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"SOUTH OF NABLUS ON THE WEST BANK"
The room was typical for a cellar, grey and dusty. It was square
and almost empty. The monotony of the room was broken up only by
two windows high up on one of the walls. The windows were shut tight
and the dirt let only a few rays of light through. It was late in
April, but the sun had warmed up the cellar, and during the day
it had become suffocatingly hot in the room. The heat together with
the dust made it hard to breathe.
In the middle of the room
sat a woman bound to a kitchen chair. She had been there close to
12 hours. Her head had tipped forward so that her long black hair
covered her face. Her hands were bound with tape to the arms of
the chair and the same tape was used around her waist and her feet.
She was naked from the waist down. Both feet had two toes cut off
which lay on the floor in front of her like brownish-red pieces
of sausage. Her left hand had also undergone the same treatment.
The ends of her pointer and middle fingers were cut off. The bleeding
had been stopped with a coagulating spray, but the pain came and
went. Spasms shot regularly through her body. Blood had also sprayed
onto her shirt from the numerous blows to her head. Her once white
polo shirt was now filthy and spattered with blood. After several
hours of torture, she could not control her bladder any longer,
and the room reeked of urine.
The man standing in front
of her also smelled it. He knew from experience that when victims
lost bladder control, they were on the verge of telling everything
they knew. And then some. Aron Slagbrach was a 48 year old Lebanese
citizen. His true nationality was difficult to determine. He had
so many identities and countries he operated from that he himself
nearly had forgotten where he originally came from. He towered 2.05
meters over the floor and was extraordinarily obese. His head rested
like a bowling ball on the top of his colossal body. He was completely
bald. With his height, enormous physique, light grey eyes and dark,
leathery skin, he frightened most everyone just with his appearance.
He felt a kind of enjoyment in his ability to intimidate others,
which of course also helped him in his job.
He had shown up one day
in Marjayon, the headquarters of Major Saad Haddad's falangist militants,
as an "expert" in interrogation. As a friend of Major Haddad, he
had served for many years as the falangists' director of interrogation,
which was just a more cultivated term for his real occupation: torturer.
His job was to hit, abuse, humiliate and finally kill his victim,
preferably after several days of torture. After many years of practice,
he had refined his methods. He now used various drugs that prevented
the victim from dying too quickly and which revived the victim so
he could inflict even more pain. .
The woman moved her head
and groaned. Aron held her carefully under her chin and lifted up
her head. He looked into her eyes. Beautiful, brown eyes stared
back at him. As soon as the woman realized who had grabbed her chin,
she began to work up spit in her mouth. Two to three seconds was
all she needed. A wad of phlegm and blood flew right in Slagbrach's
face. She tried to turn her head and steel herself for the blows
she knew would come.
But Slagbrach held her
calmly and firmly with the same grip under her chin. Then he took
his other hand and wiped the spit off his face.
”That kind of thing
won't help you at all.”
He spoke gently to her.
She groaned anyway. He had alternately yelled at her and been her
friend and ally. He had changed his tactics as the torture progressed.
”Now tell me what
you've done with the package. Tell me and we can stop all this bullshit.”
He smiled at her while
he removed his hand from under her chin. Her head fell against her
chest so that her hair again covered her face. He sighed, turned
and walked toward the window again.
”None of us likes
this, you know.”
He stood with his back
toward her, scratched himself on the back of the head and stood
there while he gave her time to consider what he had said. The minutes
passed slowly. The cellar became hotter and hotter. The heat made
the smell even more penetrating. Slagbrach turned and noticed that
she had once again passed out. For a moment he studied the woman
who sat in front of him. They had brought him a pretty one this
time. Not that he really cared. It had been many years since he
had cared about something like beauty. Beauty had so many different
sides. There was beauty in the ugliest creatures and in the most
hideous natural phenomena. Most mothers found beauty in their newborn
children. Slagbrach found beauty in a person humiliated, in a hideous
and painful death. The beauty was greater the longer the pain lasted
and the more humiliation that was suffered.
It had been many years
since Slagbrach had felt any attraction to women. He got his satisfaction
from what he did. The longer he worked on his victims, the more
excited he became. The climax for him was when he finally got to
snuff them out.
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