The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  “Move forward, critters. Hands and knees.”

  Frank crawled, certain they had a good, painful reason for making them go on their knees. He felt splintered wood under his palms and briefly considered skirting the obstacle. The thought of the cattle prod kept him moving forward, despite the splinters and the uneven boards pressing through to the bone and tearing at his injuries.

  He moved forward for Lin. If there was ever a time and place to stay strong, it was right here and right now.

  But where is here exactly?

  The Old Place, Sarge had called it. There’d been something almost reverential in the way he’d spoken of it, his ice blue eyes twinkling as if this place, wherever they were, held sentimental, if not mystical value.

  A church in the woods maybe? Is that why they’ve got us on our knees?

  Crawling forward, Linda put her hand down on a bent nail, and it tore through the side of her palm. She winced.

  “Suck it up, princess. Keep movin’ till I say stop.”

  She reached out gingerly, crawling on the tips of her fingers instead of her palms.

  “Stop,” Gitmo said.

  Linda stopped immediately. The cattle prod jammed into her side, and she twisted away from it in shock.

  “I said ‘until I say stop,’ not Gitmo. Even a dang dog knows how to follow orders.”

  They zapped Frank. He barely felt it, just kept moving.

  “Stop,” Colby said finally.

  Frank heard boots fall on the uneven boards near him and heard the door creak.

  “All right, get up.”

  He stood cautiously.

  “Walk forward.”

  Frank began to walk, but someone grabbed him by the chain and held him back.

  “Ladies first,” Colby said. “Where’d you learn your manners?”

  Linda felt Gitmo’s large, gloved hands take her by the shoulders and dance her sideways. He let her go like a toy he’d wound up. She moved forward, feeling the threshold with her foot and stepping inside.

  Even through the hood, she could smell the beer, dust, and old blood of the cabin.

  The Old Place, she thought. Wasn’t this Kaspar’s cabin?

  The way Sarge talked about it, she’d expected it might have been his old family home.

  She heard Frank hobble in behind her, recognizing the thud-slap! thud-slap! of his shoe and bare foot.

  Gitmo—she assumed it was still Gitmo—stomped along behind her, prodding her forward until something heavy struck her forehead with a metallic rattle, and she remembered the hooks and the bloodstains below them.

  Her whole body began to shiver uncontrollably.

  “Raise your hands,” Gitmo said.

  Again, her hesitation got her jolted, this time on her scar. Another zap followed, but Frank only grunted.

  Linda raised her hands. Gitmo grabbed them and fastened her cuffs on the hook. She let her tired arms hang in front of her, glad they would protect her face from further abuse. The bruise on her forehead felt bigger than a softball and throbbed dully. She would have killed for an aspirin.

  “Keep movin’.”

  Colby. Talking to Frank.

  There was nowhere left for her to move.

  The two- or three-foot radius the chain would allow her to move was where she would die, strung up like an animal on a hook.

  Frank limped ahead. He’d heard Gitmo’s command followed by their mutual zaps and the rattle of Linda’s chains. He knew the tall man had secured her to one of the hooks at the center of the room, the ones he’d naïvely assumed were for cutting up venison. And he knew his chains would be next.

  If he remembered their height correctly, they were too low for hanging, unless Gitmo and Colby were able to raise the hooks.

  Not so long ago, Frank had had a romantic notion they would die side by side of old age in a matching set of recliners. Linda’s battle with cancer had changed his vision of their future as she’d wasted away before his eyes the way his mother had. But she’d fought through it. She’d persevered. She’d come out stronger, and their marriage had suffered. He hadn’t been so naïve not to see her growing apart from him, the two of them unable or unwilling to stop themselves from pushing each other away.

  He’d imagined separate futures, living new lives apart from each other with new lovers, maybe children, although neither had craved them before, at least not openly. They wouldn’t mourn each other’s passing. Others would mourn in their place.

  Now, here they were together in the place where today’s horrors had begun, likely to die side by side again, but nothing like how he’d imagined it.

