Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  Grant took a few steps out into the clearing and allowed himself a few moments to take in the gorgeous mountain scenery, which was still faintly visible thanks to the last lingering traces of daylight. In just another few minutes, the last of that light would be gone and the landscape would disappear under a cloak of darkness. He imagined sitting out on the cabin’s porch in the middle of the night surrounded by all that inky, impenetrable blackness and felt a chill.

  There couldn’t be a more perfect place to do the awful things they had in mind.

  7

  BY THE TIME THEY WERE able to get the stranger out of the camper and into the cabin, he was showing signs of regaining consciousness. He groaned and weakly mumbled something unintelligible after they dumped him on the floor of the main room.

  Lindsey squatted next to him and snapped her fingers over his face, making him blink slowly and squint at her through red-rimmed eyes. “Hey there, sleepyhead. We’re about to get the fun started. Aren’t you excited?”

  He groaned again and forced his eyes open wider after his eyelids started drooping again. The gag muffled the words he tried to say, but it sounded like, “Where am I?”

  Lindsey laughed. “Where are you? You’re at the end of the fucking line. This is it for you, pendejo.”

  Still squatting above him, she craned her head around, surveying the interior of the cabin. She’d never been here before and had been expecting something like the type of dilapidated cabin she’d seen in so many horror movies, a rickety old hovel barely fit for human habitation, but this place was nice. There’d never been any rational foundation for the internalized image. The Weatherbys were well-off people in general. They wouldn’t spend their mountain getaways in some falling-down old tin shack. She nonetheless felt vaguely let down.

  The main room was wide open and spacious, with a large, L-shaped leather sofa and leather recliner facing an enormous wall-mounted flatscreen TV to the left as one came in through the front door. Elsewhere was a large area clearly meant for dining and recreation and a recessed kitchen nook that was also far bigger than she’d expected. A set of sturdy-looking bookshelves was stuffed-to-bursting with old board games. Beyond where the sofa and TV were situated was a wooden staircase leading to the second floor where she assumed the bedrooms were. A glance up at the second-floor landing appeared to confirm this, with multiple closed doors visible on the other side of the unpainted wooden railing. Of particular interest was how clean the place was. There was very little in the way of dust anywhere.

  The man on the floor groaned again and struggled to lift his bound hands toward her in a pitifully beseeching way. Lindsey snapped a finger against his nose, making him flinch. “Hey, honey, how often does this place get used? It’s so goddamn clean.”

  Grant came closer and peered down at the bound man, his expression mildly curious. He shrugged. “I think Justin and Kurt were here last week.”

  Justin was Grant’s bisexual first cousin, and Kurt was the guy he was currently dating. Lindsey had fucked both of them in a wild, drunken threesome two days before her wedding to Grant. There were pictures of Justin taking her from behind stored away in a secret online photo album.

  She made a face and shook her head in a display of disgust. “Ugh. I hate those guys. But the cleanliness makes sense now. You know how queers are.”

  Grant flinched at the comment. “Uh . . . isn’t that a bit of a bigoted stereotype?”

  Lindsey smirked as she stood up. “We’re about to torture and kill a man and you’re worried about my lack of cultural sensitivity?”

  He shrugged, looking a little sheepish now. “I don’t really care, I guess. It’s just a bit of a surprise. You’re always so into how woke you are on social media.”

  She laughed. “Baby, that shit is all for show. It’s a mask, a way to make people think I’m normal and caring. The truth is, I don’t give a shit about anybody in this world other than you and me. I hate all people of all races, genders, and sexual orientations.”

  “Huh.”

  She rolled her eyes and made her lips pouty as she approached her husband and pulled him into a light embrace. “Don’t be that way. I can see the wheels spinning in your head. You think I’ve been dishonest with you.”

  He shrugged but didn’t attempt to pull out of the embrace. “More like you chose not to show me everything behind the mask. You didn’t have to do that. I could’ve handled it.” He glanced in a pointed way at the bound man on the floor. “I mean, I’m going along with this, right?”

  She smiled broadly a moment before pressing herself against him and kissing him lustily on the mouth for several seconds before pulling away again. “You’re right, baby. I shouldn’t have kept that part of me hidden from you. No more secrets. That’s a promise. Now do me a favor and go fetch the rest of the duct tape from the camper. The toolbox, too. I want to get started on this guy.”

  He nodded, smiling. “Be right back.”

  Lindsey’s smile vanished the moment he was out the door. She turned away from the door, which Grant had left open, and again squatted above their captive. He was close to fully awake now, staring up at her, eyes brimming with tears. Her face remained an emotionless blank as she grabbed the crotch of his jeans and squeezed. He gasped in terror, apparently certain she was about to begin the torture by crushing his balls, but that was not her intent here. She massaged his genitals through the fabric of his jeans the way she would with any man she was attempting to turn on. At first there was no physical response and the look on his face conveyed a deep level of confusion, but she kept at it and in another moment she began to feel a slight stiffening of his cock. She was sure he would’ve soon become fully erect, but she took her hand away and stood up when she heard Grant mounting the creaky steps to the porch.

