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I kept moving back until I couldn't. I had hit the wall. The interrogation would end soon.
"Answer me. Are you dumb?"
His blotched skin and bleary eyes at that close range made him hideous. He panted heavily as if he had just climbed ten flights of stairs. But behind that hideousness, I suddenly glimpsed a pitiful, frightened face that yearned to hear one reassuring word from me.
For the third time, mother came rushing. "Let him go. He's too scared to speak. Believe me, nothing happened."
"Get away from me, slut!" he yelled, flinging out his arm and catching her in the stomach. She staggered.
His face was cruel again. So when he lay his trembling, swollen fingers on my shoulder, I shuddered, and told him, "Yes, I saw them in the bedroom last night."
His face crumpled like tissue.
He wouldn't have believed me had I told him the truth, anyway.
END
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