When Leonard awoke, it was to the sight of Roger donning latex surgical gloves and organizing tools on a tray. "It is time for us to begin our work in earnest, Leonard. We are little messiahs, my friend, and yet, what sacrifice have we put forth? Virtually none."
Leonard was unable to respond as the aluminum foil and duct tape were back in place. Scalpel was taken in hand and a deep painful cut made on Leonard's right arm. He reflexively bit down on the aluminum foil ball, raising goose bumps and worsening the pain of the incision as the skin tightened around it.
"You see, Leonard. I am on this Earth for this very purpose. Whether or not you were destined from birth for this is a matter of conjecture. You see, you were chosen for this. Whether it was by me or some higher force acting through my hand is a futile debate. Wouldn't you agree?" Roger picked up a surgical needle and some thread. "Now I don't want you to worry about these cuts. The needle and the thread have both been sterilized and the thread has been soaked in iodine. It will sting, but it will keep the stitches free of germs and bacteria that may cause infection."
His stitching was crude but efficient. While not trying to mutilate or damage the cuts, Roger was by no means gentle, causing Leonard to repeatedly bite down on the aluminum foil ball. "Just think of all the good that we are doing here, Leonard. You're dying a thousand deaths. Think about that."
Once the first cut was sealed, Roger quickly made another, inches from the first. This second incision went a little bit deeper and produced a trickle of blood. Leonard swooned and a low moan rumbled down in his throat.
"Before you pass out, let me tell you that I have plenty of epinephrine and thorazine. Any time you get to spend in the sweet void of unconsciousness is thanks to me." Those were the last words Leonard heard before fainting.
Consciousness came in the form of an epinephrine drip. Roger had gone on to open and close many more incisions. Leonard's arms and legs were covered in freshly sewn lesions which made themselves evident when the adrenaline kick caused his entire body to jerk to life. The muscles convulsed, the skin stretched, and the fresh lacerations were pulled taut against their iodine soaked bindings.
An attempt to scream produced the usual muffled cry. Leonard looked around the room. No sign of Roger. Then came the spray. A fine mist shot into the air above Leonard's head and gently cascaded down on the fresh cuts. The prisoner let out further pathetic attempts at screams and fought madly against his bonds, worsening the pain of his mangled skin and sending new lightning bolts of pain through his broken arm. Spraying the mist, a combination of lemon juice, vinegar, and bleach, Roger walked around to face Leonard.
"I would normally have kept you awake for all those incisions, but I felt that I could make much quicker progress if I just went ahead and cut you up without your crying. Besides, I can always make up for the pain that you missed now that you are conscious. How are you feeling?"
Leonard's eyes darted frantically around the room. His heart raced. For a moment, he felt strong enough to try and escape before the pain kicked back in. Whereas he had previously been able to use shock and detachment to look at his situation calmly, he was now too frantic to comply his way to freedom. The adrenaline and the pain and the endorphins all sang the ballad of fight or flight; but his lacerated and bruised muscles had other plans, leaving his body locked in a state of suspended animation.
"You know something? My suture job wasn’t really sufficient to seal some of those gashes." The madman walked to the back corner of the room, returning with an industrial soldering iron. The sight sent Leonard into more futile and painful fits of resistance. "I'll just have to cauterize the wounds, for safety's sake."
He first applied the iron to a cut on the right knee. The skin on the knee is relatively pain resistant. Even so, it was by far the worst pain Leonard had yet experienced. The pain is unique. There is intense heat at the actual point of contact, but the nerve endings there are quickly killed. The heat, however, is such that from the central burn emanates a spectrum of damage and subsequent pain. Skin crisping burns still torment the living nerves closest to the point of contact. Further out, secondary burns still tenderize the flesh beneath the skin. Beyond that, first degree burns, little more than a sunburn, but having appeared and blistered in seconds stings the skin. These assorted pains constitute but a fraction of the miasma of sensation flooding the victim's mind.