  Turning away from the captive, her smile returned as soon as Grant came through the door and kicked it shut behind him. “That took a while. Everything okay out there?”

  Grant was frowning again as he carried the toolbox and a medium-sized cardboard box filled with rolls of duct tape over to the dining area and set them on the table there. “Took me a few minutes to find the toolbox. It wasn’t where I thought I put it. Had to hunt around a bit.” He sighed and shook his head. “Unusual memory lapses bug me. Can’t help thinking of my grandmother when shit like that happens.”

  This was a reference to Grammy Evelyn, his grandmother on his mother’s side of the family. The woman had suffered from Alzheimer’s for years before passing away last year.

  The corners of her mouth drew down in an expression of sympathy as she said, “Oh, Grant, honey, you’ve got years and years to go before you have to seriously worry about anything like that.”

  Grant was a young man, so this was almost certainly true. Besides, she knew he hadn’t suffered any kind of memory lapse. She’d intentionally switched the toolbox to a different storage cabinet during her time alone in the camper back at the roadside clearing. This was a carefully calculated move to allow her an early private moment with the captive. It’d worked out precisely as she’d foreseen.

  “Come on, help me get him into one of those chairs.”

  Arranged around the table was a set of four identical chairs, the seats of each chair pushed up under the table. Grant pulled one of them out and turned it so it was facing away from the table. Each of them then grabbed their captive under an arm and heaved him up. The toes of his work boots skidded across the wooden floor as they dragged him over to the dining area and slowly lowered him down onto the sturdily built chair, taking care to slide his already bound hands over the back of the chair. Although the man was conscious now, he remained somewhat woozy from the sedation drug still circulating in his system. His eyes looked glassy and his head kept lolling to the side.

  Lindsey used duct tape to lash the man’s ankles to the legs of the chair. After that, she wound thick layers of tape around the length of his legs up to his knees, a job that required the use of two full rolls of duct tape. With ano
ther roll, she fully encased his hands in tape, then used another to bind his arms to the slats of the chair’s back. After taking a moment to check out her work, she judged it satisfactory.

  They were about ready to carry out their first kill together. An important distinction. Together. This would be Grant’s first kill, but it would be her second. The first had happened several years ago.

  That she’d already previously killed a person was another of the many things Grant still didn’t know about her. Back in college, she’d been getting high on the roof of a nightclub with a girl she’d met in the bathroom only minutes earlier. Rooftop access was technically barred to patrons, but the girl knew how to get up there anyway. They were all alone up there as they made out and did multiple bumps of coke. Lindsey didn’t actually like coke, but it felt like the thing to do in the moment. At one point the girl went over to the edge of the roof and said something vapid about how beautiful the city looked at night. On impulse, Lindsey shoved her off the roof and the girl fell to her death on the sidewalk below.

  Lindsey hurried back the way she’d come and slipped out of the nightclub without making eye contact with anyone. She was pretty sure no one had seen her in the company of the girl she’d just killed. They hadn’t spent any time together at the bar or out on the dance floor. There’d been no one else in the bathroom with them when they met. The girl was powerfully attracted to her and impulsively proffered an invitation that wound up leading to her death. There was nothing at all to connect them. Those first weeks after the incident were nonetheless tense as she dreaded a knock on the door from the cops, but that never happened and soon she realized she was in the clear.

  Technically, she was lying to Grant by allowing him to believe this would be her first foray into the world of murder, but in spirit she was being more or less sort of truthful. That first time had been sheer impulse, nothing more. There’d been no time to wallow in it or savor the terror felt by her victim. This was different. This would be her first premeditated murder, something she’d dreamed of most of her life. She would have all the time she wanted to revel in this man’s fear and agony. The anticipation of it was almost painfully sweet.

  Lindsey got to her feet and moved around to take a look at their captive from the front. The fear in his watery eyes was a joy to behold.

  Grant was standing next to her now.

  She gave him a sidelong smile and said, “Well, what should we do to him first?”

  8

  RIGHT UP TO THE MOMENT she asked that question, Grant had for the most part thought of the planned murder in abstract terms, like a shared exercise in fantasy or make-believe. Not that much different from their bedroom roleplaying, really. Thinking of it the way he had was a psychological defense mechanism, a means of keeping the hard reality of it at arm’s length until that was no longer possible.

  Well, that moment of reckoning had arrived. There could no longer be any turning away from what was about to happen. He stared at the man strapped to the chair and tried to imagine himself using the things in the toolbox on him. The guy was utterly helpless and thus would be unable to evade or defend himself against, for instance, a hammer blow to the face. As he thought about it, Grant could almost feel the weight of that hammer in his hand. He was thinking about how it would feel to swing the hammer and have it connect with vulnerable human flesh when he realized his hands were shaking. Not wanting Lindsey to see how nervous he was, he curled his hands into fists in an effort to still the shaking.

  “I asked you a question.”

  Grant flinched at the sound of Lindsey’s voice. “Sorry,” he said, glancing at her with a strained smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. “I spaced out a little. Daydreaming about what we’re about to do, I guess.”

  She frowned. “You’re sweating.”

  “Am I?” He rubbed a hand across his brow, then frowned at his glistening palm. “Huh. Sorry, I guess I’m nervous.”