  “Raise your hands.”

  Frank raised them. Colby grabbed his wrists and attached him to the hook. He let the hook take his weight, glad at least to able to rest his leg.

  “Linda,” he said.

  “No talking.”

  “I love you.”

  Frank tensed against the expected zap. Instead, they shocked Linda.

  She startled, more from the unexpectedness of Frank’s words than any pain. “I love you too,” she said.

  “Shut up,” Gitmo said, thrusting her forward.

  Her feet left the ground, and she swung, suspended by the chain. She found her footing again and staggered back to center, sensing Frank’s presence beside her, calming her.

  “You wife’s a sturdy woman, Moffat,” Colby said at his ear. “She gon’ wish she’d never heard your name when me an’ Gitmo’s done with the two a you.”

  Frank held his tongue, knowing anything he’d say from now on would only cause Lin more suffering.

  “We gon’ finish what I started back there at the lodge. What was that you was sayin’ about me holdin’ you and hittin’ you at the same time?”

  Frank felt the punch in his side like a cannonball. He staggered back to the length of the chain and fell forward, suspended, until he was able to right himself. He stood up as tall as he could manage on one good leg with a stitch in his side.

  “I gotta hand it to ya, Moffat, you can take a wallop. Jackson, he was handy with a firearm, but hand to hand, he wuddn’t much more dangerous than a teddy bear. Still, we seen combat together. He was like a brother to me.”

  Frank heard the man breathe in deeply through his nose, preparing for something.

  “This one’s for him,” Colby said.

  Frank’s ear split against the man’s knuckles. He saw stars and nearly blacked out, the only thing keeping him conscious the thought of what they’d do to Linda while he was out cold, not that he could prevent them from harming her anyway.

  “Stop!” Linda cried. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” Colby clomped over to her. “Why?” She felt his breath on her neck, his face an indistinct, black shape through the mask. “Might as well ask the snake why he bites.”

  “Heh heh heh.”

  “You might as well ask the dog why he gotta piss all over his yard. We're animals, princess, or did you not hear what the Sarge said? This is our territory, sugar, an’ roun’ here you gon’ follow our rules!”

  “You’re a maniac!”

  She saw him pull back from her and turn away.

  He let out a short, sharp laugh. “Missy, you ain’t got no idea. But you’re bout to find out, I guarandamntee it.”

  14 — Love Is Pain

  Linda knew pain.

  She knew fear. Shame. Humiliation.

  Most people thought they knew these things, but Linda knew them acutely. They’d been intimate. Spend nearly a year pissing yourself, shitting yourself, puking and pissing blood, losing your hair, losing your mind, terrified of falling asleep because you could die during the night, wasting away to less than nothing . . . those agonies had stuck in her mind. The memory of physical pain had long since dissipated, but the sheer torture of those individual moments had added up and conditioned her brain to expect nothing from the world but further abuse.

  Linda knew fear . . . ,but not like this.

  The fi
rst thing they did was take off her hood so she could see.

  Light flooded her vision, so bright she had to close her eyes until the pain dulled and the world around her filled with muted colors.

  Then they took off Frank’s hood. He turned to her, the whole side of his face a mass of bruises. Sweat had matted down his hair. Blood dripped from his ear onto his shoulder and chest.

  The men cast the hoods aside and got to work.

  Linda knew pain, but now she’d been given front row standing admission to the Torture of Frank Moffat. While one man worked him over, the other held her head steady so she couldn’t look away.

  Set out on the counter lined with newspaper was a toolbox. Gitmo opened it and spread out an array of torture implements almost lovingly. He unzipped a small carrying bag the size of a lunchbox and took out a video camera, which he set beside the tools aimed at Frank and Linda.

  The camera beeped when he pressed record. The red light winked on.

  Gitmo selected a shiny chrome wrench and approached Frank. His dark-brown eyes gleamed from the holes in his green balaclava.

