by CJ Bishop
“I hope you’re right,” Axel whispered. His heart lay in pieces in his chest as the image of Clint holding the dying child haunted Axel’s mind. The despair in the cowboy when he’d called Axel…it made sense now. His pain was real and oh so deep. Axel realized one of the kids had ventured close and he looked down to find a young boy of undeterminable age—surely at least thirteen?—staring at him.
“You were the one with the cowboy,” the kid said quietly. “You took Kelly and Raimi.”
Axel nodded. “Yes, that was me.”
The boy looked at him for a long, silent moment. “Her name was Grace.”
Axel frowned. “Whose name?”
“The girl who died in the cowboy’s arms.” The kid blinked. “She called him daddy. She thought he was her dad…come to save her.”
Oh, God…
“He cried,” the boy whispered with tears in his eyes.
Axel couldn’t deal with this. At a moment when Clint needed him the most, Axel hadn’t been there.
Two other kids who looked healthy and were dressed in normal clothes joined the boy. “He was really sad,” the girl said. She looked like she was in her early to mid-teens. “I read to him from the bible my mom gave me.”
You really are angels, aren’t you? Axel hadn’t been there…but they had. Clint hadn’t gone through it completely alone.
•♦•
“Jesus took a whip and chased men out of the temple because they had turned his father’s house of worship into a house of merchandise.” Clint strolled back and forth in front of the three guests. He paused and looked at them, eyes narrowed beneath a stiff, heavy brow. “What kind of whip do you think he would have used on men who make merchandise of little children?”
Cochise silently watched the cowboy. He knew where Clint was going with this.
“Maybe a whip like the one that was used on him?” He stared at the three men. None of whom made a reply. “It was called a scourge. A nasty little motherfucker that could reduce a human body to hamburger. You know those paintings you see of Jesus on the cross? A few scratches on his body and a couple trickles of blood on his face? They’re very misleading. After thirty-nine lashes from a scourge, he wouldn’t even look human anymore.”
Moving closer to Cochise, Cruz murmured, “Is he all right?”
The Egyptian nodded. Clint knew what he was doing, and what he had in store for these men was going to be ugly.
“The people of ancient times knew about torture,” Clint went on educating the guests. “Some may not realize it, but death by crucifixion was one of the worst. Jesus suffered through this hellish torture of beatings, scourging, and crucifixion to save mankind because the wages of sin is death, and without a death, the debt of sin could not be paid. But when you start hurting his precious ones…committing vile acts on the innocent…you are shitting on his sacrifice—rejecting it. So, it falls on you to pay for your own sins. And I find it only fitting that you pay for them as he did.”
It falls on you to pay for your own sins. Cochise would pay for his sins one day as well.
•♦•
Clint gathered up the three barbed-wire crowns and handed two off to Cochise and Cruz.
“You’re fucking crazy.” Olson tried to scramble from his chair, but his injured leg wouldn’t hold him, and he fell back into the seat, nearly toppling it over. “Stay the fuck away from me!” he screamed when the Egyptian advanced on him.
Cochise’s cold gray eyes turned to stone and Clint read his thoughts on his face; did you back off when the kids screamed the same thing?
The three gangsters walked around behind their designated sinner, holding the crowns carefully so as not to stab themselves. Vinny was beginning to regain his wits, though he remained visually impaired.
“What’re you doing?” the cook whimpered, his swollen, blistered tongue muddling his words. He squirmed in his chair and Cruz wielded a knife, touching the blade to the cook’s other ear.
“Hold still or lose this one, too,” Cruz warned.
Cruz and Cochise looked at Clint. Sanchez and the rest of the men stood back a few feet and watched in silence. Clint looked down at Barron; the man didn’t have much fight left in him since the knife to the crotch. The crudely-fashioned crown settled over the crest of Barron’s skull, the tips of the long nails lightly pricking his scalp. The man shuddered. A mewling whine escaped through his nostrils. Clint felt nothing. He added pressure, forcing the crown onto his head. The mewling swelled into a wailing scream as the nails dug in, grinding Barron’s skull and puncturing the bone.
