“Oh, how I wished you hadn't seen this,” I whispered in his ear as I wrapped my arms around his neck in a submission hold. I compressed his carotid arteries. He clawed at my arm, but I felt the life ebbing from him, and when I could've held on longer and ended the complication he caused, I eased the pressure. He slumped to the ground at my feet, and as I reformulated my plans, I stowed both men in the car, my target in the trunk and Harrison in the front seat. I had a limited time frame until they'd come to and I needed to be at my destination. My car was stowed at a storage unit I rented on the other side of the city. I had my second parked in the garage at my cabin.
Both needed to die, I'd made it this far without detection, and I couldn't allow Harrison to keep living. He wasn't the first witness I'd done away with since I'd started this particular career path. Yet, I'd never known any of the others. It was too close to home.
I drove out of the garage and toward the city limits and beyond to the mountains and my sanctuary.
Minutes turned slowly into an hour. The banging in the truck alerted me to the fact my mark had come to, but Harrison, except for a few groans in his sleep, remained still beside me. He looked so peaceful. Unaware what I had in mind for him. I'd always wanted to play with him, and since he would die, there were no constraints on my actions. A few days of teaching him how pain could be pleasure, then kill him as I’d planned. This way I could find out if I was right about the sweetness and submissiveness the man kept hidden.
I'd researched him and memorized his routine. No one came into my life without me learning everything about them. He had no one left. His parents both deceased. No friends that I could find other than the employees of his favorite eating establishment. He lived a rather sad existence. If I didn't write his paycheck, I could dump his body anywhere, and it would just be another John Doe.
I cursed the whining of the engine as the car struggled to make it up the steep hill to my cabin. The place was purchased under an alias I'd created through a corporation long defunct. No mortgage and completely solar-powered from electricity to the water pump. At some point, I figured I'd need to retire, and this played a part in my plan. I broke into the small clearing, and the headlights illuminated the front door. The man in the trunk had stopped trying to escape fifteen minutes ago.
I made quick work of parking inside the garage, and I got Harrison in a fireman's carry to take him inside. I'd stow him in the cellar and decide what to do with him later. The stairs creaked under our combined weights, and with cold efficiency, I stripped him. The scent of musty, wet earth caused me to wrinkle my nose, and there was a definite chill in the air. I shackled his wrists and ankles, secured him to the far wall and tossed a blanket over him. I didn't spare him much study before I jogged upstairs to take care of my job.
The money was good, and with what I'd saved up over the last decade, I'd never have to work again. It wasn't the reason I took the job. No, I took it for the fact it was the one place I'd fit and where my skills were perfectly honed. In the living room, I removed my clothes and padding until I wore only my jeans, then kicked off my shoes beside the door.
Grass and damp soil teased the spaces between my toes and the soles of my feet as I descended the porch steps. I had a workroom off the garage that led to what I learned was a stone furnace used by blacksmiths. Cremating the body was easiest, and then only ashes need spreading. I squared my shoulders and widened my stance to strengthen my center of gravity. Then I opened the trunk. If I'd anticipated a fight, I was sorely mistaken because he lay curled in a shivering ball.
I dragged him from the cramped space, and he tried to dig in his heels, but I had him locked in the room and strapped to the work table in the center in no time. He had his eyes squeezed shut as if not looking at me would change his fate. It wouldn't.
I slapped his cheek, and as quickly as he looked at me, they were closed again. I straightened and moved to the counter with my tools laid out, shiny and pristine. I didn't always kill. Occasionally, I'd get a job where someone needed information.
“I find it interesting that you don't want to look at me. From what I heard, you love imparting secrets to law enforcement about what you've…witnessed.” I chose a scalpel and turned to the table. “What should I remove first?” I forced my thumb into the side of his mouth and pushed the blade into his tongue. “Your tongue. Or maybe…”
I didn't warn before I held his head still and removed his eyelids. His screams were let free. No one lived any closer than a five-mile radius. “Now do you see me? Well, let us begin.”
