Slowly We Rot

by Bryan Smith

  Noah craned his head around as far as he could. The old man wasn’t in the basement at the moment, but the door at the top of the staircase was open. The wedge of light shining through it was brighter than before, which made Noah believe a significant amount of time had passed while he was unconscious. Daylight had been on the verge of beginning its early evening fade when the old man took him prisoner, which meant he must have slept through the night and into morning. It was hard to fathom having been out that long, but Noah supposed the severity of the beating he’d taken had something to do with that.

  The light visible through the door wasn’t the only source of illumination in the basement. A lit kerosene lamp sat on a card table against the basement’s back wall. When Noah’s attention settled on the old man’s other prisoner, he briefly wishing for a return to unconsciousness. The sight of the woman’s badly beaten body was a hard thing to take. Her midsection was covered in ugly purple bruises as well as other livid marks that looked like places where the old pervert had bitten her. Noah was grateful she was unconscious. He didn’t think he could take looking into her eyes while knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. But then she startled him by sucking in a big breath, opening her eyes, and lifting her chin slightly to peer in his direction.

  Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as she met his gaze. The strange thing was Noah had the sense this was more out of sympathy for him than any concern for herself. It was possible he was perceiving something that wasn’t there, but he didn’t think so. The longer he held her gaze, the more he was sure his first impression was correct. In a way, it made sense. She had obviously endured a lot of abuse over a significant period of time and was possibly resigned to her fate, while his suffering was just about to begin.

  Her pity made Noah’s anger flare brighter than it had at any point since the beginning of his ordeal. He peered up at the pipe to which the length of chain binding him was connected. It wasn’t very thick at all, maybe an inch or so in diameter, but it looked sturdy. There was no discernible give when he stood up on the tips of his toes and yanked on it. The woman made a muffled sound of distress when he did this. She shook her head when Noah looked at her, her eyes wide with alarm. He frowned, unsure why his testing of the pipe distressed her, but then he heard the first heavy thump of the old man’s booted feet coming down the steps.

  Noah bit back a cry of fear. His tormentor was returning to torture him again and he was even less capable of defending himself than before. The unfairness of it all made him want to scream. He had survived the apocalypse and endured the loss of his family, had spent all those years alone up on the mountain, afraid to come back out into the world. To wind up here after all that, chained up in some loathsome psychopath’s basement torture chamber, struck him as a horrible cosmic joke, an ultimate “fuck you” gesture from an unforgiving and uncaring universe.

  At the very least, the apocalypse should have acted as a total reset for humanity, a way of wiping the slate clean of filth like this monster. But obviously at least one had survived. Maybe the sadists and other bottom feeders were like cockroaches, resistant to toxins and prone to coming out into the light when their natural enemies weren’t present.

  The old man chuckled as he approached Noah and looked him up and down. “You’re a skinny fuck, but at least you ain’t all beat to hell yet, not like this one.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The old man smirked. “Because I can. And because I like it. Why else?”

  Noah grimaced. “You’re sick. There’s something wrong with you.”

  The old man slugged him in the face, snapping his head sharply backward and making him screech in agony. Even in the midst of pain, Noah hated crying out like that. It made him sound weak, more like a small, sniveling child instead of a grown man. On one level, he knew this wasn’t logical. He was at the mercy of a deranged individual. Grown or not, terror was the only reaction that made sense. And the man tormenting him wasn’t just any old sicko. He was strong. His punches packed a devastating power. Not crying out wasn’t a real option.

  None of which negated the self-loathing Noah felt when the man’s fists pounded into his abdomen, eliciting the usual shrill cries of pain as well as his first blubbering pleas for mercy.

  The begging seemed to appease the old man. He backed off after giving Noah a last hard slap across the face. The blow was delivered in a casual way, but it landed with enough force to make his whole head throb painfully. He squeezed his eyes shut as hot tears spilled down his cheeks.

  When he opened them again, the old man was sitting in a folding chair retrieved from the darker recesses of the basement. He had positioned the chair at a midpoint between his hanging prisoners but set far enough back that he could watch them both simultaneously. As he did this, he rubbed at the bulge in his jeans, slowly working himself into a frenzied state. After a while, he opened his pants and took out his engorged member, openly masturbating in front of them for several minutes.

  Noah stared at the floor, unable to take the old man’s leering scrutiny while this happened. His skin crawled with revulsion. His whole body thrummed with terrified anticipation of what might happen next. He couldn’t help whimpering when he heard the chair’s legs scrape on the concrete floor as the old man got to his feet. The next sound Noah heard was a fleshy pounding. His gaze remained riveted to the floor, but it was clear from the woman’s muffled whimpers that she was being assaulted. More tears gushed from his eyes as he realized what he felt most strongly in that moment was relief that the old man had picked the woman instead of him this time. This was followed by the deepest, most gut-wrenching sense of shame he’d ever felt.

  In a very short while, the assault on the woman ended. The next thing Noah heard was a zipper being pulled up, which was followed by the sound of footsteps coming his way. “I know what you’re thinking, boy. You’re glad that wasn’t you I was putting the wood to this time. Your time is gonna come, don’t you worry about that. The bitch won’t last much longer. It’s a good thing you came along when you did, ain’t it?”