  “Subject: white male, approximately thirty years old.” His words were constricted by the tight mouth hole of his ski mask, but they were clearly audible. He cocked his head, looking Frank over. “Five nine. Maybe one hundred and seventy pounds.”

  “I woulda said a buck sixty,” Colby said close to Linda’s ear, gripping her neck with his rough thumb pressed under the base of her skull, making her watch.

  “Subject has received multiple injuries to the face and torso, as well as what appear to be insect bites on the left forearm, possibly ants. Two wounds on his left calf appear to have been inflicted by an animal trap and crudely sewn together using cotton thread. Discoloration surrounding the wound indicates it may be infected.”

  “Why are you filming this?” Linda said.

  “Shut her up.”

  Colby grabbed a fistful of Linda’s sweat-dampened hair and yanked her head back. She cried out as much from the hairs he’d pulled out by the roots as the unexpected strain to her neck muscles.

  “Okay! Okay!”

  He let her go, leaving her a moment’s respite before he gripped her neck again.

  Gitmo raised the wrench above his shoulder for the benefit of the camera. “First implement is an open-end wrench, which I will use to strike the humerus.”

  Frank danced away, wild eyed, fairly certain he didn’t know which bone was the humerus and wouldn’t have been able to defend himself even if he did, Linda shut her eyes.

  She heard the wrench ping against bone. Frank screamed.

  “If she won’t open her eyes, punch her in the kidneys,” Gitmo said.

  Linda forced herself to keep her eyes open. She saw Frank swing from the chains with his legs drawn up, weeping audibly. A pink runner of drool spilled from his lips and pattered on the stained floorboards. The fresh wound on his right forearm already matched the angry red of the bug bites on the left.

  “Please,” she said. “Please don’t hurt him anymore.”

  Colby let go of her neck, and she tensed her muscles against the impending blow. His fist struck her just under the lowest rib, barely an inch from the tingling numbness of her scar. He snatched out for her neck again without giving her a second to absorb the pain.

  Breathing in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth, she let the pain settle, let it dissipate the way they had taught her after surgery.

  Her own pain she could abide. Frank’s pain, she couldn’t absorb so easily.

  Somehow these men understood this and were using it to their advantage.

  Gitmo returned the open-end wrench to the counter and plucked up another tool. He held it in front of the camera, and the lens twisted to focus.

  It was a box cutter.

  “Second implement is a utility knife.” He raised the knife and studied it as he approached Frank. “Pick the spot, Moffat.”

  Frank shook his head, lips tight.

  “Pick the spot or I’ll cut your goddamn throat—”

  “Watch the cussin’.”

  Gitmo turned his fury on Colby. Linda felt the man shrink back, his grip on her neck loosening slightly.

  The torturer returned his attention to Frank and the blade. “Pick. The spot.”

  Frank raised his injured leg from the floor. “My leg! My leg!”

  “Good choice.”

  Gitmo bent and slashed Frank’s uninjured leg on the upper thigh. Frank screamed through his teeth as his shorts ripped open and the exposed flesh became red.

  “Too bad. I know it’s already numb. Be specific next time, Moffat.”

  Blood soaked through Frank’s shorts. His eyes looked heavy.

  “Now . . .” Gitmo turned to Linda, the bloodied blade held before him. “Pick the spot I cut her or the same rules apply.”

  Linda shied away. Colby’s rough hand held her steady.

  “Pick the spot, Moffat.”

  “Cut my arm!”

  Gitmo shook his head. “You don’t get to choose.” He showed gleaming white teeth. “You’ll get your chance to play.”

  He was less than a foot from her now.

  “Cut her arm!” Frank sputtered. “Upper left arm!”

  “There you go . . .” Gitmo’s eyes flashed and he struck out.

  Linda felt the skin tear open and bit her tongue to stifle a cry. She couldn’t let Frank believe he’d hurt her. She wouldn’t let them win.

  “Very good, Mrs. Moffat. You’ve got a fine woman here, Moffat. She won’t break easily, I’ll tell you that.”

