"What?" I asked.
By the time they had removed the burlap sack from my head it was already drenched with my sweat, spit, and tears. I had spent the past hour begging for my life after being abducted on my way home from work. My face was still moist and I could feel my matted hair sticking to my forehead.
"I asked if you take cream or sugar with your tea," she responded. A quilt of medals and ribbons hung from her perfectly-fitted black blazer. She sat with flawlessly straight posture and extended a small teacup towards me with a gloved hand.
From the white cap she wore to the sharp nature of her face, everything about her screamed military.
Of course it did.
Crap.
This Chancellor Lavender.
"What is this?" I asked, craning to look around the room. "I supported your campaign, I swear it. You can check all my records. Please!"
Two guards stood behind the sofa I was sitting on. Another behemoth of a guard stood at the large window from which the light of the pink sunset poured into the room. The Behemoth tilted his neck one way, and then the other, his bones crackling audibly with each twist.
"Of course you did, dear." She said, smiling sweetly. "It's about time for evening tea, though. I'd be a barbarian not to offer you a cup." She responded.
"Thank you," I said, my voice cracking. "I'm alright."
"Your loss," she said, looking into her cup as she took a sip. "Williams? Jefferey? Collis?"
The men behind me shook their heads side to side. Behemoth stretched out a gargantuan arm and delicately picked up a small pearl-white cup as she filled it from a kettle and brought it up to his lips, holding the saucer with his spare hand.
Her glare snapped back up to me. "Do you know why you're here?"
"Look, I swear, I didn't do anything. I was just... I mean I threw a paper towel, is that it? I mean it fell between the rubbish and the recycling, and I didn't think I could squeeze my arm there without..."
"Oh darling, please do shush before I begin to think less of you." She laughed gently, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "This isn't Texas or Singapore. I'm not going to hang you for missing a rubbish bin with a towelette."
I could see the Behemoth trying to hide a smile.
"It wasn't an easy. Physically or emotionally, you know? To overthrow the government that I've loyally served for so very long. It wasn't easy to balance an entire economy after cutting ties with the Queen." Chancellor Lavender stood from her desk and began to walk towards the window. Behemoth stepped aside so she could have the whole space to look out towards her country. Her country was stressed, anywhere you looked. From billboards to the tele.
She cleared her throat, and one of the guards reached behind me and cut the rope that bound my hands together. I massaged my wrists, and watched as Lavender strode back to her desk and pulled out a thin manila file.
"You've studied at an American University, haven't you?" She looked down at the files, scanning paper after paper, her eyes rolling back and forth across the text. "An undergraduate in the UC system, and looks like a Masters in San Francisco. In engineering?"
"Y... Yes ma'am," I whimpered. "Is that... a bad thing?"
"Well of course it is!" She exclaimed.
"Wha-- I'm so sorry. Look I don't even remember anything they taught me... I barely attended..."
She waved me off with one hand. "What did I say about talking too much? I just can't believe you got yourself in so much student debt!"
"I'm sorry?"
"Yeah, how much do you have left to pay off? 50 thousand? 60?"
"64 thousand left... I couldn't find a job for a few years after and built up a bit of interest..."
"That's terrible! I'm so sorry."