The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she thought. ‘You really think it’s that easy?’

  She stood staring at the glass, trying to reason with herself, but in the end there was nothing else she could think to do so she went to the corner and grabbed one of the chairs. She placed it under the window and stood on it and that frustrated her even more. At just over five feet tall she was still too short to look through the glass.

  With an angry grunt she gripped the concrete windowsill and pulled herself up. Her arms trembled as she held her weight and extended her neck to look through the soot covered glass. It was thick, the same sort of glass her father used in his home and offices. Even if she had a gun she wouldn’t be able to crack much less shatter it.

  She eased herself down onto the chair and then sat upon it. Despair boiled up inside her and she began to cry softly. Her arms wrapped around her and she drew her knees to her chest. She was cold, her feet on the brink of numbness while her skin prickled in goosebumps.

  Time passed indeterminately as she sat on the chair under the window staring into the corner and thinking of nothing. Finally there was a sound from the door above, something heavy sliding with a loud metallic clink. The door opened silently and Sticklan Stone stepped through the threshold. He pulled the door closed behind him and stood atop the stairs for what seemed like minutes, looking down at her.

  Rain watched him, her eyes red and puffy but hard underneath. She had fight in her, a fire that would be hard to extinguish. Sticklan watched those eyes for a long time, allowing them to tingle in his groin. He didn’t know what it would take to break this one, but he couldn’t wait to find out.

  Slowly, he descended and as he did she moved to her feet and then away from him. She snatched the chair as she went and held it in front of her. He smiled. Oh yes, this was going to be fun.

  He’d brought hundreds of women and more than a few dozen men down into this basement over the decade and a half he’d been under Richter Crows employ, but there were few he truly enjoyed and none he’d enjoy as much as this girl. He’d wanted to bring her here since first lying eyes on her. The first time he saw how she stood up to her older brothers, and then once her mother was gone, the way she handled her old man. He became obsessed with the notion of snatching her in the night and carrying her off to this place. He used to imagine how he might do it without Richter finding out. Of course, this little house was the first place he’d look.

  Rain watched him like a feral cat he’d cornered in an alley as a child. The cat had hissed. Rain simply said, “You come near me, I’ll kill you.” He met her eyes and saw that she meant it. He smiled. She went on. “Whatever my father wants, there are better ways.”

  Sticklan lunged for her. Rain leapt back half a step, adjusting her feet to give her better balance and thrust one of the chair legs into his face.

  It caught him off guard, her tactic. He’d expected her to swing hard, to try and take him out in a single blow but her attack was smart, a jab that collided with his chin, stumbling him. When she took a step forward she put everything she had into the second swing.

  Sticklan still felt the blow throbbing on his chin but he’d been in enough fights not to let that faze him. He dropped low and moved forward under her looping swing. The chair arched over his head and slammed into the floor. Before she could raise it to defend herself again he pulled the gun from behind his back and fired.

  Rain felt something bite her side, like a snake. When she looked down at the prongs and the wires hanging from them she had just enough time to recognize what had struck her. Then the jolt came. Her body jerked stiff and she dropped the chair. Sticklan grinned as he pushed the button on the gun and sent another shock through her. This one dropped her to the concrete with a loud thwack.

  Sticklan pressed the shock button again and watched her seize.

  Three seconds that felt like an eternity as electricity pulsed through her body. She couldn’t feel anything save the scream of her nerves. She felt every muscle jerk tight, as if she were lifting a car over her head. When it finally stopped her body tingled and where the weapon had bitten her burned. She found it hard to move and her head swam with dizziness as pain radiated through her. She’d been tazed before and this gun wasn’t like that. This was a pure electric shock, like sticking a prong in a wall socket.

  The saliva in her mouth tasted metallic so she spit it onto the floor.

  “That could have killed you, you know,” Sticklan said as he approached her. “Three seconds is all it takes, they say.” She tried to pull herself away from him but what he said must have been true because there was no strength left in her body.

  Sticklan up righted the chair she’d dropped then gripped her by the hair and pulled until she was sitting up on the floor. She couldn’t find the strength to stand so he gripped her throat and dragged her to the chair where he lifted and then threw her into it.

  “Nice iv ewe offer me a seet.”

  He looked at her, swaying in the chair, eyes glancing about uncertainly and laughed. “You don’t think it’ll happen to you, I know,” he told her. “Everyone…” her eyes were looking somewhere else so he grabbed her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Everyone has a limit. Everyone breaks. Everyone comes to a place where hope has abandoned them. It’s cold. Made of stone and scorched sky and the only thing to do there,” he glared at her, “is die.”

