Every time they lashed her raw back, for every drop of blood trickling down her thighs, adding to the puddle below, her moans grew softer - muffled in the worry of whether her children woke up okay, and how many burnt toasts and unseasoned eggs they’ve had to gulp down since mama disappeared.

It was mostly pitch black in here. However, on the far west wall, there was a crack and she tried to keep staring at the alternating light and dark through it to remind herself that there is still more left on earth. That there is still an earth.

But her tanned and cracking face and chest could no longer feel the heater blazing in front of her, and their questions didn’t consolidate into words she knew anymore – what words did she know? How long had she been here?

Her fingers felt numb from the grip of the ropes abrading her wrists, but she summoned all her remaining will to tilt her neck back. She knew there was an answer up there.

As her head scraped past her sore right arm, she realized that she was now bald. And as she caught a glimpse of her forearm - the glistening marks there- she remembered.

She grabbed at the remaining husks of faint memory escaping here - she was Ariana. Mother of Sandra, and Miguel. An ordinary lady who only remembers ordinary balance sheets, and her accountant name tag.

And how on earth did she end up here? What on God’s earth was this interrogation about?
As if to answer her, the door creaked and the high pitched cackle of a bluffing voice rang through; “the guns”, “the cash” - the only phrases registering in her mind.

"I don't know, I don't know" her own voice rand in her mind.

As she heard the twisting of a bottle cap, her memory swirled into patterns of clumping and dissociating images, and suddenly, they all sprang away - nothing responding to the sudden sear of pain scathing her back now. As the lady in uniform took a noisy and messy sip, Ariana knew she had no answer. And what bothered her was that she knew she’d said that before, a hundred times and over. And it didn’t matter. She knew that the matchsticks she heard light up behind her would jolt up some more neurons, and that her 7 year old Sandra can’t pay rent if mama can’t make it home.