Chapter Four
Harrison
I groaned as I awakened and for the hundredth time remembered that I needed to get a new mattress. My back and shoulders were killing me. I tried to roll onto my back, and metal cut into my wrists. The pain brought me to full consciousness quickly enough to make me dizzy. A headache I didn't realize I had exploded painfully behind my eyes. My body prickled with chill bumps and realized I was bare except for a thin blanket tossed across my thighs. The room was completely dark, and I felt the dirt between my toes and under my ass as I tried to pull at the restraints around my wrists and ankles.
I screamed into the dark. Frantically searched for even a sliver of light. I tried to get my brain to function enough through the fear and disorientation to let me know what happened. When I shifted to my knees, I used my mass to deadweight and tried to break whatever had me trapped. It wasn't any use, and agony radiated outward from my shoulders as I felt them begin to pop.
To distract myself, I played out what I did remember. It was Saturday, and I'd had errands to run. All I could recollect was the meeting with the financial advisor who I was speaking with to cut the payments. Afterward, I'd felt defeated. I refused to file bankruptcy to take care of the rest of the medical debt, so I'd wanted something comforting and decided to treat myself to ease my depression. That overly expensive coffee was the end, and everything else was black or fuzzy.
I wasn't worth anything. No one would pay a ransom for me. I was corrupted code in the Matrix. Useless and easily erased. A part of the scenery no one ever noticed. Maybe I spent too much time watching TV and movies.
The boards above me creaked with slow steps, treating and returning as if the person paced.
“Help! Why am I here?” I bellowed at the top of my lungs at those ghostly steps, and then they receded again. The scrape of a heavy metal lock started to build my hope for the dimmest of lights. I hated the dark. A silly childhood phobia I'd never quite been able to get over. I imagined monstrous demons in the shadows. Their clawed hands reaching to drag me into them.
The planks of stairs gave eerily under lazy footsteps. I couldn't see anything. What I assumed was a nightlight in the room above didn't broach farther than the opened doorway. The stranger didn't say a word, and the dirt floor muffled where he'd stopped in what I assumed was a cellar or unfinished basement.
I counted clicks of a chain switch on an overhead light being pulled. At five, a bare bulb flared to life, and the sudden brightness forced my eyes closed as stars danced behind my lids as the pain in my head exploded. I forced them open and stared down at the ground. The soil was wet and my knees sunk into it. Shame heated my face at my completely naked form and caused me to try and cover myself, but I'd kicked the blanket too far away in my panic.
I quickly brought my gaze to the stranger and found him in the shadows beyond the circle of illumination. He was using a crimson-stained towel to wipe what looked like blood from his hands. His face was concealed behind a mask that covered all but his mouth and the lower right of his face, but the same substance on his hands looked as if was sprayed across that exposed skin.
“What am I doing here? Let me go, I don't know…”
The laugh that answered me was guttural and without emotion. “Now, boy, do you think begging will get you anywhere with me? You woke chained in my basement. Naked and alone.”
I didn't recognize his voice, it was dangerous and barely above a whisper.
His calmness strengthened my terror. I would understand anger, ranting, or a frenzied attack. As much reaction as the stranger showed, we could be conversing over coffee instead of me waking to find myself chained in his basement like a captive.
“But I'm no one.” I hated the quiver in my words.
“That I won't deny.”
“Then why…”
“I grow tired of your incessant questions. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you're mine to do with as I see fit. Are you ready to learn your rules?”
“Who are you?” I yelled in a high-pitched, cracking voice. “I just want to go home.”
“Are you ready to learn your rules?”
I continued to plead with the stranger. My limbs were cramping and shaking with cold and hysteria. His voice didn't change—it remained flat and calm. It was that which terrified me the most. I could deal with death. Rules implied the stranger was going to keep me and what would he subject me to, and no one would think to look for me.
The urge to ask him once more was tempered by the fact I grew more chilled by the second.
“What do you want from me?”