Clint nodded at the other two men. Cruz and Cochise crowned Olson and Vinny. Cruz’s face pinched with disgust when the thick, bulbous blisters on the cook’s head popped and oozed murky pus. Vinny quivered then began to shake as his cries distorted in the swollen caverns of his mouth.
The sharpest, loudest scream burst from Olson. Panic struck, and he fought Cochise, attempting to rip the crown off his head. The Egyptian snarled and grabbed Olson’s left arm, wrenched it back and up hard enough to dislocate it from the socket, tearing a strangled scream from Olson.
“Do it again,” Cochise barked, “and I’ll break the fucking thing off.” In a single forceful thrust, Cochise rammed the crown onto his head, sending the man into shuddered convulsions as blood streamed from the deep puncture wounds and lacquered his face.
“Did you bring the items from the guest room?” Clint asked.
Sanchez answered. “Out in the trunk of the car.”
“The whip that Greco made me…is it in there, too?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Clint left Barron gagging and quivering in the chair. “There’s a pole out in the front yard. Looks like it used to be a flagpole or something. It’ll work.”
“For what?” Sanchez asked.
“A whipping post.” Clint motioned to Cruz and Cochise. “Bring them outside.”
Sanchez helped Cruz with Vinny. Clint instructed a couple of the men to haul Barron out. Cochise had no problem moving Olson despite the man’s injured leg.
They dumped the three men on the frozen ground in a patch of snow. “Strip them down,” Clint told the men. “All the way.” He retrieved the items from the trunk, including a spool of thin wire that he tossed to Sanchez. “We’ll start with the cook. Tie him to the pole.”
Clint watched them while he untangled the leather tails of the whip and shook it out, the embedded nails clanking dully against each other. He had used it only one other time—on his brother.
Chapter 27
Barron lay still in the snow, chilled to the bone, a blinding universal pain pumping through him. He didn’t dare move his head—couldn’t move it—but didn’t need to do so to see what was happening. The winter landscape was blurred and hazy through his squinted eyes. The two main focal points of pain were his crotch and his head, though his hip and ankles continued to scream, especially after being dragged from inside.
Warm wetness seeped through his crotch. Blood. If he was lucky, he would bleed to death before they could do anything else to him. But he feared it wouldn’t be soon enough as he watched the men tie Vinny’s hands around the pole with wire. The cook showed real signs of life for the first time since getting dunked in his own slop. His gargled wails were fucking eerie, echoing out into the bitter winter wonderland like the haunting of a dead tortured soul stuck in the land of the living. It wasn’t nearly as eerie and terrifying as the screams that suddenly erupted when the cowboy laid the whip to his bare flesh.
Horror struck Barron as chunks of Vinny’s body were ripped off him, spraying blood across the snow. His screams were drowned in his gagging. Vinny was rotated when there was nothing left of his back side but shredded, bleeding hamburger. The large friend of the cowboy took over. Before continuing with the whipping, he walked up to the cook, unsheathed his big-ass knife—and cut off Vinny’s dick.
“Holy fuck!” Olson cried from a couple feet away. “Fuck…fuck…Barron—holy fuck!”
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Barron couldn’t speak, his throat clamped shut. Terror surged through his veins, pumping into his heart. Thump-thump-thump! Maybe he would have a heart attack before it was his turn. Would he be next? Or Olson?
The scourging continued and ceased just short of Vinny’s demise.
Fuck, he’s really going to do it—he’s going to fucking crucify us!
•♦•
The cook was unconscious and might not survive until the grand finale. He would still take his place on the wall, dead or alive. The other two were the ones that Clint intended to keep alive till the end.
Clint approached Barron and Olson, his breath quick from the recent exertion. The cook’s blood spackled Clint’s front. He looked at Barron, limp in the snow which was turning crimson from the blood draining out of his head and crotch. “It’s your lucky day, motherfucker—you get to go last.”
“No…” Olson cried when Cruz and Sanchez dragged him up off the ground. “No! let me go!”
