by Stanley Gray
Chapter 18
Thirst.
Tom felt thirsty.
He felt dizzy as he sat up. He reached out and tried to steady himself, but felt weak. He looked down at the pocked greenish concrete floor. It seemed so far down. What was he going to do?
Looking longingly at the rusted metal sink jutting from one graffiti-laden wall, he knew he needed to venture forward. He had to get to the sink.
Tom tried to break the journey down into simple tasks. First, he needed to get down off of the top bunk. The sheets underneath him felt wet. He thought he smelled the pungent, cloying stench of his own piss and shit. But he couldn’t be sure, because he felt heavily congested. His head still hurt.
Glancing down at his arms, he saw that they’d cleared up a bit.
People screamed. Loud, piercing screams. Primitive, blood-curdling appeals to some higher power. They haunted him, even in his current state. For some reason, Tom felt lucky.
He tried to focus. He needed to drink. He had to get down.
“At least I’m alive.” he whispered.
He kicked one leg out, and as he moved, he was able to get a foot onto the bunk below. He grabbed the thin metal edge of the bunk. His arm trembled as he moved downwards. Tom almost collapsed. Somehow, he maintained his composure and refused the alluring darkness that called to him. He knew that if he allowed himself to black out now, he would fall, probably head-first down onto the concrete.
He didn’t want to die.
Chapter 19
He woke up.
More screaming.
Tom looked towards the sink. His eyes felt heavy. Itchy. He rubbed them. The ground felt cold on his skin. He crawled forward. All he could do was focus on the metal sink. The silver-and-red sink. He moved, and stopped for several seconds. Then moved again.
Finally, he made it. He was there.
But he had to get up to reach the buttons.
He blacked out again.
Chapter 20
Resting his weight on one elbow, he sat up.
Reaching up, his arms going into paroxysms, he flailed at the edge of the sink. He failed to get a firm grip the first few times. Groaning, he wanted to give up. To surrender to the darkness. Why should he even want to continue on?
For some reason, at that moment, he remembered the name Johnson. A sudden anger pulsed through him, its own demonic entity. The rage energized him.
Tom didn’t know exactly what that meant. Johnson. But he did know that he felt capable of getting to the buttons. He wanted to. He knew then that he wanted to survive. Because of something to do with Johnson.
He pulled himself up. His legs felt useless, numb bags of dead weight that restrained him. Tom reached out and pressed one of the thick circular buttons that jutted out from the metal surface of the sink. Water sprayed out. Some of the lukewarm mist splashed him. Tom began licking his lips.
His strength failed him. He collapsed onto the floor with a thud. The impact hurt him and drew the wind out of him.
But, this time, he did not black out. He felt dedicated to slaking his thirst. He felt as if he’d mired himself in the squalor and degradation for far too long. He began to intuit that, if he did not do something soon, he, too, would add his own screams to the macabre refrain that seemed to constantly reverberate through the place that was now his home.
First, he needed water.
Then he could plan his escape.
Chapter 21
Tom could walk again.
A man rested in the bottom bunk of the cell.
Or, what once had been a man. Now it was just a corpse.
Needing nourishment, protein, Tom did the only thing he could think of. After several days and countless hours of internal debate, he used a sliver of metal he pried from the edge of the scarred metal bunk to cut a few small hunks of meat from the carcass.
He ate the meat raw.
Because of this bounty of food, Tom was able to slowly regain his strength. His muscles had atrophied. Everything in him screamed weakness. But with each footstep, he grew. Progress remained slow, and painful. But there was progress.
Memories began to return as his skin cleared and his headaches subsided.
Tom found a disturbing solace in the unrelenting screams that stalked the cell from the outside. He listened to them, humming as his did so. He noticed that someone walked by occasionally, and they always seemed to pause at the door. Whenever he heard the door outside buzz open, he’d learned that this meant the guard was coming. The first few times, returning to the top bunk proved burdensome. Pain laced his senses for hours afterwards, to the point where he dreaded the idea of returning to the floor.
The desire to collapse back into the cocoon of protracted slumber proved an indefatigable foe. But he resisted. Each time, as he tried to avoid the urge to peek out from under one arm, he waited for the guard to pass. He listened for the echo of footsteps. The screaming usually subsided considerably during the short durations whenever this person entered the area. Tom could tell when the person or creature had finally left, by the screams.
That was one other reason he’d taken to listening to their melodies. They harbored secret melodies, those screams.
Sometimes, whoever it was that did the occasional rounds would try to trick Tom. The steps would pass by, and he would feel the lulling call to safety. He might even move, and open his eyes. But they guard would sneak back, retracing its steps.
It was almost as if the person knew.
Tom had regained enough of his senses to realize that if whomever it was that occasionally entered the unit were actually monitoring him inside the cell through some form of visual surveillance, they would not be taking pains to try to trick him. As long as he could maintain his end of the scheme, all they had was a hunch.
It was always a hunch that was saving Tom Martinez.
Chapter 22
Tom vomited.
