by Tia Wilson
Blackjack eyes followed every movement that Darian made as if he was watching a dangerous rattlesnake that could strike at any moment.
“Who the fuck are you?” Blackjack barked with no sign of fear in his voice.
Darian walked behind him and placed his hand on Blackjacks head and gently and almost lovingly started running his hands through his hair. Blackjack tried to jerk away and Darian grabbed a handful of it and roughly pulled his head back.
“Cut his throat now my love,” Emily said as she walked around them excited by the pain Blackjack was in.
Darian drew a knife from his belt and held it against Blackjacks throat. The skin dimpled and stretched under the pressure from the blades edge. If he exerted even the slightest bit of pressure Blackjacks life would end.
“No please, please, don’t do it,” Linda screamed.
Emily and Darian both laughed at Linda’s anguished plea. It was the sound of a demon and his concubine cruelly drawing glee from the shapeless human skewered on the pitchfork.
Darian bent in close to Blackjacks ear and whispered, “Should I listen to this bitch? Should I spare you?” he stepped away from Blackjack and then said, “You are going to wish I ended you quickly.”
Blackjack locked eyes with Linda and she could see a burning defiance in him. His look told her that no matter how dire the situation was he was not going to go down like this. Linda wished she could share his strength, inside she felt nothing but an acrid roiling swell of fear. She felt like a little girl who just wanted to throw the sheets over her head so that the monsters under the bed wouldn’t get her. She closed her eyes tight for a second wishing that when she opened them all this would be some sort of horrible phantasm. It was not to be. Darian and Emily circled them like something ripped from a dark story to frighten children. Darian was bent and twisted and walked with a noticeable limp. Emily spun and twirled as she circled her prey a look of pure unbridled joy on her face as she danced around.
Emily stopped her manic dance behind Linda and grabbed the back of her chair. She kicked the chair leg and tilted it back looking down imperiously into Linda’s scared face. From this angle Linda could see dried blood under Emily’s chin and along the nape of her neck. The sight of this leant Emily a feral animal like quality, which ratcheted up Linda’s fear. Emily tilted the chair back further and Linda’s view was to the rotten and crumbling ceiling of the factory. In the rafters high above two pigeons sat oblivious to the chaos below them. The chair and Linda were dragged across the floor and left closer to Blackjack.
“A ringside seat for you,” Emily said as she let go of the chair and it swung forward onto its four legs. Linda’s teeth clattered as her chair came to a rest and as it did she felt the ropes on her wrist loosen ever so slightly. It wasn’t much but it was a start. She flexed her arms only a tiny and hopefully imperceptible amount so as not to draw attention to herself. What was once an ironclad restraint now had the most minuscule amount of give.
Darian and Emily stood between the two facing chairs and stillness befell the proceedings. The covered trolley was pulled closer and Darian ran his fingers lovingly over the cloth covering the contents.
“Let her go,” Blackjack said, “It’s me you obviously want, she is an innocent in all this.”
Darian chuckled at this. A loud crack rang out in the vaulted room as he struck Blackjack open handed across the face. “Don’t talk to me about the innocent. Was she in the wrong place at the wrong time? Tough luck. She needs to know that anybody who falls into your orbit leaves permanently damaged. Don’t worry I’m not going to kill her. She needs to see and hear about what kind of man you really are. Do you not remember me?”
Blackjack looked puzzled for a minute and then said, “Yeah I recognize you, you are another freak who wasn’t hugged enough by your mother and daddy never told you he loved you. Maybe good old dad fiddled with you,” he said spitting out this last line in anger. “You are a freak who is afraid to face me man to man.”
Darian started to clap his hands together slowly in mock praise.
“Very good, what do you think I should do? Untie you so we can partake in a bout of fisticuffs? I intend for you to suffer the way I did. The last time we met I spent 6 months in hospital and it took me a year before I could walk properly. You are going to feel what it is like to be weak and helpless, your body betraying you time and again. Pins holding you together. The pain of surgery after surgery just so I could walk again. You will never be able to feel what I did, all I can do is help you understand a little bit.”
“Fuck you” Blackjack said.
“Enough of this pointless chatter,” Darian said as he pressed a strip of tape over Blackjack’s mouth.
Linda’s eyes were wide in horror as she followed Darian as he approached his covered trolley. He moved as if in slow motion, every step feeling heavy and laden with doom. He gripped the corner of the cloth between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. Linda’s heart hammered painfully in her chest and her body was doused in an icy cold sweat. She flexed her wrists again and the ropes loosened another notch. She slowly moved her them back and forth and could feel her soft skin wear off from the harsh friction. The pain in her wrists was nothing more than a background hum to the rising panic filling her being. She knew if she did not react fast, both her and Blackjack wouldn’t walk away from this. Linda had no plan of action; she was going on the pure animal drive to survive and to free herself.
