by Lucian Bane
“And it will never… torment… us… again.”
Solomon braced when the man turned toward him and seemed to just stare. His right hand shot into the air and the audience fell silent.
“But before we do that…” he slowly walked toward him. “The queen says he must behold the face of his father.”
Low murmurs fluttered through the air as he continued to approach. Solomon eyed him with hatred when he stood before him, black turnip head aimed down and nodding.
He spun to the sick mob and held out both hands. “To sacrifice… requires great sacrifice.” He removed his hood and Solomon’s gut clenched. The man slowly turned, leading with a deranged grin. “But to sacrifice a son,” he whispered, reverently, his face crimped in sorrow as he slowly approached and knelt before Solomon. “Requires great… love.”
Solomon’s rage surged and he slammed his head it into the monster’s face.
The crack of his nose came with Solomon’s thrashing screams while the enraged master scrambled to his feet, his face twisted and dark as he did more hand signals.
Two black bowling-pin figures raced to Solomon and the master thundered, “Let’s begin!”
“Nooooooo! Nooo, Master, no!” Chaos begged, sounding like a child.
“Don’t beg him!” Solomon roared, glaring at the man. “And don’t call him MASTER! He’s not your master and he’ll never be your master, he’s a fraud, a fake!” Solomon roared looking at the audience. “He’s a fraud. A monster!” Solomon thrashed again as the maniac approached him with an old straight edge barber knife.
“Better be still, son,” he warned, “or I may nick you too deep.” He gave a throaty excited laugh, his breaths heavy and sour in Solomon’s face.
“How about you untie me and handle this like a man?” Solomon grit out, fingers clutching the edges of the chair while Chaos screamed on and on.
The man growled and straightened, moving his arms around with more mysterious signals. This time a different kind of singing began. A haunting, angelic singing that echoed with perfection through the large auditorium. The grand finale.
“Ahhh…” he swayed to the sound, waving the blade with his eyes closed. “So beautiful,” he muttered before getting back to what he was doing. “Get all this pretty hair out of the way so I can see what I’m doing.”
“Why are you doing this?” Solomon hissed, clenching his eyes tight.
“Why am I doing this?” he mocked in a whiny voice. “I still don’t know what the queen sees in you. You’re such a little bitch. You got your momma’s spine.”
Terror flooded him at the mention of her name. “What do you know about my mother, you piece of shit.”
“Ohhhh, plenty,” he cooed. “She was once one of our prized, you know.”
“Bullshit! You lying piece of shit!”
“Oh, it’s true. She was our whore for quite a few years then she slipped and fell. In love.” He made a sick tongue sucking sound. “Oh not with her husband, mind you, no no no. But with her little orphan boy. Her little sweet Solomon Gorge.” He eyed him with angled head. “Well, the queen knew what that meant,” he nodded as thick regret lined his ugly forehead. “She was going to try to keep you from us. We couldn’t let that happen now, could we?”
Solomon roared and rammed his head at him, but he jerked back. “Awwwwww,” he said in a deep patronizing voice. “That ain’t nice, son.” He whacked at Solomon’s head with the blade, putting gashes all over his scalp, while Solomon grit his teeth and tried to dodge the assault. “Don’t worry,” the man said finally, breathing hard. “Soon, you won’t remember all of this. Daddy’s gonna make all the bad go away.”
Solomon kept his eyes clenched tight and his fingers biting into the chair until his head was entirely shaved.
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeease!” Chaos shrieked. “I’ll do anything you want. Take me, take me!”
“You’re used up, daughter!” the monster raged as he spun to the table on the right. “Only so much can be taken out of one vessel and you are all! Used! Up!”
Solomon’s stomach churned with fear and hate as he eyed the terrifying tool that reminded him of a drill with a door-knob sized bit on the end. Blood leaked into both his eyes and he blinked rapidly, watching the animal as he held the device in the air, showing the audience while the choir sang in that perfect angelic harmony.