  “She’s stronger than all of us,” Frank grunted, and he meant it.

  Gitmo turned on him. “Nobody said you could talk.” He returned to the counter, set the box cutter down, and selected another tool. Considering the lack of deliberation, Linda thought he must have been following a plan.

  “Third implement: a barbecue lighter.”

  He turned with the object held out. He depressed the trigger, producing a small yellow flame. Linda heard it hiss.

  “Since you two like fire so much,” Colby said at her ear.

  “Heh heh heh.” Gitmo stopped in front of Frank. “Who gets burned, Moffat? You or her?”

  “M-me,” Frank stuttered.

  “I knew he was going to say that.”

  “So’d I,” Colby said.

  Gitmo approached Linda. “Pick a spot, Moffat.”

  “No.”

  “Pick a spot or I’ll burn her hair off.”

  “Okay,” Frank cried, eyes bugging out.

  Linda knew what he was thinking in that moment and promised herself that if it came down to it, she would die for him. Though she knew he worried about the pain it would cause her, that wasn’t what terrified him.

  It was losing her hair. He’d seen it happen to his mother and then to his wife. For one it had meant death. For the other, rebirth.

  Linda had already fought death once and survived.

  Frank had fought death twice and seen his mother perish. He’d fought just as fiercely to hold on to a wife who’d rejected him almost as soon as she’d recovered.

  He’d fought for them, and in her fear, she’d pushed him away.

  All this time, she’d lived with the guilt of her decision weighing her down, unable to tell him the real reason she could no longer be with him, knowing he would never understand.

  Would he understand now? she wondered. Is it too late to ask?

  “Burn my heart,” she said.

  “You don’t get to choose.”

  “No, Linda.”

  “Let me take it. Frank, I’ve been horrible to you.”

  “It’s not just you—”

  “You’ve just been retaliating,” she said. “Like an injured animal.”

  The hand on her neck squeezed so tight her vision grayed. “Shut it, princess.”

  Gitmo cocked his head to the side, curious. “Let her talk.”

  “Frank,” she gasped as the pain on h
er neck dissipated, “the reason I’ve been fighting you, it’s because of what your dad said. I thought a lot about it, that it’s unfair for you to have to keep fighting, and I thought he was right.” Bitter tears stung her cheeks. “I thought about what would happen if the cancer came back, if you had to go through it again, if you lost me this time like you did your mom.” She tried to shake her head, but Colby’s fingers tightened. “I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t put you through that pain again.”

  “Linda—”

  “But he was wrong. I know, Frank. I know that now. Love is pain. Love is scary and—” She swallowed. “And messy, and it doesn’t always turn out the way you planned it. It’s tears and blood and swearing at each other until three in the morning when you have to get up to go to work in the morning. It’s sickness.” Her chest hitched as she sobbed. “And eventually it’s death. We say that in our vows. But I think we forget that part. Frank, I love you.” She smiled through her tears. “And if this really is the end, I’m glad we’ll die together.”

  Frank smiled back, teeth stained pink with blood.

  “So burn my heart,” she told the torturer. “Because it’s been cold for so long, and it needs to burn again.”

  “Phew!” Colby chuckled. “That’s drama, folks! I’d clap if I had two hands.”

  “Hold her steady,” Gitmo said, seemingly unmoved.

  The hand tightened as Gitmo pulled down her shirt collar low enough to reveal the tops of her breasts and sternum. He depressed the trigger, letting the flame dance in front of her eyes for several seconds, heating the metal.

  He seemed almost apologetic when he said, “This is gonna hurt.”

  Then he pressed the tip of the lighter into the soft flesh above her left breast.

  Red-hot metal seared through layers of flesh. He held it there as the skin around it bubbled and oozed.

  Linda steadied herself, breathing into the pain, and locked eyes with Frank. He didn’t look away, feeding her his strength.

  I am steel, she thought, the way the pain management consultant had taught her at the hospital. I am steel and you can’t hurt me.