I took his eyes so he can’t see, his tongue so he can’t taste, his ears so he can’t hear, his fingers so he can’t feel, and his nose so he can’t smell. And I left him like that in the dark, starving, no way to release his ropes.

Humans have had five senses for as long as I can remember, that’s what I was always taught, I knew there was more, there had to be more because five was far too simplistic. To clean. I knew about the sense of knowing where each part of your body is at any time, I took that from him too when I removed his parts.

If you go by that one folktale, there is another sense to see the dead, that was fine he can’t see anything now.

What I didn’t account for, what I never considered was the eighth sense. The one which led to me taking his place in that chair.

I expected him to give up, to die in his place, but he refused. Can you believe that? He refused!

He sat there for days, bloody and cold, his body slowly decaying with him inside it. Every part of him is destined to give up eventually. I had no reason to bet on it. That’s just how things work.

He sat there, staring at nothing, open mouthed, heart still beating against his rib cage and simply waited. Waited until his wrists were so thin, the ropes fell right off. And he stood in the dark, unguarded, why would he need to be? He was no longer a threat. And he walked, feeling each cobblestone beneath his toes as he waited by the door until nightfall. He pushed his skeletal body forward out into the night, where he was seen by a maid. Who took him in and warned the others.

With him alive, they had restored their hope. And they all; all of them made their way to my door and dragged me out kicking and screaming.

I was bound in his discarded ropes, playing a million scenarios in my mind as to how he did it. How he escaped. And it dawned on me as his wife held her dagger to my neck, that what he had, what so many of us lack, as she swiped the blade across my skin, was a sense of patience.