Turning to Solomon, he nodded at his helpers who immediately grabbed his head in a tight grip. Solomon fought with all he had and Chaos’s screams turned to short panicked shrieks.
“Ah now,” he said on his right. “You fight, and it’ll be messy.” The raspy warning said he hoped he did. Solomon’s growls turned high pitched as he pressed the metal teeth of the bit into the back side of his head.
Solomon let out a scream of agony as the first turn sank the teeth into his scalp.
“Just a few turns is all and it’ll be through the skin,” he whispered lustily. “Then the skull. Now that might take some doing since you’re a fucking hard-headed little bastard!”
Solomon’s body remained rigid and trembling. He couldn’t move, the pain was debilitating. His terrified whimpers shot out with his growls now and he screamed again when the teeth turned, scraping at his skull.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Solomon begged, not able to even care that it did no good. “Please stoooooooop!” His roars mixed with Chaos’s. He saw her in the corner of his vision, a possessed woman, clawing and thrashing like she were being burned alive.
BOOM! BOOM!
Screams erupted followed with another, BOOM!
BOOM!
His head was released suddenly and Solomon jerked to see what was happening, fighting to blink the blood from his vision. The masses broke out in screaming and running. Master dropped the tool and ran as two black figures nearby dropped to the floor with another two booms.
That was a gun!
Chaos stared with her ever-wide eyes, screaming and crying as Solomon fought to see. A man in a black-ops looking uniform worked toward them shooting as he went.
Solomon’s disbelief came in a roar. Terror pumped through him as he eyed the lone figure hurrying toward him, terrified he’d disappear and turn out to be a hallucination.
But with every gunshot, he realized it was real. The masked man was real and he was rescuing them.
Solomon stared with wide eyed shock at the man who cut him loose, his body still shaking uncontrollably.
“Solomon!” the man yelled.
Solomon stared into the blue eyes behind the mask. He… he knew them.
“Can you walk?” he yelled before hurrying to Chaos and cutting her loose. She screamed and the man spun and shot two more black figures. “Can you walk?” he yelled to her, too.
She nodded rapidly and raced to Solomon who could only stare, still in shock as she quickly placed his arm around her shoulder. “Hurry!” she screeched, hurrying with Solomon toward the back side of the auditorium.
Solomon fought to make his legs work, his breaths a mix of loud bellows and whimpered growls as he went.
It all felt too much like a dream. And he was afraid to even pray. Afraid that if he did, then it would all disappear and the nightmare would resume.
Chapter Nine
They broke out of the asylum grave at the tunnel exit. Jimmy was there, his grave face flicking over them, then all around, as Solomon shielded his eyes from the painful bright sunlight. “Follow me and keep up,” he muttered. “We gots a long run ahead.”
They took off after him, Solomon behind Chaos, his uncle behind him. It felt like he was in a perpetual stumble he’d never recover from, but if it wasn’t for that forward momentum, he’d collapse from pain and exhaustion. Oddly, it was the pain stabbing his feet that kept him wide awake. His head felt twice its natural size and he felt like he was bleeding out from that hole in it. He wanted to touch it and see how deep it was but he’d surely trip if he tried.
Two miles in, or at least it seemed like it, he finally did fall. His uncle helped him up. “C
ome on, son, can’t stop now. Crazy sonsabitches will be coming.”
“I can’t” he gasped, fighting for breath. I can’t. I can’t. It was all his mind kept repeating and his mouth couldn’t even speak it.
“Help me” his uncle called.
Solomon was hauled to his feet and draped between him and Jimmy. They hauled him the rest of the way. How far it was, Solomon couldn’t tell, as his mind checked out.
****
Solomon woke in a dark place with the smell of dirt. Panic hit him and he began to scream and fight.
“Help me!” Chaos called, sending more panic through him. Oh God, it was a dream. He was still there, they’d never left.
Solomon roared in helplessness and desperation, fighting to see.
“Son! It’s me, uncle Joe!” A light suddenly lit the room. Solomon bolted and he scurried toward the corner with a hand shielding his eyes.
