Breath

Prompt sourced from TomiAdeyemi.com

 

 

She shook her head and frowned.

“I pray you never take a breath without remembering the breaths you’ve taken away.”

“That’s a bit dramatic.”

“I don’t really think you are in a position to be funny.”

“Hey at least you thought it was funny.” Calvin was tied to a chair that was partially submerged in water. It was attached to a contraption that intermittently dunked the chair below the water level for ever-increasing amounts of time.

He had to keep his mind clear of any distraction when he was under, the only thing he did was count, really slowly. If he tried to actually count the seconds he would realise how close he was getting to his maximum limit. The reason he knew it was currently about 90 seconds was because his captor, Dani, had been mocking him a few minutes ago as he recovered between his punishments.

She kept referring to going under the water as a punishment but he had no idea what she had against him. He knew he deserved to be punished for the things he had done in his professional life. He was a trained assassin and had been in the trade since the tender age of seventeen. It was the only life he knew and he loved it. Unapologetically loved it. He preferred intimate killings rather than long distance eliminations but either way, it was the only thing in his life that gave him any joy.

Dani had thrown him off guard, he had never suspected that she wanted anything from him other than a helping hand. In fact, he had found her on the side of the road with a flat tyre looking helpless, a real life damsel in distress. It never crossed his mind that as he stepped out of his car to help the woman who for some reason was holding a wrench and a screwdriver in an attempt to change her tyre, would be anything other than what she presented herself to be.

However, as soon as he was in striking distance, she lunged for him. The wrench and screwdriver didn’t seem so ridiculous now. She was obviously a skilled fighter but she wasn’t nearly as fast or as well-trained as Calvin. He ducked out of the way of most of her blows except for the wrench to his upper arm. He thought it may have broken it but his training had instilled in him the capacity to move past the pain. It was just another enemy that needed to be defeated.

How he wished for a little oncoming traffic right now. Either for someone to drive past and call the police after seeing the scene of a woman with DIY tools fighting a guy at the roadside or as a potential weapon to shove her in front of. But for some reason the road was clear. Too clear. It aroused suspicion but as it wasn’t pertinent to this exact moment he pushed the thought out of his mind and got back to firstly disarming and then subduing his opponent. A round house kick to the back of her head that launched her into the side of his car did it.

She was knocked out. He quickly went through her car, her wallet and pockets, retrieved anything that could possibly identify who she was, got into his car and drove away. Instead of going home, he went to a safe house.  He looked through all the documentation he had found and quickly got an ID on the woman at the roadside. Danielle Monk.

He searched for any affiliation they may have had, tracked her name, aliases, face through every database he could think of and she came up as a regular person. Not attached to his trade in any way. She was a normal. She checked out. It made no sense.

“Time to go under again.” Her voice brought him back to the present.

“Wait!”

“You’re ready to talk now?” She looked at him wide-eyed expecting to hear the answer to the question she had been asking him for the last 6 hours.

“I was just wondering if I could I have a drink of water first before we carry on with this?” She looked at him with utter shock and amazement. “Sorry, where are my manners? Please.”

My Thoughts: This reminds me that I have a Tomi Adeyemi email writing course waiting in my inbox to be read, hopefully by the time this is published, I will have found the time and motivation to start it!

Sometimes 15 minutes flies by and sometimes you finish with seconds to spare. It still surprises me how much you can get done in that amount of time but there are still a lot of questions that need answering here. I don’t think Calvin is as cold-hearted as he makes out, he has feelings but he knows how to hide them. And I like to think that Dani is normal but something has pushed her to this moment where she seems to have lost some of her humanity. Obviously Calvin has wronged her in some way but how? I was thinking of revealing it in the time but I couldn’t think of what her beef might have been!

Til next time friends.

xx woeful writes xx