  Noah didn’t say anything.

  The old man laughed. “There ain’t many people left in the world, you know. Shit, what am I telling you for? You’ve been out there. These days a man has to take what he can get. And, hell, a hole’s a hole, right?”

  The old man cackled, a sound alive with pure glee. He sounded like a demented child. Noah had a feeling he’d been the kind of kid who tortured animals and burned insects with a magnifying glass. He guessed the old man had been doing this kind of thing since long before the end of the world. He lived in a rural area. The houses out here—the ones still standing anyway—were spaced well apart from each other. It was the perfect place for a maniac like this guy to conduct his grisly work.

  A quizzical, squinty-eyed look replaced the old man’s grin. “I can see the wheels spinning in your head, boy. You got something you want to say?”

  “You’re glad the world ended, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Noah grunted. “Because you don’t have to bury your victims out back anymore. Why would you? There’s no more law around to worry about, right?”

  The old man’s expression turned shrewdly appraising. “Maybe you’re sharper than I figured. Got anything else you think you know about me?”

  “Matter of fact, I do.”

  “Well, spit it out.”

  “You’re a piece of fucking vermin. And like vermin, you should be exterminated.”

  The look on the old man’s face turned cold and furious. His eyes bulged and his nostrils flared as he sucked in air through clenched teeth. There was nothing Noah could do in the face of the explosion of rage he knew he was coming. But he didn’t regret his words, despite the pain he knew they’d earned him.

  To Noah’s surprise, though, the savage beating he expected didn’t happen. After seething for several moments, the old man unclenched his teeth and grinned again. “Got a de
ath wish, eh? Well, you ain’t gonna goad me into doing anything I ain’t ready to do. You’re gonna be here a long time, boy. But maybe I’ll get out my needle and thread and do to you what I done to her, then you’ll get to eat mush through a straw the rest of your miserable life. How’d you like that?”

  Noah didn’t say anything. The chilling words effectively squashed his defiance.

  The old man smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

  He laughed as he turned away from Noah and headed for the staircase. The laughter continued as he climbed the stairs and disappeared through the doorway. A moment later, the door slammed shut, leaving Noah to stew over the old man’s horrifying parting words. A glance over at the woman was all the reminder he needed that his captor didn’t make idle threats.

  Noah wanted to scream.

  But he didn’t dare make a sound.

  21 .

  Hours passed before the door at the top of the stairs creaked open again. Noah had spent the entire time wide awake, the victim of an agitated mind overwhelmed by lurid visions of mutilation and abuse. The urge to scream never went away, an impulse the ever-present fear kept at bay. But he was unable to hold back a little cry of terror as he heard the by now familiar heavy clomp of the old man’s boots as he came down the stairs.

  Noah’s gaze went to the floor. Soon footsteps were moving in his direction. Tremors racked his body as more pleas of mercy trembled at the edge of his tongue. The words went unspoken as the footsteps continued past him. Seconds later, the woman squealed loudly as the old man approached her. There was also a clank of twisting chain links as she flailed about in a desperate, vain attempt to get away from her tormentor.

  Noah told himself not to look, to just keep staring at the floor while the old psycho perpetrated whatever fresh atrocity he had in mind. But something inside him compelled him to turn his head toward the woman anyway.

  The old man had a hammer clenched in his right fist. The moment Noah looked his way, he took his first swing at the flailing woman. She turned her head just in time to prevent her jaw from absorbing the full impact of the hammer’s blunt end. It clipped her chin instead, making her squeal even louder. The sound the hammer made when it struck her made Noah’s gut clench. Then it thudded into the woman’s flesh a second time. After that, the struggle ceased and he watched as the entire sickening assault played out.

  At least another dozen blows connected, the old man concentrating most of them around the meatier sections of her body, though her ribs absorbed a few, too. The woman’s pitiful, mewling cries tore at Noah’s heart. More half-formed fantasies of revenge flitted through his head, but Noah pushed them away, unable to stomach how impossible they were.

  Noah could tell the old man wasn’t putting his full strength into the blows. He based this on his own knowledge of how hard he could hit. Upon seeing the hammer, his initial assumption was the old man had come to finish her off so he could focus on his new catch, but it seemed he’d been wrong about that. The bastard was pulling his punches and was clearly still committed to drawing out the woman’s suffering as long as possible.

  I’m in Hell, Noah thought. This basement is Hell and this man is the devil.

  After a seeming eternity, the old man stopped battering the woman with the hammer and approached Noah, whose gaze again went to the floor. Noah flinched when he felt the top of the hammer press against the underside of his chin, forcing him to lift his head.

  The old man grinned. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, boy. I’ve got something special in mind to break you in proper. What I just did to that gal? You’re gonna wish you were getting something like that instead. You just think on that some. See you in a bit.”

  He gave Noah a hard tap on the chin with the hammer, chortling at the pained yip this elicited. After that, the old man moved away from him and climbed the staircase in his usual unhurried way. This time when he disappeared through the doorway at the top of the stairs he left it open.