“It’s Uncle Joe, son,” he repeated, softer. “You’re safe, you’re safe in the mines, deep in the mines where nobody can find us.” He came closer and Solomon watched him, waiting for him to disappear. He looked around, noting the large planks of wood that seemed to be holding up the earth walls. A small mattress lay in the middle of the floor. His gaze landed on Chaos then. She wore what looked like a sheet, clutching it to her body tightly. Her eyes and face were set in agony. His hand reached for her, all on its own, and she hurried to him. Tears fell from her eyes as she knelt next to him and stroked his face.
Red dots lined her skin just beneath her brows and he reached up and touched it softly, wondering. Flashes of her eyes sewn open hit him and threw his mind and body into a panic.
“Okay, okay,” his uncle soothed again, “you’re safe. It’s all over son.”
Over?
Solomon’s mind spun that word, trying to understand it in connection to anything inside him, around him.
Over. It was over.
He stared into his uncle’s blue eyes and his chest got tight at seeing them full of tears.
Over.
Solomon struggled to make the words fit somewhere, make them mean something, feel something. But he came up empty. Like… there would never be such a thing as it’s over. His mind said the exact opposite. Not over. Never over. It would never be over.
Solomon forced his body to calm down or at least pretend it was calm. He noticed he had what looked like hospital clothes on. Blue cotton pants and a matching top. He fought the sudden need to rip them off and get as far away from anything that resembled a hospital. God. He scrubbed his face and crawled his way back to the mattress. Sitting on it, he felt his head, realizing something covered half of it. Bandages.
He gasped in agony when his mind replayed the head drilling event. His hands shook like his body, and he clenched them into tight fists. He jumped when Chaos suddenly appeared next to him, then quickly welcomed her and leaned into her embrace. Wrapping his arms around her he let her lay him down on the mattress and hold him.
His body immediately began to relax as she hummed his favorite song and stroked his face. Desperate for more, he wrapped his arms around her tighter and pulled his legs up until he was in a tight ball. Warm. Safe. And with Chaos. That was what his body wanted and needed.
****
Chaos was exhausted and finally managed to lie next to Solomon without waking him. Her tears were endless and her eyes burned like they were on fire. Good. Maybe they would burn right out of her stupid head.
She froze at hearing a sound then lifted her head. Solomon’s uncle was in the doorway motioning for her to come.
She carefully untangled herself from Solomon and tiptoed to the door, clutching her tightly wrapped sheet to her body. The dark man said he’d bring real clothes and she was glad. She hated to be around his uncle this way, forcing him to watch the parading dirty whore.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered when she stopped at the sheet-covered door. “Are… you okay to do that?”
Fear made her heart hammer in her chest as she nodded, then looked back at Solomon in the soft light of the lantern. She didn’t want to leave him, but she didn’t want to upset his uncle either.
As she followed him out, she inspected her surroundings. She’d not done that since they’d gotten there because she’d kept her gaze glued to Solomon the whole time, fearing the worst. That he’d die before she could make things right. She eyed the large wooden pilings that reminded her of the dark man’s arms. The dirt walls stood in the silence, shadowed only by a single lightbulb that barely lit the long passageway.
So this was a mine. She’d heard many stories about them. Bad stories. She was forbidden to go near them because the unrepentant used the hellish caverns to carry out their depravity. That’s what Master always said, and now she wondered if that were one of the lies the curse had told him.
They passed dark openings that she couldn’t see within, and she wondered what kind of rooms they were. Her mind tricked her into seeing faces when she stared into the dark, so she focused her eyes on his uncle’s back. He looked like an army man in the black clothes. Strong and scary. Nothing like the soft soul she’d met before all this. Even his pretty blue eyes were darkened. Darkened with hate she was sure. For her. The one responsible for Solomon’s torture and near death.
She didn’t like being afraid around his uncle. The fear was different from other fears she’d come to know. She also had questions for him but wouldn’t ask. Maybe he would give the answers on his own. Like how had he found them? Why was the dark man helping them? Where were they going from here, and how would they escape?