Clint halted them and seized Olson’s stare. “Give me one good reason we should release you. If you can come up with just one…maybe we’ll let you go.”
The man’s mind worked frantically behind his bulging eyes. “I won’t do it again,” he offered desperately, pathetically. “I swear—I won’t! I won’t go near another kid as long as I live! Please!”
Clint nodded. “Not a bad reason. Let me run it by the kids in the living room and see what they think.” He took a few steps toward the porch then stopped. “Oh, wait.” He cast a sidelong look at Olson. “I forgot, they can’t participate because they’re all dead.” He jabbed a finger at the pole and Cruz and Sanchez shoved Olson forward, unmindful of his dislocated arm and injured leg.
“No!”
Ignoring his panicked wails, the two men secured his hands to the pole, the thin wire gouging into his flesh. “Get comfortable, fucker,” Cruz said and smacked Olson’s head against the post. He screamed as the crown hit the pole, embedding the nails a fraction deeper in his skull.
Clint circled him, making a wide arc around the pole. The whip swayed casually back and forth. Olson locked on the whip and he attempted to balance himself on his good leg. He couldn’t hold his head upright and it lay against the post, purple veins snaking down his forehead and temples and into his face. “Don’t…please…I’ll do anything…don’t do this…”
“Anything?” Clint halted and stood ankle-deep in a patch of blood-stained snow.
“Yes…yes!” Olson cried with a tendril of hope. “Anything!”
Walking up behind him, Clint asked brittle, “Can you bring the dead kids back to life?”
“What…?”
“You said anything,” Clint murmured. “You want to save your hide, then bring them back to life.”
“Wh-what’re you talking about?” he choked. “I-I can’t.”
“Then you lied when you said you would do anything.”
“I can’t! It’s impossible!”
“Not my problem. You shouldn’t make offers you can’t deliver on.”
“No one can bring the dead to life!” Olson wailed. “That isn’t fair!”
Clint went rigid. “Fair? Fair?” He grabbed the back of the man’s neck and pushed his head hard against the post, grinding the nails of the crown into his skull. “Was it fair to these kids to be raped? Their innocence ripped away? To be thrown away like fucking trash?” His face twisted in fury and he punched Olson in the kidneys—once, twice, three times. The man howled in pain and his leg buckled, dropping his full weight on his arms. The thin wire cut into his wrists, drawing blood. Olson screamed as his dislocated arm wrenched beneath the burden of his body.
Clint took a few steps back, his adrenaline pumping and rage boiling. He jerked the whip back and brought it down with full force. The leather tongues licked the man’s body and the teeth sank in—then tore out bites of his chilled flesh.
The early afternoon resonated with the cries and screams of the condemned as crimson rain fell on the snow-packed earth.
•♦•
Barron squeezed his eyes shut when the cowboy’s companion came at Olson with the knife. Closing his eyes didn’t block out the blood-chilling shriek of the man being separated from his favorite body part. He didn’t look when feet crunched through snow and frozen grass. He didn’t look as Olson’s body was dumped on the ground not two feet away, still conscious and gagging on his own bubbling spit and whimpers. Barron clamped his eyes tighter, willing the nightmare to be over, trying like fuck to wake up.
A strong hand grabbed his wounded dick and his eyes snapped open. “No…!” The cry hardly flew from his lips before the blade severed his precious flesh, robbing him of the one thing that made him a man. “Fuuuck!” His screams clogged his throat as his eyes rolled back and he flopped in the snow which melted with the heat of his blood and turned to crimson rivers.
Barron was lost in a cloud of pain and barely felt the men lift him off the ground. He became aware of his warm blood flooding his thighs, running all the way to his useless feet. Then his face was against the wooden post as one man held him in place while another wound thin wire around his wrists and the pole. When they let go of him, he sagged against his arms, his feet unable to hold him up. The wire bit into his wrists—his broken hand singing along with the rest of his body.