  Noah heard him clomping around in the kitchen for a while, whistling and sounding like a man without a care in the world. Noah’s breathing quickened as he tried to imagine what the old man was doing up there. It probably involved preparations for some unique form of torture.

  As always, there was no give when Noah yanked at the chain. The effort resulted in a loud clanking sound, which he was sure the old man could hear up in the kitchen. But Noah yanked at it again anyway, putting all his strength into it, because what the hell, he didn’t have anything to lose. No matter what he did, the old man was definitely going to torture him, possibly even mutilate him. If by some miracle he succeeded in tearing the pipe down from the ceiling, he at least might be able to put up some kind of fight.

  He yanked on the chain several more times. Every time he did it, the pipe remained as sturdy and unyielding as ever. The old man seemed unconcerned by the constant clanking sounds coming from the basement. Noah heard him chuckling occasionally. He was on the verge of despair when the old man abruptly stopped whistling and went dead silent for several moments.

  Then came a sound Noah needed a few moments to recognize as the old man’s boots moving with seeming stealth across the kitchen’s hardwood floor, with a much lighter tread than normal. This was followed by a long pause that made Noah frown. Maybe this was another of the old man’s ways of fucking with the minds of his captives. After all, they could only hear him and imagine what he was doing up there. It was possible he was exploiting this limitation in a subtle and quite deliberate way.

  But then the near-silence ended with a shattering of glass and a yelp of fright from the old man. This was followed by the sound of the side door being kicked in by someone of considerable strength. Next came a flurry of noises typical of an explosion of sudden, brutal violence—snarling grunts and crashing sounds accompanied by frequent shrieks of pain. The pained noises all seemed to be coming from the old man. This all happened in the space of a few seconds. Before he could even begin to guess at what was happening, a voice Noah knew cut through the jumble of confused, half-formed thoughts swirling in his head.

  “Noah! Where are you!?”

  His mouth dropped open.

  Aubrey. Holy shit.

  Hearing his sister’s voice astounded him so completely he was rendered momentarily speechless. He snapped out of it when the woman next to him made some frantic squealing noises. When his sister’s voice rang out again, he tried calling out to her, but it came out as a choked, nearly inaudible rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again.

  “Aubrey! Help!”

  This time she heard him and came through the doorway to stand on the landing at the top of the staircase. Strong emotion swelled in Noah at the sight of his sister. He’d been sure he would never see her again, yet here she was, still in that same tattered black dress. They had parted in the bitterest way imaginable, but that meant nothing now. He’d never been so happy to see anyone.

  She stood up there a moment peering into the semi-darkness. Then she pelted down the stairs and came to an abrupt halt a few feet from where Noah was hanging from the pipe. Her eyes opened wide in shock and her mouth moved soundlessly, words apparently escaping her. The horror in her expression made Noah realize she hadn’t become as hardened emotionally as he had feared.

  She let out a breath. “I’ll get Nick.”

  And with that, she turned away from him and sprinted back up the stairs.

  22 .

  Noah and the woman were freed from their bonds and gingerly led up the stairs by their rescuers. The woman could barely move without assistance. They were urged to step with caution as they passed through the doorway. There were shards of glass everywhere from the shattered door window.

  Noah’s clothes were on the kitchen table. He would later learn their presence there was the last in a chain of clues leading up to the rescue. Others included the backpack he’d dropped outside this house and the weapons he’d abandoned at the spot of his abduction. These items remained where they’d fall
en because the old man apparently believed there was no urgent reason to get rid of them. After all, hardly anyone passed through here anymore. If not for the old man’s complacency, Noah almost certainly would have remained hanging in the basement for a long time to come.

  He shrugged free of Aubrey’s grip and glared at the old man as he began to pull on his clothes. His former jailer was lashed to a chair at the table. He was in rough shape. Blood was leaking from countless gashes and his face was a swollen, purple mess. Despite all this, his mouth curled into another of those cruel grins when he made eye contact with Noah.

  “You gonna tell them about how I made you my bitch, boy?”

  “You didn’t do shit.”

  The old man laughed. “Don’t believe a word this bitch says. He’s just trying to save his pride. I rode--”

  Noah spied a hammer on the floor. It was resting amidst those shards of glass by the kicked-in door. That it was the same one the old man had used to beat on the woman was not in doubt. Noah finished dressing. Pointedly ignoring the old man, who was still spewing bullshit, he got up and walked over to the door to retrieve the hammer. The old man trailed off when he saw what his former prisoner was doing. Now he finally looked scared.

  Good.

  Noah glanced at Nick. “Cut him loose.”

  Nick frowned. The woman from the basement was in his arms, shivering and mewling softly. “You want to kill him? Go ahead. No need to cut him loose for that.”

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t want him tied up while I do this. It’s important. Please.”

  The old man laughed. “That’s what he said every time I gave him the meat. Never was sure whether he was begging me to stop or keep going.”

  Nick helped the woman into a chair and then took a knife from his utility belt. The old man looked scared again as Nick sawed through the twine binding him to the chair. And he also looked like he was done vacillating between fear and amusement. The look on his face was all terror now.