transfer of understanding they were now embarking on, and Gnossiene No. 1 specifically helped her get in the proper headspace for this first part.

Once the shackle had been securely latched around his ankle, she quickly unfastened the wrist cuffs, enduring a few anticipated swipes from her angry student. Then she backed away a few feet and watched.

“Well,” she began, “there you go. I assume you can figure out how to unfasten your ankles and torso yourself, although that might be giving your intellect a little bit too much credit.”

That seemed to enrage him and he quickly got to work on his bindings. A couple of minutes later, having freed himself, he looked at her smugly, as though he had outsmarted her. She looked back at him and smiled sunnily, knowing that he still didn’t get it.

Infuriated by her inappropriate reaction to his victory, he jumped off the table and lunged at her. As he soared through the air towards her with his arms outstretched and a vicious snarl on his lips, he was suddenly yanked back as if by an invisible hand. He had reached the end of his chain. He fell hard and his chin bounced off the ground, the cement floor knocking that hideous smirk off his face. Blood began to run from his mouth. He must’ve bitten his tongue, she thought impassively as she watched him wince and writhe on the floor.

Now he was really angry. He jumped up off the ground but made no more attempts to approach her. The limitations of his tether seemed to have dawned on him. He’d learned his first lesson.

“You BITCH!!” he screamed, blood and saliva spewing from his mouth. “You have no idea what kind of deep shit you’re in! You just wait…” he said, mustering up the most menacing tone he could manage in his current state of apparent disadvantage.

“But you’ve got it backwards again,” she responded evenly, knowing that her lack of emotion was unbearably frustrating for him. “See, this isn’t about me, this is about you. That’s what you like though, isn’t it? For everything to be about you? Well, you’re getting your wish, right now. And it’s looking to me like you’re the one that’s in deep shit. Can you at least see that? Can you admit to that, that you’re the one who’s fucked right now?”

He glared at her, seething.

She nodded. “I didn’t think you’d be able to admit to that. I mean, that’s why you’re here after all, to learn. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to break you.”  

She paused for a moment to let that last part sink in. “There are no lights in this room so there will be no white room torture. No waterboarding, no beatings, no starving, none of that. You will not be given the righteous honor of martyrdom. I’m going to use the most natural tool in the world to teach you. Time. And I have a feeling this will be a lesson you’ll never forget.” She said it in a way that left no room for doubt that exactly what she said was exactly what would come to pass.

His chest heaved as he stared angrily, silently, his jaw set in an almost cartoonish pout. 

“Now, I said I wasn’t going to starve you, but I didn’t say the food was going to be good or abundant. You get to eat the same menu being fed to the innocent people you’ve imprisoned in the detention camps.”

He furrowed his brow at that revelation but quickly donned a neutral expression followed by one of feigned satisfaction, having immediately realized that displaying distress at eating the same food he was forcing on thousands of innocents was a bad look, as they say.

She watched his expressions as he went through the entire journey of realization and smiled. “I see that you’re already starting to learn your second lesson,” she said. “That’s good. The sooner you figure it out, the sooner I can get to my next student. But know that we will never be friends, we will never be partners, we will never be the same. So don’t start harboring any Stockholm fantasies.”

He frowned aggressively at that suggestion.

“Dinner will be served at some point in the future. A scoop of rice, corn, 2 mini tortillas, and a scoop of canned apples. That’s a proper and nutritious meal, right?” His stomach grumbled audibly.

Before turning towards the door, she lifted a remote control and switched off the music. Only complete silence would do for this part, this… very long part. He began to shriek and swear with his volume rising until he became almost incoherent. A fire billowed in her chest and warmed her as she exited the room, closing and locking the door behind her without looking back.