Laid out on the trolley in two neat rows were six syringes. Three contained a red liquid and the opposite three were filled with a deep green solution. Also neatly placed three to a row were some light bulbs. Beside these were an old instant camera, the kind that prints out your picture on a small postcard sized print. Darian walked over and picked up the camera. He pointed to Emily and she stood beside Blackjack and put her arm around him. She smiled broadly as if she was on a day out to the fair. Blackjack tried to shout from behind his taped mouth and it came out as a muffled groan. Emily’s smile only broadened. Emily bent down and kissed Blackjack on the cheek as Darian snapped the picture. The flash popped and momentarily the brilliant light blinded Linda.
“Now me.” Darian said passing the camera to Emily.
Darian got on his hunkers and threw his arm around Blackjack. He withdrew his knife from his belt and pressed the tip of it below Blackjacks left eye.
“Stay still. I wouldn’t want to hurt you. Yet.” Darian said.
The shutter clicked capturing the macabre moment to film. Darian shook the expelled picture and let it develop, Emily did the same with hers. They were both silent as the pictures slowly came into view and then they both cooed like proud parents seeing the first picture of a newborn. Darian took a leather notebook from his inside pocket and slipped both pictures inside it.
“Ok let’s get down to business,” he said as he walked towards Blackjack. He withdrew the knife from his belt and slipped it under Blackjacks shirt. The material ripped easily as the blade sliced through it. Darian pulled away the ragged material from Blackjacks body and threw it on the floor. Blackjacks body was covered in a sheen of sweat. His torso was bruised across his chest and shoulder from the impact of the trip wire and subsequent his fall from the bike. His ribs were still bandaged from Linda’s application in what seemed like a lifetime ago to her. His muscles were tight and visible under the restrictive pressure of the ropes. The sinews in his arms and shoulders strained against his binds haplessly.
Linda could feel the clock ticking, every second sounding like a death bell in her skull. If she couldn’t somehow free herself from the ropes both of them would die, she was sure of this. She felt one of the knots slip slightly over the bones of her wrist. Whoever tied her had made a sloppy mistake and it might be the only thing that could save her. In her head she counted at a steady rhythm. On every odd number she pushed her wrists apart and tried to ignore the searing pain of the rope burns. At first it seemed futile with the rope loosening in tiny increments, then
the knot started to loosen significantly. Linda saw a glimmer of hope that they could get out of this hellish scenario. She continued to push past the burning pain and each twist of her wrists edged her closer to freedom.
Darian picked up a syringe filled with a red liquid and held it up to a beam of sun that was beginning to intersect the factory. The sun glinted off the syringe and cast dappled patches of red on the dirty floor. Darian admired the syringe as if he was holding a beautiful gem in his fingers.
“Do you know what the worst part about having my legs shattered was?” he asked Blackjack, “The cramps that would tear through my legs. I’m not talking about the kind of thing that wakes you up at night and is a little uncomfortable. No, these sent my legs into spasms. The muscles on my legs knotted as hard as oak. Have you ever seen stitches rip because the muscle below it is cramping and contracting so hard? I have felt it. I have endured it. It has made me stronger but I’m afraid you wont be so lucky.”
He tapped the syringe to clear any air bubbles and continued, “This here is a little something that they use in horses. I’ve no idea what it’s used for. I do know that it causes muscles to spasm out of control. A warning for you my soon to be dead friend, if I inject it too close to your heart it will probably stop it dead and I don’t want that to happen just yet.”
He placed the syringe back on the trolley and ran his finger along each item as if he was a man browsing in a store. His finger stopped on a lightbulb and he tapped the thin glass smiling.
Darian picked up the light bulb and held it between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted it up towards a beam of light as if inspecting an item of great beauty, a thin smile playing across his face as the glass twinkled. “This was Emily’s idea. She is quite the little devil when it comes to inventing ways to hurt people. A couple of dollars bought me a box of these common household bulbs. They are nothing special, you could pick them up in most any store across the country. Those couple of dollars are going to bring me a whole mess of fun.”
Darian motioned to Emily and she stood behind Linda and withdrew a hunting knife from a sheath slung around her waist. Emily roughly gripped Linda’s hair and yanked her head back. She pressed the tip of the knife under her eye and made a demented soothing sound as if she was trying to get a small baby to sleep.
“If you don’t comply with me she will pop out her eye like an over ripe grape. If you continue to be stubborn her second eye is removed. We will get creative after that if you are still not in a giving mood,” Darian said.
Linda moaned as the knife tip dug into the soft skin beneath her eye. The menacing metal of the blade filled her whole field of vision. All hope of escape dissolved like newspapers strewn on a rainy street. These two unpredictable freaks were never going to stop torturing them. Tears streamed from her eyes as the darkness of the situation enveloped her and wrapped fetid arms of despair tightly around her chest.
