Rook

standing very straight. Hopefully that would also help her appear a bit more intimidating.
    “Gestalt, you’re looking well,” Myfanwy said. “I mean, as well as anyone could look in that delightful apparatus. Which is to say, you look like utter shit.” Gestalt was pinioned in stocks, his hands and head poking out through the holes. The stocks themselves were affixed to the wall with thick iron bars. A sphere of chicken wire encircled his head, looking like an attempt to keep out extremely fat bees. “My goodness,” she said cheerfully, “but they’re certainly not taking any chances with you, are they? All you need to complete this picture is a big iron ball shackled to your ankle and a hockey mask.”
    “Frankly,” replied Gestalt, “I don’t know why they bother.”
    “You mean since you have so many other bodies running about?” Myfanwy asked.
    “Exactly” came the flat answer.
    “Still, you’ve lost access to half of them, haven’t you? I mean, three days ago there were four siblings walking around, free to do as they pleased, and now there are only two. We’ve got the Teddy body here, and the Robert body in the next room. Bit of a comedown, wouldn’t you say?”
    “I’ve still got twice as many bodies as you have,” said Gestalt snidely.
    “And you think I feel the lack?” asked Myfanwy. “I assure you that the rest of us do not go about wishing we had a couple of extra bodies. No one is suffering from body envy. But that’s not the reason I came to talk to you.”
    “I wouldn’t have thought so. Are you going to ask me where my other bodies are?”
    “No, of course not,” Myfanwy assured him. “At least, not yet. Dr. Crisp wanted to be flown in immediately to interrogate you. He’s never quite forgiven you for attempting to strangle him. And he feels that your unique physiology would offer a
marvelous
challenge. But we still need him in America. And anyway, we have a nice buffet of torturers to choose from right here in this facility.”
    “Torture!” scoffed Gestalt. “You realize that I could abandon this body, don’t you? I could simply slide out of it and into a different one.”
    “Oh, yes, I know that. After all, you vacated yourself entirely the other night, didn’t you? All four siblings, and not a brain between them. Not that there was much there to begin with,” Myfanwy added sweetly.
    “So then why are you here?” asked Gestalt.
    “I wanted to see if there was anything you wanted to tell me of your own free will,” Myfanwy said.
    “You must be joking!” the body said. “If I wouldn’t tell you anything under torture, why on earth would I tell you anything of my own free will?”
    “There are worse things than torture,” said Myfanwy with a small smile. She’d spent the ride up from London thinking about this, and her creativity had surprised her. “After all, you may have four bodies, but I’m fairly certain you’re emotionally attached to all of them. Now, you can choose of your own free will to answer my questions, or you can choose of your own free will to have various limbs chainsawed off.”
    Gestalt was staring at her fixedly.
    “You’ve never had fewer than four bodies to work with, have you? So I’ll bet that having only two is driving you nuts. But at least
our
two are as yet unharmed.” She paused for dramatic effect. “How would you like to slide into a body with no eyes, or ears, or limbs?
    “Now, of course you wouldn’t be present for the actual procedure—you wouldn’t feel the pain, so it’s technically not torture—but I’m betting just the
knowledge
that we’re abusing your body would hurt you. It may be one body of many, but it’s still
your
body. We wouldn’t have to mutilate both of them. In fact, maybe we could rig it up so that you could watch it going on. See yourself get ruined.”
    “You wouldn’t dare!” screamed Gestalt. “You touch me and I’ll kill you!”
    “I’ll kill you first,” promised Myfanwy in a cold voice. “I’ll kill you twice if I feel like it.”
    “I hate you! I hate you!” the body screamed until she reached out and shut it up.
    “You need to be quiet for a moment,” she said. For a minute, she worried that Gestalt would leave, unable to tolerate her manipulation of its body, but the blue eyes still glared at her. “Now, let’s think.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
    “I wonder how many people are involved in this little mutiny of yours. I know it wasn’t just