“It's quite simple, follow the rules that I set. Now, are you ready to learn your rules?”
“Y-yes.”
“Before I list your rules, let's discuss your punishment. For every infraction, you earn one lash, but in some cases, you will earn up to three for every rule broken.”
I was so shocked by what he said that I didn't even protest what he was suggesting. Tears began to flow hot down my cold cheeks, wetting my short beard.
“You will call me sir when you address me, is that understood?”
“S-sir?” My thoughts were chaos, and all I could focus on was the punishments. Lashes. Did he mean from a whip? What had I done? Was this all a nightmare that I would eventually wake up from—maybe a night terror. I squeezed my eyes closed and mentally begged to wake up, but when I opened my eyes, he was still there—closer. I was eye-level with his belly, and I couldn't make myself lift my gaze higher than that.
“As I give you the rules, you will respond yes, sir after each. Tonight, you won't earn correction, but from tomorrow forward, you will earn lashes from my whip.”
“Y-yes, s-sir.” My free will seemed to slip away with those two simple words. They wouldn't mean the same thing to me ever again. A statement of respect now proof of my unwilling submission.
“Rule one…you will follow each order as given.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rule two…you will thank me for each lash given.”
My naturally shy nature fought with my will to survive. If I did what he asked, maybe he'd let me go. His appearance was hidden behind baggy clothes and a leather mask. I'd never be able to identify him.
“Do I need to repeat? Your hesitancy in the future will earn you one lash.”
“Y-yes, no, you don't have to repeat. Yes, sir.”
“Rule three…you will be ready to please me. If I tell you to suck my cock, you will do so. If I tell you to bend over and spread your cheeks, you will do so.”
I dropped my chin to my chest. “I can't do that.”
“Then you will earn lashes. Rule four…you must follow all instructions as given to earn rewards. We'll start off simple and rules will be added as I deem necessary.”
“Y-yes, sir.” They came too easily that time, barely a stutter. I wanted to go home. My life may be quiet and uneventful, but it was mine. “What are the rewards?”
“You will address me as sir. Each slip will earn you a lash.”
“What are the rewards—sir?”
“You will earn clothing. A bed. Treats. You will earn the right to come upstairs. To sleep on the floor beside my bed. To sit at my feet. Tomorrow I will bring you a few items, and you'll begin your stay.”
“Why are you doing this to me, sir? I don't know who you are.”
“Why, boy, I'm doing it because I can.”
I tilted my head back as he retreated and I watched as his arm seemed to rise in slow motion.
“No, please—please leave it on.”
“What do I get in return for the kindness of leaving your light on?”
“I don't know, sir, please, I don't—”
I threw myself back against the wall as he undid his zipper and started to free his penis.
“Rewards are earned, boy. If you don't do something to show what a good boy you are, then why should sir give you something for free?”
I couldn't answer, and suddenly, just as it was when I woke up, the room was black. I followed his steps until his silhouette was visible for mere seconds before the door slammed. I stretched as far as I could from where I was secured to the roughhewn wall behind me and wrapped the scratchy blanket around me to ease the chill in the air. My bladder screamed for relief, and I mentally cursed myself for not asking to use the bathroom or for something to drink or eat. I could only assume it was late evening, maybe just hours before dawn.
My only comfort was that he wouldn't kill me—didn't seem as if he would—but what did he want with me? He didn't explain why he was doing this to me, and because he could, wasn't an answer. Where did he see me? Why did he decide I was the one he wanted to chain in his basement? The one he wanted to call him sir.
This wasn't a fantasy of mine. I didn't understand any of it. I'd watched porn, I knew about BDSM in theory, but this—this wasn't what I saw in those videos. Was I being groomed for something else? I wasn't the type to be kidnapped for those stories of human trafficking. It was always young men and women, teenagers. Did he want to break me just because I was bigger or manly appearing?