There is a sound, quiet in the stillness of the room but thunderous in the ears of the victim; a hissing sound of hair being singed and that first layer of skin sacrificing its moisture to the searing metal. The hissing lasts just a moment before being replaced with the sizzling of flesh, of meat cooking. And what meat cooks without giving off a scent? Roasting human flesh lets off a noxious stench made all the worse for the victim by the singed hair musk that wafts up ahead of it.
This symphony of pain was to play in its entirety for Leonard every time his captor touched metal to flesh.
"Do you understand why you are here yet?" Leonard had been reduced to choking sobs and could only shake his head. Too damaged to move, too drugged to faint, he was trapped in the chair and in the hands of his madman torturer.
"Well, you see, I'm like a sponge." Iron touched flesh, the symphony played. "I soak things up." Another pause and a third lesion was sealed. "Specifically, I absorb negativity. Do you know what that means?"
Leonard again shook his head, this time more desperately as the pain was compounding with every second.
"When I say negativity, I mean so-called bad feelings. I mean anger, hatred, bitterness, rage, envy, contempt, loathing, and cruelty. All those assorted feelings that can lead perfectly normal people to do things like this."
As Roger spouted the litany of negative emotions, he touched the iron to a wound for each feeling. Leonard swooned again, but remained trapped in a chemically forced state of hypersensitive consciousness. His mind wanted to fly to some safe and warm place away from the body, but was held back by pharmaceutical chains.
"The people who have these emotions aren’t driven to anything this severe." Sizzle and burn, another cut sealed. "Which brings me ever closer to the reason that we are here right now. You see, normally the emotions that I soak up take the form of little problems. Little crimes, little sins, and little transgressions. Sometimes they are as minuscule as cutting someone off at an intersection or being rude to a cashier. Ironically, it is usually being the recipient of such behavior that would cause a person to do such a thing. Vicious cycles are born.
"Then there are the bigger sins and bigger crimes. They come from the same place, you know. Murder is just the result of negativity, just like starting a fight, calling a name, or cheating at cards: lackadaisical expressions of negativity." As he went on, Roger continued the step by step cauterization of Leonard's legs. "Do you see what I am saying?"
Leonard could not even shake his head by then. He hung his head, eyes shut tightly with tears creeping out the corners. His chest heaved with quiet sobs. He'd known people who enjoyed pain, sexual masochists and exercise junkies. They all spoke of the epiphany; of the moment of clarity and tranquility that comes from pushing your body over the edge. He had captured a faint taste of that escape with the broken arm and the broken nose. He had begun to float, and while he hated the eerie sense of detachment when it was happening to him, he now yearned to feel it once again. The carefully regulated IV's in his arm saw that he stayed right where he was, body, mind, and soul. Roger was good. He had done this before. For the first time, the painfully real specter of imminent death reared its ugly head causing Leonard's sobs to become all the more pathetic.
Roger's fist crashed into Leonard's already damaged face with surprising force and stealth. The uppercut rocked the chair back so far that it nearly spilled backwards. His ears rang, but could not drown out his captor's screaming. "You sniveling punk! You think this is fun for me? Have you been listening at all? All those feelings, all that hatred and anger and fear and loathing and bitterness and contempt; that is not
fun. At first it’s a bit of a rush. A tingle in the base of the brain, a hot flushed feeling in the arms ready to strike at the first person foolish enough to cross me. It has a strength that comes with it. That's not where it ends. It keeps building. It stockpiles itself in the crevices of my being and it makes itself at home because chances are it has been there before. It builds until I must release it. Like here. Like now. And why do I go through this? Because this is my cross to bear. Because by taking all those emotions, all those little cruelties and private murders and pouring them into this one pure, simple, and isolated act, I spare the world at large. I stop the vicious cycle and slow down the wheel of Karma. I save lives and minds and souls through this sacrifice. This is not a hobby. It is my destiny."