“No…” he blubbered against the weathered post, his lips dragging on the rough wood. He couldn’t hold his eyes open as the pain racked him from head to toe. His bleeding crotch bumped the pole, blood running down to the frozen ground. “Don’t…please…”
“The merciless deserves no mercy,” the cowboy drawled deep and low, his voice as deadly as the devil himself. Perhaps he was the devil…and this hishell. Barron’s lungs suddenly constricted as something bit into his flesh, teeth sinking into muscle. He couldn’t breathe as his lungs remained locked and the teeth held—then suddenly extracted, taking bites of flesh with it. His lungs expanded all at once, releasing the scream lodged at the base of Barron’s throat.
•♦•
The kids’ faces rose in Clint’s mind—Grace, Luke, Jacob, Eric, Nina—all the children, from the youngest to the oldest, their gaunt features and sallow skin, haunted eyes reflecting nightmares that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Clint tightened his grip on the whip handle and brought it down harder as his rage and fury surged from his body and into the leather tongues. All he could see was red and didn’t know if it was the color of his rage or Barron’s blood—or both.
The man’s screams had died away as the pain engulfed him, strangling him.
The whip came down, non-stop, tearing at flesh already mangled and shredded.
“Enough.” Cochise caught his hand, halting the scourging. “Any more and he’ll die right here.”
Clint trembled and clenched the whip, then released it to the Egyptian.
“Take them back inside,” Cochise instructed the men. Cruz and Sanchez approached Clint and stood with the Egyptian.
Clint looked at them; they were concerned for him. Maybe they should be. “Let’s finish this and be done with this shithole.” He turned away and walked across the lawn, boots crunching through the stained snow and frozen grass whose brittle blades dripped with blood. The three men followed him without hesitation. At some point over the years, he had become the leader. Even Cochise took his cues from Clint, not that he needed to take cues from anyone. Clint wondered if he deserved this position of authority. Right now, he didn’t think he would’ve minded so much if someone else took over. Axel’s face immediately formed behind his eyes. Maybe it was Axel he longed to submit to at this moment, and lose himself in the safety and security of the young man’s arms.
Thoughts of Axel lingered in his mind as he walked into the main room. “Bring me the spikes and the hammer.” The items were quickly delivered to him. “Is the cook still alive?”
Cruz produced some smelling salt and waved it under the man’s nose. Vinny gasped and jerked awake. “Still
with us,” Cruz confirmed.
“All right,” Clint nodded. “Bring him on over.” He motioned to the wall and the first cross.
Vinny whimpered and struggled but the lashing and blood loss had robbed him of his strength. He was helpless against the men as they hoisted him up and held him while Clint stepped up on one of the chairs with a spike and the hammer and shoved the cook’s right hand against the wooden beam. He pressed the rough tip of the spike into his palm. “The wages of sin is death,” Clint muttered. “Time to pay up, motherfucker.” He brought the hammer down with all his strength, driving the spike through Vinny’s hand and into the beam beneath.
The cook wasn’t all out of screams as another exploded forth, his body contorting in the men’s grip.
“Hold him,” Clint ordered and moved around to the other side, driving in a second spike. He stepped off the chair and indicated the man’s feet. “One on top of the other.”
Cruz and Sanchez grabbed the cook’s flailing feet and forced them down against the beam, shoving the sole of his left foot onto the top of his right.
Brandishing the third spike, Clint glanced at Barron and Olson, both of whom remained conscious and aware, their faces a mask of horror as they watched their friend get crucified. “Patience,” Clint told them. “Your turn is coming.” He held the spike to the top of Vinny’s foot and swung the hammer hard, busting through bone. Vinny shrieked and wailed and bucked against the vertical beam as the two men clutched his ankles, holding his feet in place. It took a few extra swings to get the spike all the way through both feet and nailed to the wood beneath.
•♦•
Despite his brutalized and mutilated body, Olson’s primitive survival instinct kicked in. He screamed and fought the men as they dragged him to the third cross at the end, leaving the middle vacant for Barron.
“How can you fucking do this to another human being?” Olson yelled at them, terror clogging his voice.