He’d gathered the strength to go to the door. Standing at the window, he saw into the open dayroom of the unit where he was held. Metal tables with bolted-down chairs affixed to them dotted the large area. Big black glass panels lined what probably was some sort of control unit. Tom saw cameras in two corners, up high near the ceiling. But none of that was what bothered him.
Chained to the brick walls, there were men and women. Many of them were naked. Most were bloody, with gashes and bruises almost totally covering many of their bodies. Some of them had had their noses completely removed. Others blew bloody air bubbles as they aspirated. Several corpses, split entirely in half, littered the floor. The place seemed painted crimson. Curdled blood reached almost up to the door of his cell.
The maniacal laughter he vaguely recalled from a time that seemed so long ago threatened to overtake him when he noticed a yellow wet floor sign in the middle of the carnage.
The scene proved too overwhelming.
He passed out.
Chapter 23
It happened by accident.
Tom returned to the door for his daily dose of observation.
The corpse was starting to stink. The fetid, hot stench filled the room. He couldn’t be fully sure which rotting body it was that filled his nostrils with an ungodly and ineffable stink that threatened to reach down into the depths of his soul and pull his bowels out through his mouth and strangle him. But he knew the one in his midst stunk, because he had to get close to it every day. The meat was quickly dwindling, and Tom knew he needed to act soon. He didn’t know what he could do, but he knew he’d rather die trying to flee than risk remaining here.
As he looked out into the dayroom, he saw one man, whom had only one leg remaining on his body, begin chewing threw his own flesh. The individual was successful in chewing through his own appendage, to the point where, face awash in thick, dark blood, his fetters were removed. The man laughed. And then added his screams to the chorus.
Tom only knew the man was screaming because he was watching his face.
Tom couldn’t help but think t
hat maybe the man’s meat would be usable.
He turned, to walk back to his bed, when he brushed against the door. It pushed open.
Tom almost fainted.
His heart began racing, and he had trouble seeing. His body shook. Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe it was excitement. Perhaps it was fear. Whatever the emotions, or combination thereof, Tom knew he needed to capitalize on this development.
He knew there were cameras. He watched the glass from the observation tower for several long moments, but finally decided he just had to wing it.
He slid out into the dayroom, closing the door behind him. The stench assaulted his nostrils, but he ignored it. He moved under the long grated metal stairs. A stray severed leg sat there, a long, gleaming ivory bone jutting from the end of it. Tom risked returning to the cell, where he lumped up the gray wool blanket in a feeble attempt to make it appear as if some living being existed there. He grabbed his knife.
Going back out into the fetid dayroom, he tore hunks of flesh, stashing a few in the filthy band of his underwear. The jumpsuit he had possessed no pockets.
After that, he peeled back enough of the rotten flesh to get to the bone. He began filing the ball joint at the end, the harsh sound of it moving against the concrete ugly and obscene.
The people chained to the wall around him noticed, and stopped screaming as they looked at him. He tried to ignore them, but felt the weight of their stares. He couldn’t yell at them, couldn’t do anything but keep filing the end of the fibula. He was going to stab the guard the moment it walked back onto the unit.
But, first, he had to do something else. He peeked out from under the stairs, trying to gauge just how far the cameras were. He hatched a hasty plot as he hunkered there, fueled by human flesh.
Tom was going to splatter blood up there, to cover the cameras.
As he thought, his nerves began to pulse. His body shook. He sensed some sort of denouement on the horizon, however macabre or unfortunate. He wanted it. He needed it. Tom had no idea what he’d do if he were to successfully get out of this place, this nefarious hellscape. But he needed to, because somewhere, Johnson Slayton existed still. Tom refused to surrender until he’d finally murdered the rapist scoundrel with his own hands.
He would force the man to eat his own penis, one small morsel at a time. Tom laughed at that idea.
Tom again felt the weight of the stares on him. He decided that having pity on these living entities, husks of their former selves, could prove useful to his goal of escaping. After executing the guard, he would use the keys to let as many prisoners go as he could.
Chapter 24
Tears.
He cried. The tears refused to end their deluge.
Standing there, waiting by the front door of the tier, hidden from view and otherwise as safe as could be expected under the circumstances, he cried. He wept. A searing pain sliced through him and seemed to rip him asunder like some of the bodies littering the cold concrete floor of the unit.
Chained to the wall, missing one arm, her flesh marred by massive boils and festering wounds, was a woman. A woman even an interminable illness and medically induced, near-catatonic state could not erase from his memory. The love remained. Even after sacrificing his dignity and mores at the altar of self-preservation, indulging his basest desires and consuming the flesh of other humans, the love remained.
Tom clenched his fist. He fought the urge to punch the wall.
He muttered and clenched his teeth. He tried to look away. But he could not.
The agony he felt, knowing Delilah had suffered at the hands of these beasts, heckled him. Hectored him. Honored him for his nefarious misdeeds. Tom experienced a guilt so profound and deep, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to continue on.