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  She turned fully toward him as she said this, giving him a hard look that made her opinion of that possibility clear. It was all he needed to know there would be no backing out of this regardless of how he responded to her question. Even if he declared an intent not to participate in the torture side of the proceedings, the bottom line would not change. Things had gone too far for that. The man they’d taken would die in this cabin.

  Grant shook his head. “No. Definitely not.”

  She nodded, that stern expression still firmly in place. “Good. You know how much this means to me. Backing out at this point would put our marriage in serious jeopardy. It’d be a betrayal. Do you get that?”

  He nodded in the most emphatic way possible, eager to please. “Yes, yes, I do. Like I said, I’m sorry. But I’m human, you know? This is a big thing. Some jittery nerves are to be expected.”

  Lindsey’s expression turned a shade harder, an indication her anger was still escalating despite his reassurances. She moved a step closer. “We spent months and months talking endlessly about this. I’d hate to think you were misleading me all along.”

  Grant’s cheeks flushed red as he absorbed the brunt of her anger. He palmed more sweat away from his brow and wiped it on his jeans. “I wasn’t misleading you, I swear. Please cut me some slack for my nerves. I’ll get over it. I promise.”

  Still glaring at him, she said, “You better.”

  She went to the table, opened the toolbox, and began sorting through the things inside it. The man in the chair flinched at the sound of metal things clanking against each other. Whimpering sounds were audible from behind his gag. Grant made eye contact with him for a moment before tearing his gaze away. The pleading look in the man’s eyes made his stomach clench. Maybe he didn’t have what it took to go through with something like this, after all.

  Didn’t matter, though.

  He was trapped with absolutely no way out.

  Lindsey’s hand came out of the toolbox as she turned away from the table and moved into place behind their captive. Gripped in her right hand was a pair of wire cutters, with the snips open. She placed a hand gently on the bound man’s shoulder. He jerked at the moment of contact, the volume of his whimpering sharply increasing. He turned his head in a futile effort to see what she was up to.

  “Face forward, you piece of shit.” Lindsey’s hand came away from his scalp and she gave him a hard swat upside the head, making him yelp in pain. “We’re just getting started here. You should save your energy for when things get really bad. Understand?”

  Still whimpering softly, he nodded and sniffled.

  Lindsey smiled. “Good. Because make no fucking mistake about it, things are about to get very, very bad for you indeed.”

  She pulled his right earlobe away from the side of his head, applied the snips to the stretched-out bit of flesh, and clipped it off. Blood leaked from the wound and spilled down his neck to his chest as he screamed in agony behind the gag. Lindsey again swatted him upside the head and screamed at him to shut up unless he wanted to move on to the genital torture phase of the proceedings much sooner than planned. This threat did manage to cow him into suppressing the urge to scream. The screams, however, were replaced by a continuous loud whimpering, which Lindsey appeared to deem at least temporarily acceptable.

  For a while, she stood there smirking down at him from behind, clearly enjoying her victim’s misery every bit as much as she’d always claimed she would. For Lindsey, nothing remotely resembling a second thought had ever crossed her mind. Grant knew that beyond any doubt now. The look on her face was sheer malicious glee. Just as the man’s whimpering began to subside ever so slightly, she pinched his wounded ear and gave it a hard twist, laughing as his screams resumed. She allowed the screaming to go on a few moments before again swatting him multiple times and reminding him what would happen next if he didn’t stop.

  The captive needed a bit longer this time to regain some semblance of control, but he finally managed it. His flu
shed face was sheened in sweat and his eyes danced wildly in their sockets, desperately seeking some sign of help or hope from somewhere. Of course, nothing of the sort was forthcoming.

  Lindsey stepped out from behind the chair and showed the man the bloody bit of severed flesh, holding it inches away from his face. “See that? That used to be part of you. It’s not anymore. Isn’t that a fucking trip? Hey, watch this.”

  She backed off a few steps and dropped the earlobe on the floor, grinding it to mush beneath the heel of her shoe. Tears streamed down the man’s face as he watched her do this. Lindsey laughed wildly at the sight of the man’s tears. The sound struck Grant as not far removed from the exaggerated maniacal cackling of a crazy person in an old movie. The churning in his stomach was getting steadily worse.

  Then Lindsey abruptly stopped laughing and turned around, slapping the wire cutters into Grant’s hand.

  Grinning broadly, she said, “Your turn, baby.”

  9

  GRANT’S HAND WAS SHAKING AS he tightly gripped the padded handles of the wire cutters. Lindsey gripped his hand and held it until the shaking began to subside. His face was still red, and he was again sweating profusely.

  “Grant, honey, just breathe, okay?” She said this with a more soothing and less reproachful tone than before. These symptoms of a lack of fortitude in her partner remained worrisome, but another display of anger at this critical juncture might only make things worse. The anger was still there beneath the surface, but she managed to hold it in by telling herself it was too soon to give up on him being able to see this thing through with her. It was clear he wasn’t as strong mentally as she was, but that didn’t mean he was a lost cause. He needed guidance, that was all. Guidance and the firm, steadying hand of the love of his life, as he often described her.