I was nothing of the sort. I curled into a fetal position and tucked the blanket beneath my chin. Out of all the happy places my brain could go for a moment of reprieve, it went to those silly dreams I had before I woke up here. The man who would come in and love me for me. He'd hold me and make love to me. He'd accept me with all my faults. Tears started to seep from beneath my lids again while I mourned the life I'd dreamed of and tried not to think about my new reality.
Chapter Five
Cowen
I had cooked breakfast and made coffee like I was normal that morning. Everything I did was out of necessity. I ate and drank because my body needed it to sustain me. Slept and exercised for the same reason. The requirements in my life were simple and biologically imperative. The food I consumed tasted as I assumed it should. I rarely contemplated or compared my existence.
Who said that I wasn't normal in an abnormal world? That violence wasn't the natural order of things. Unnatural death as population control.
I rinsed the last plate and placed it in the dish drain. Rinsed and dried the sink. I'd checked on my guest that morning, and he still slept.
Harrison's basic needs were requirements for his stay with me. I pivoted on my toes to study the tray of food and then glanced at a large duffel bag that contained the items I'd packed when I'd awakened. There was a roughly enclosed room in the corner of the cellar I assumed the original owners used as a pantry when the home was built. The door had long since disappeared. There was a spigot beside the entrance. He would be able to clean himself and get his own water, but I would provide food.
He wouldn't be in my care long. When his time came, and my boredom reappeared, I'd do away with him as I'd done all the rest. I was still unsure about the reason I wanted to keep him. I understood my compulsion to play with him. To absorb his pain for a momentary reprieve from my existence. I'd threatened him with the demand for a blowjob, but I had no intention of fucking him.
Experiencing emotion through the study of another was one of the few acts I found fascinating. I returned the mask to my face, securing the buckles at the back of my head. I took two measured steps and rearranged the items on the tray. The food was still warm from where I'd stored it in the oven. It was the same as I'd eaten, eggs, bacon, and toast. I picked up the tray and balanced it on one hand as I strode to the door. I slid the bolt lock asid
e and pushed the door open with my toes. I easily leaned down to grab the handles of the bag and straightened
The stairs strained under my slight weight. I'd used the cellar only on one other occasion. Most of my jobs were as an assassin, but there were certain times that my employer wanted information. That man had found himself chained to one of the support pillars. I hadn't cared about his basic needs. The interrogation took no more than twelve hours, and I'd left the bloody and broken man on a sidewalk as a warning.
I walked easily through the dark and crouched to place the items I held on the floor. The lantern would only require him to wind it up. I did so and then set it on one of the shelves on the right side of the little room.
“Hello?”
His voice was broken and slightly husky from sleep. I didn't respond, just finished placing more blankets on the remaining shelf space along with books to keep him occupied. I spread a towel on the ground and laid my whip on top of it. I stroked the woven leather with the tips of my fingers. I couldn't remember the last time I'd removed it from its box, and I felt a brief thrill at the thought of using it.
Then I removed the last item from the bag. One I'd left last night to purchase for him. I straightened and placed it in my pocket. When I approached him, he cowered back to the wall. I didn't say a word as I released his cuffs from the chain secured to the wall.
He whimpered in pain as I jerked him to his feet with my hand fisted in his soft hair. I quickly had him secured to a pillar in the center of the cellar. He twisted his body to conceal his cock from me. His bulky frame was covered in thick, dark hair. His pubes were wild and untrimmed.
“Be still,” I ordered as I gripped his hips and forced him back on the rough wood.
He refused to meet my gaze as I pulled the chain to turn on the bulb above his head. His body was stretched taut by his cuffs over the hook high enough to force him to stand on his toes. I studied him as I would an object. To me, he wasn't anything more than a possession—something to be used and discarded when it had served its purpose. I pinched the softness of his belly, spun him and squeezed his ass until he gave me another pain-filled sound. I measured the breadth of his back with the flats of my hands. He had a patch of hair in the hollow of his lower back and more on his shoulders.
By Way of Pain: Criminal Delights: Assassins Page 3