The hall finally opened into a large room, but the dirt ceilings were still low enough to reach up and touch if she jumped.
Solomon’s uncle turned suddenly and she stopped in her tracks, waiting for direction from him. He put a hand on his hip and lowered his head before taking a few steps in no particular direction. Then he stretched his hand out to the chair. “Can you sit? I mean do you want to? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
She stared at him, trying to understand his tone. His words were soft enough and sounded nice, but there was an edge on them, which said he was upset. She looked at the rickety chair of tied up logs and decided she’d try and do what seemed normal. Sitting seemed normal. But not eating or drinking, she didn’t deserve that luxury. She’d eat to stay alive for Solomon, but that was it.
The dirty whore feeling grew with every step she made across the dirt floor. She eyed the sparse furniture. All of it was fashioned of tree limbs and rope—two seats with no back and a small table between them. She sat slowly, not sure how strong it was. Not sure what to do with her eyes, she allowed them to roam the surroundings a little. She spied a couple of books in a corner along with a big blue flashlight, an olive colored pillow and one of those blankets with tiny squares on it. It looked familiar. She remembered one in the dark man’s cabin just like it.
“Thirsty?”
She regarded his uncle again and shook her head.
“You must be hungry?”
She shook her head, unable to voice the words.
He nodded and stared at her for a while then angled his head. “Not hungry, not thirsty.” He tilted his head left to right. “They feed you good while you were there?”
“No.” The gasp came with a shake of her head.
“Of course they didn’t,” he muttered, sounding like he was putting a silent argument to rest in his mind.
Chaos rocked a little and poked her nails on the skin between each knuckle. One… two… three… Then back again exactly the same, careful to make it hurt just right as she waited for the talking to be over so she could go back to Solomon.
Her heart hammered in her chest as he came closer. Lowering down, he knelt before her so that their eyes were almost level. “I need to know… what they did to my son,” he whispered.
The wrong thoughts flooded her mind. How was Solomon his son? “Master thinks… he’s Solomon’s father,” she whispered then swallowed the dread of tho
se stupid words. Why did she say that? She wanted to turn away from his angled, squinted stare. Squinted with angry questions.
His head shook a little as he kept his eyes on her. “Don’t… don’t ever say that.”
Even though the order was soft and kind, she felt the fury behind it. She nodded and lowered her gaze, poking harder along her knuckles.
“I need to know what they did to my son…” he said again in that soft tone, “so I can know how to help him.”
He was trying hard to be nice to her, she could hear it. And she was torn. She wanted him to like her, and then she wanted to say things that made him hate her more, like he should. Maybe she needed to just answer his questions and not think about all the rest. Upsetting his uncle more wouldn’t helping Solomon.
“They….” She forced her gaze to meet his because it wasn’t right to escape the judgment of his anger and hate. She faced straight on and swallowed. “The first day…” she whispered, “they did… water… therapy.”
Confusion lined his forehead, shiny with sweat.
“They tied him up,” she went on. “Naked. He was scared, very scared, I could feel his fear, see it in his eyes.” She wouldn’t spare the details to escape the agony of them. “And they sprayed him with ice cold water. Hard cold water, it was a special hose that made it sting and bite. They sprayed him for…” she fought down the sick. “Six hours. And then,” she hurried. “They let him rest in darkness to think about his sins.”
The second day they put him in this chair. They forced him to wear a dirty sack over his head and he was so scared when they strapped him down. I could see the material moving in and out quickly from his breaths. And it spun…” she moved her finger in circles, showing him. “Round and round and round and round until he vomited, he vomited over and over,” she whispered quickly. “And after, they put him in a cage, like a hamster cage for people, and made him run until he couldn’t run, until he fell and hit his head and toppled over and over and over like a rag doll.” She strained, blinking through tears before making her voice strong again. “Then he rested in darkness to contemplate his sins.”