“Open wide or she loses her depth perception in one flick of Emily’s dainty wrist.” Darian said. Blackjack hesitated for a second looking over at Linda as Emily hopped from foot to foot with glee pressing the knife harder into Linda’s soft flesh. Blackjack opened his mouth wide and Darian stood in front of him and waved the bulb below his eye line.
“This little beauty is one of those new low energy bulbs. I remember reading somewhere that they were coated on the inside with something highly toxic.” he said placing the coiled glass of the bulb between Blackjack teeth, “Whatever you do don’t bite down.”
Darian stood back to admire his handiwork and Emily giggled as if she had just seen a cute puppy take his first steps.
“Emily is going to take the knife away from your bitches eye socket, if you try to spit that light bulb out I’ll have both her eyes out before it even smashes on the floor. Nod if you understand tough guy.”
Blackjack nodded slowly, it was the nod of the man facing the firing squad who knew with full inevitability what was going to come next. Linda’s chest heaved with sobs as she tried to contain the full force of her panic behind the crumbling walls of her resolve. She didn’t want to give these two twisted creatures the satisfaction of seeing her pain. The ropes on her wrist moved another minuscule notch bringing her one step closer to the chance of freedom. Blackjack needed to hang on and endure through whatever twisted games they had planned for him
Lifting a syringe up high Darian spoke in a loud deep voice, his usual reedy and weak voice seemed to be banished while he heaped more pain on Blackjack. “See this here. You know what will happen when I inject this into your jaws?” He snapped his jaws shut and laughed in Blackjacks face. He ran the tip of the needle along Blackjacks face, tracing the outline of his broad square jaw with the pinprick of the tip. Blackjacks eyes were wide in horror but he never looked at Darian, he looked past him and focused on a spot off in the distance.
Darian made a motion to plunge the needle into Blackjacks face and then stopped at the last second. He took the bulb out of Blackjacks mouth and laughed at him cruelly. “Too soon, don’t you agree?” he said as stood back and glared at his captive. “Maybe I should try somewhere a little less definitive, somewhere else for maximum pain. I’m a fair man so ill give you some time to think it over. The bulb goes into your mouth if you don’t have any suggestions.” He placed the bulb back onto the metal trolley and walked off to the back office with Emily trailing behind him.
Linda exhaled loudly as if she had been holding her breath for an eternity. Her body went slack against the ropes at this brief moment of respite.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The three riders stopped in the deserted lot in front of the harbor. Row upon row of stacked and rusting cargo containers created branching corridors and blind alleys any one of which could lead to a trap. Pops stomach lurched as he got off his bike and approached a weather beaten map of the site. Every fibre in his being screamed at him to get on his bike and drive away. He knew that he had to do this for Blackjack and Red. The map displayed a list of cargo containers by number and color coded zone. His destination was in the green zone close to the back of the area. “You two go here and here,” he said pointing to the black and grey zones on the map. “That should give you a good view to where I’m going. Dig in and wait for my signal,” he said mounting his bike.
Pops took a side road that lead to the back of the massive container lot and parked his bike under a covered awning. The whole place was silent and not even a bird squawked.
Pops stopped at a row of containers and checked the serial number on the outside to see if it matched the one in the picture. It did. Pops placed one hand on the head of the claw hammer hanging from his belt. The weight of it in his hands reassured him, he felt a little safer knowing it was there and ready to be brandished in a split second. He reached out and grabbed the handle of the container door and yanked it down. The door swung open on well oiled hinges. The interior of the container was lit by florescent lights making everything inside look stark under the harsh illumination. The two brothers lay on the floor in a pool of congealed blood. Sitting on the chair and tied to it with electrical cord was Red, his head flung backwards. He had been shot below the chin sending a spray of blood and viscera over the walls and ceiling. Pops stomach churned at the sight. Red had been like a younger brother to him and he had often sought Pop’s counsel on some of the major deals the gang might get involved in. Red was one of the core revengeful eight whose numbers were now quickly dwindling. Pops felt like his life and the gangs very fabric were being torn apart by some force greater than them.
The gang had worked from the shadows for so many years, dispatching lesser hoods and gangs with ease when they stood in their way. Now it seemed like it was all starting to come back to cruelly bite them. Someone was out to kill the core members of the gang in a hope that it would pull them asunder. Pops would go down with his hammer swinging viscously before he let anybody destroy the gang and his fellow brothers in arms. Fly's buzzed around the corpses and several crawled over the faces of the fa
llen. Pops felt a greasy queasiness well up inside, he had to get outside and get some fresh air. Before he turned away he noticed a splash of color on Reds chest. A bright sticky note was stuck to him. Pops entered the container and pulled the note off. In neat block letters it said, “You fucked up. Now Blackjack. You die”.