Leonard's eyes were wide with shock, fear, and desperation. There was also a sense of pity that felt grossly inappropriate.
"You want to know where you play into all of this?" Leonard nodded a weak affirmation. "There is a flipside to all the bile that I take upon myself. For every cruelty there is suffering. For every crime there is a victim. When someone hits another person the sting is felt, and when someone commits a murder someone else must die. That is where you come in. You are taking all that upon yourself and expelling it in this same pure act. This same ritual in which I expel what demons I can from society, you take its pain. You take its suffering and bleeding and bruising and crying and anguish. We are little messiahs, Leonard. Be proud of what you are accomplishing here today."
The terror that lurked in that moment was more intense than anything that Leonard had felt. He did not know how to feel, what to say. The pain was still lighting up his nervous system and the blood still dripped warm and sticky from some of the less carefully attended cuts. He thought that he was a broken man, but the implications of everything that had been said were such that he knew his ordeal was just coming to speed. If anything was to be a source of comfort for him it was the idea that he was helping humanity, and that his torturer was just as pained as he was. He desperately wanted to believe it all.
Roger clapped his hands together loudly. "Ah, but how I prattle." The smile that spread across his face had enough evidence of glee in it to cast a shadow of doubt upon everything that preceded it. Had all that talk been part of the game? Or had it been the truth? Roger turned off the IV drips. Perhaps he was finally getting tired. He waited for the drugs to work their way out of Leonard's system, idly passing the time drawing intricate patterns on his victim with the soldering gun.
When at last it looked as the drugs had run their course and that Leonard was ready to slip into sleep or unconsciousness or that blackness whose name does not matter, Roger sharply slapped the broken arm to bring him to attention.
"You look like you could use some rest. Good idea, Leonard, you've had a hard first day. That said…" Roger drew a large dagger and plunged it into Leonard's right cheek. It pierced the aluminum foil ball and poked through the other side of Leonard's face. Roger then punched Leonard in the jaw, knocking him out yet again.
Leonard was awoken with an ice cold glass of water to the face, a pleasantly mild shock. The puncture wounds on his face had been stitched more proficiently than the other cuts. His arms and legs were unbound and his broken arm rested in a sling. Roger looked at him with a tranquil, almost relieved expression. "You may leave now, Leonard.”
"What?"
Roger handed him a cane. His legs, while terribly burnt and in constant agony, were still functional. "You question my offer?"
Leonard took the cane. "No. Not at all." Oddly enough, he meant it. There was a change in Roger’s demeanor. It seemed that he had been purged, the ritual completed. Moreover, freedom was so much what Leonard wanted that he gladly set aside any suspicion. He hobbled his way to the door and opened it, stumbling into the light beyond the threshold.
His stomach plummeted. He died a dozen more deaths more severe than anything that Roger had forced upon him. He stood in the hallway outside his own bedroom. As his body began to collapse, he was seized from behind by his hair. Roger jerked him into the room and slammed the door shut. Leonard was on his mutilated knees, Roger's grip on his hair the only thing stopping him from going fetal on the floor. Roger leaned into Leonard's ear and growled, "You have experienced suffering and bleeding and bruising, but you have not yet begun to understand anguish."
He threw his crippled victim to the floor. "This is your bedroom, Leonard, the room where you and Christina have made love and whispered so many sweet nothings in your years of marriage. Don’t worry. She won’t be interrupting us any time soon. I’ve seen to that."
The door closed and the real torment began.
Strength
by Alec Cizak
"This is your last year of elementary school," his mother explained, "next year you'll be in middle school and surrounded by completely new people." She smiled, kissed him on his forehead and shoved him out the door, towards the school bus in the front of the house.
Matthew knew better, though. His parents insisted every year that things would be different. But they never were. It started the first day of school and didn't stop until summer break. Even then, at the pool, at the mall, if he ran into one of the popular kids, the noise continued.