Tom looked down. He held an amputated leg in his hand. Blood crusted on his wrist and on his forearms. He stared at the pointed edge. He had literally devoted time to filing down the fibula, in order to fashion a weapon. An instrument of death and dismemberment. Tom tried to recall the past. The times in which he had been an awkward hack sent to an art gallery. It seemed hard.
Johnson.
Johnson Slayton.
Those words. They held a special power now. Only the invocation of those sacred words could draw him from the miasmic mess of emotions that threatened to drown him. Tom held on to them, allowing them to pull him from the toxic sludge and angry, buzzing mists.
He no longer existed for any other purpose than to find, and maliciously murder, that man. Tom understood, as his mind regained some of its former potency and power, that Johnson served as a mere symbol. The fat, slimy editor was just another cog. Another tool. But he was fucking tool that had stuffed his fat throbbing cock into his mouth and forced him to swallow. He was an amoral, duplicitous, cravenly tool, and it was his fault that Delilah had been savagely dismembered and broken.
Tom struggled.
He did not want to take her. He did not want to risk the attachment. He felt a fierce love for her, a protective passion that would in time far surpass any desire for revenge.
Revenge was his religion now. He craved it like the eremite praying on aching knees for salvation. He planned to write a sacred tome on the subject. He would pen it with the blood of his enemies. Tom Martinez would become the Chief Priest of the High Church of Revenge. His cock throbbed and his muscles tensed as he pulsed and tingled with anticipation.
There were practical considerations, however.
Tom realized, high as he was on the febrile fervor for revenge, that in order to effectuate it, he would likely need help. Tom had no idea where he was, though the jumpsuits said Texas Department of Criminal Justice on the back. So, he felt reasonably confident in assuming he was still somewhere in the large state. Delilah knew the area. She also knew how to use guns. Tom could be as savage as a feral pig, but that would do him little good.
It could, in fact, hinder him.
These thoughts passed through his brain as he waited, leg in hand, for the guard. He stood there, pressed against the wall, looking at the violated, mewling shell of what had once been a proud and strong woman, the stifling screams of dozens of humans erupting around him, the filthy and pugnacious stench of depravity and death pressing against his throat so hard he felt surprised he still had an intact hyoid bone.
Then the door buzzed open.
Chapter 25
The door buzzed open.
Tom reacted instantly.
Without fear or preamble, he launched himself forward, striking with his unusual weapon. He hit the guard in the face, but did not succeed in stabbing him. Tom moved viciously with strike after strike, angry blow after angry blow. He knew he needed to seize the momentum, for if the guard were able to signal for help, his chances of escape essentially were extirpated like his humanity when he’d awoken from his coma.
The guard didn’t yell. He collapsed to the ground, shielding his face and mewling. “Please.” he said.
That word. It seemed profane, under the circumstances. Here this guy was, about to patrol a unit filled with evidence of the worst sorts of crimes. Vivisection victims lay around in bloody clumps. Beaten, battered, broken bodies stirred sometimes from their fixed positions on the walls. For all Tom knew, this man had done committed some of the atrocities to Delilah.
Tom struck the man. Repeatedly. He hit him so hard, so fast, that he couldn’t begin to keep track of how many times he did so. He lost himself in the senseless brutality of the moment. If he were honest, he enjoyed it. Not because of how bad it was, how violent, but because it allowed him some brief reprieve from the ceaseless agony of his newfangled existence. It provided a welcome distraction.
Tom bent over the lifeless body, breathing hard, smiling an insane smile that spanned from ear to ear. His dick throbbed. His muscles tingled and shook. He felt a sudden, paralyzing exhaustion. He resisted the urge to fall to the floor.
He regarded his work. Tom had succeeded. He’d formulated a plan, and executed it. So far,
everything seemed to be working.
“I’m an artist.” he said.
And he was. He was an artist. In times of peril, there are those who become inadvertent creators of beautiful brutality. He was a macabre Picasso, making displays with flesh and blood. He was a nefarious Mozart, conducting symphonies of screams.
If the people who’d sent him here didn’t die by their own devilish devices, he would help them along on their road to hell.
Johnson. Johnson would just be the beginning.
The artist creates art not because he wants to. It is compulsion that drives him. It is a unique and driving need that festers in the mind.
Bending down, he plucked sets of keys from the belt of the guard.
The man had died with his eyes open, so Tom took a moment to close them. For some reason, that seemed a bit too much. To have the corpse staring up at him.
Rushing over, his hands quivering, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth dry, he started unhooking Delilah.
She hugged him.
She’d been chained to a wall, lost a limb, and was otherwise subjected to myriad indignities and violations of the body and mind, yet the first thing she did was hug him. He returned the embrace, and proceeded. Some of the people did not react immediately when he released them. Others began moving towards him slowly, their faces slack, their eyes empty. They slobbered. Some of them moved their mouths, mumbling incoherently.
Suddenly, standing there amidst the carnage, Tom remembered Mike.
“Where’s… Mike?” he asked.
