Disclaimer: I do not own Lost or any of its characters.
"What do you think? One more?"
His voice is casual, almost friendly, as if he were offering me one more beer or one more cookie. He smiles that particular smile he seems to reserve for me; icy, deadly. If a shark could smile, or a viper, it would smile the way he does. The ropes pull tighter around my wrists as I lean forward to shout into his face. "No!".
He steps back a little, but not in retreat. It just means he's dropping the friendly act. "You're still showing defiance," he says, a sharper, more steely tone now present in his voice. "I think we should go through this again."
"Fuck you!", I snarl, spitting out the words as loud as I can. My voice echoes around the tiny, harshly-lit room. I wonder how long it is since I have seen daylight.
He fixes me with a stern gaze. "You know, you're really not helping your case, Karl."
"You can do what you like to me. Do anything at all. It won't change me. I love her!"
He sighs, very quietly. "Do you really think I can't change something if I want to, Karl?" he says. "Do you really think I can't change you? I can do whatever I like with you. We can go through this as many times as I want. By the end of another stretch, I'd put money on you doing anything I tell you to."
"I don't think so."
"Oh, you don't? Well, we can keep going. Five, ten, fifty, a hundred times. Over and over again. We'll find out just how long you can hang on to your wits, shall we? How many stretches do you think you can handle before you lose your mind, Karl?"
"I…" Words refuse to form in my mouth. I can't help it. I can't help but think about having to go back in that room again and again, like he says. It makes me feel like a child frightened of dark things living in the basement, as if all logic and common sense have been stripped and flayed off and I'm nothing but a scared three-year-old being told to go down and face the monsters.
I started to count, what feels like a long time ago, the number of times I had seen the film. I think I got to forty-two before I lost count. At least, I remember thinking 'forty-two', but numbers get scrambled inside my head the more it plays. The images flash too quickly, the colours change and flicker and they confuse things. Time stretches and condenses and stretches again, so I feel as if I've been in there a year, a second, a lifetime, until I can't even comprehend the notion of time any longer. Words become letters become shapes become twisting, threatening things I imagine I can feel inside my head that I wish I could claw out. Hell can't be worse than that room.
"You can make it stop, Karl. You know it can all go away, right now."
"I won't give her up," I reply, relieved that my voice is steady for once.
His expression is one of pure hatred. "Remember that, Karl, when you're crying and babbling and screaming to be let out," he snarls. "Remember that you could have stopped it with one word."
I will remember. I'll remember that like I remember the music in that room, pounding and constant. I can still hear it now in my head, feel it pulse in my chest. When he lets me sleep – and he rarely lets me sleep – it stays with me in the quiet of my cell. The only thing that drowns it out is the thought of her. I can make it stop with one word, he says. I'd rather lose my mind, I tell him, and I'll probably get my wish. When they let me out, I have to fight to hold onto my thoughts. They fray and they unravel and more often than not, I can't put them back together. When the day comes that I forget that I love her, that's when he wins.
"Why are you doing this to me?", I ask him, doing my best not to sound pathetic. He hasn't won yet and I don't want him to think it.
"You know very well why."
"But why this? Why that… that film? It's just pictures. It doesn't mean anything."
"There's a subliminal message hidden inside the images."
"And what does it say?"
"It says 'stop screwing my daughter'."
I stare at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief. "You're insane," I tell him "and I hate you."
"I'm afraid I don't care," he answers. "You are nothing, Karl. The sooner you agree with me on that, the sooner you can be let out."
"She won't forget me, however long you keep me here. And she won't forgive you. Ever."
That gets to him, at last. There is a momentary flicker – just a flicker – of hurt across his face and suddenly he looks less like my tormentor and more like a small, lonely, frightened man. He blinks furiously for a second, then composes himself and fixes me with that old familiar stare. "That's a price I'm willing to pay, Karl. Now. One more."
He strides to the door and bangs on it three times with the flat of his hand. It opens and the other man – Aldo – enters the room.
"Take him back to Room 23," my tormentor says. "Run the film on a loop again. I'll see you in 36 hours, Karl."