"There's Yuckystall!" they would say. They would point. They would laugh.
There was nothing he could do about it. The teacher always ran down the roster first thing to learn the students' names. His was at the end, the one everyone would remember.
"Matthew," the teacher would invariably say, "ah," her eyes would narrow, attempting to decipher the rudely un-American name. "Ah, Matthew, ah," more pause.
The entire class would figure out who the only uncalled name belonged to and stare at him expectantly. Matthew refused to help the teacher. She should be able to read, he reasoned, she should be educated enough to put together the letters in a logical manner that fits the rules of English.
"Yutzenstal?" She would say it, but somehow never pronounce it correctly.
"Yutz-en-stal," he would explain, as though he were speaking to a monkey in the throes of worthless linguistic training.
This annoyed the teacher, who would then allow the students to make remarks about his name.
"Yutzenstal," they might say, "what kind of creepy name is that?"
When he was younger, he explained that it was Jewish. Few elementary students understood what that meant. One or two, however, would lay into him.
"My dad says Jews have to control everything."
"Is it true your people like to start wars?"
Moronic questions to which there were no satisfactory answers for the drooling youth of ignorance. They accused Matthew of having all the power in the world, to which he would respond, "I have nothing."
This was almost true. His father was a public defender. He made no money outside of that which he needed to keep them in a small apartment in the housing projects near 25th and Keystone. They lived on the border of the worst ghetto in Indianapolis. His mother was a medical assistant at a Clinica Medica, catering to the newly arrived Mexican and Latino population of the city. She spoke four languages. She had been offered translating work with Eli Lilly. She chose eight dollars an hour working for people who called her ‘gebacho’ behind her back.
Their apartment was filled with enough rodents and insects to start a miniature zoo. Matthew watched his father set new traps for the mice and rats every night. As the early morning hours rolled around, he could hear them going off in the kitchen.
Snap!
The sound echoed through the apartment. It woke him up every morning and he began to take a liking to it. He knew when he walked into the kitchen there would be another reminder of his family's poverty, killed during the act of trying to take what little they had.
***
Matthew got on the bus. The snickers and giggles started. He tested high on the moronic assessment check-ups the state insisted all students submit themselves to. The questions were an insult to h
is intelligence. Because the state was convinced he was a genius, he was bussed to a public school in Carmel, the last hold-out of white yuppie hegemony in the entire state. The other students, no matter where they were bussed from, had money. It showed in their clothes, their school supplies, their shoes, their teeth.
"You don't want to be like everyone else, do you?"
This was what his father said to convince him that wearing a nine dollar pair of sneakers made him superior to his classmates. He knew better. Even in the ghetto, the kids understood that a flashy brand name printed on the side of a shoe was a ‘get out of being picked-on’ free card. The Nike emblem was worth the price of gold in the hallways. In some neighborhoods, children actually killed each other for a pair of trendy shoes.
But Matthew was expected to ‘make do.’ His clothes were from Goodwill. The logos on his t-shirts were faded. Probably for the better. While some might find great value in an original tour shirt from a 1973 Black Sabbath concert, in elementary school, it was just another badge of economic failure. Most kids never got around to making fun of his shirts, however, since the hand-me-down pants he wore were riddled with holes, many times in the most embarrassing of places.
"You guys run out of food or something?" Jason Bugle said as Matthew sat near the back of the bus.
"What?" he asked, letting his guard down. He actually thought Jason was asking a serious question.
"Looks like you've been snacking on your jeans!" he laughed and pointed to a severe tear down the side of Matthew's pants.
As the other students howled with delight, Matthew looked away. He wasn't sure why, but he thought about the ants that had invaded his bedroom at the beginning of the summer. A line of them traveling from a hole in the wall to a piece of birthday cake he had brought back from his cousin's house.
Ruthless: An Extreme Shock Horror Collection Page 19