  She could feel his eyes as they ran over her bare skin. Suddenly her nakedness made her feel vulnerable. She remembered the way he used to look at her, when she was barely a teenager. She’d catch him in the corner of a room or lingering in the shadows, his eyes leering. Suddenly her gaze hardened.

  “You’ve been on the road a long time.” His fingers left her face and traced the scars along her ribs, the ones given to her by a pair of bandits that thought her and Leone would be easy prey. They’d paid for that mistake with blood.

  She smacked his hand away from her skin and he zapped her again. The jolt made her jump and stung like a bitch, but at least it was quick. “Do that again and maybe I’ll see just how long it would take this thing to kill you.”

  Rain swallowed hard, hoping she could send her anger down to her belly with the bit of spit in her mouth.

  He traced over the dull slices running down her back, through the storm cloud tattoo on her left shoulder. He found the scar on her thigh and thumbed it, then rested his hand on her leg and caressed. She shivered under his touch and he smiled as he slid his hand to the inner meat of her thigh, fingers dangerously close to the spot where her legs met.

  She swallowed hard and looked strait ahead, a thousand yards past the wall in front of her, holding her rage deep inside. Then his hand caressed the scar along her guts, a stab wound just below her belly button, before he boldly found her breast and massaged it. Rain tasted bile at the back of her throat and a tremor passed through her. It wasn’t his hand, she’d been groped plenty of times, it was the way he was doing it. Tenderly, as if they were lovers.

  “All that time on the road…” he knelt before her and looked into her eyes. “All the perils awaiting a young woman, especially a pretty one,” his hand caressed her cheek. “And you had to come home to be raped and murdered.”

  Her eyes wavered ever so slightly but she knew he saw. She hated giving him that bit of satisfaction and she promised to allow no more.

  It was true though, she had faced perils on the road, men with ideas about uses for her body she did not share. When they pressed the issue they’d bled for it. The ones who took a more final approach to her well being were no longer with us. She’d known the dangers when she chose the life and chose it because she thought it was the right thing, and because she loved Leone and would not be separated from him. She also knew what it was to be a victim and decided early on she never would be. She’d seen women who had, looked into their eyes and knew. You can live with things that happen but you can never leave them behind. Killing a man she could carry, if it was to protect herself or Leone. What s
he saw in those women, survivors they called them… She would die first. But now she had no strength to fight and the prongs were still biting into her skin, waiting to spew their electric venom.

  Tears flooded her eyes but she wouldn’t give them voice because that would give him another satisfaction. He rose to his full height. Looking down at her, he smiled and shocked her again.

  Sticklan Stone went to one of the cabinets where he used a key to open the door and removed a pair of handcuffs. Rain was on the floor again, she’d fallen off the chair when he zapped her and must have come to the brink of blacking out. She was trying to get back onto the chair when he moved to her, snatched her arm, and slapped the cuff on. He yanked hard on the chain and brought her to standing, then bound her other wrist in front of her.

  “There has to be something,” her voice was shaky. He looked at her. “A reason I’m here. My father must want something from this.”

  Sticklan smiled at her. “You don’t get it do you? You still can’t see that place. You still have hope,” he said and pounded his index finger into the middle of her forehead.

  Her brow furrowed confusion at him.

  “There is no, ‘what your father wants,’ anymore. He’s through with you. He’s given you to me.”

  She was shaking her head. “You’re lying,” she protested.

  “I think of it as my holiday bonus.” He smiled.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said sharply. “He wouldn’t…”

  Sticklan’s grin faded. He looked at her coldly and told her, “He did it to your mother. And she wasn’t half the cunt you turned out to be.”

  The words shuddered through her and shook tears from her. It was her. She’d broken into her father’s office all those years ago. She’d stolen his hard drive and her mother had paid for it and she’d just stood there and let her. ‘I deserve this and worse,’ she told herself.

  “It was me,” she said softly.

  Sticklan looked at her.

  “I stole the files. The one’s he killed her for. It was me.”

  Sticklan laughed so hard he doubled over. “You’re making that up,” he finally said. She looked at him and he knew it was true. “I’ll be damned,” he added with a cock of his head.

  “Tell him,” she spit sharply with a glare.

  He smiled. “Oh, I will. …someday.”

  There was something in the way he said that last word, the look on his face and the tone in his voice, that felt queer to her. She didn’t have time to consider it further.

  “We have to get started,” he told her. “Unfortunately we’re on a timeline.”

  “You could just let me go,” she told him and her eyes still held that it might happen.

  He smiled at her and nodded. “You’re right. I could.” He grabbed the chain linking her wrists and drew it over her head with one hand while the other pulled a clamp attached to a length of tension wire down from the ceiling. She had to stand on tiptoes as he slipped the chain of her cuffs into the clamp.

  Sweat beaded and glistened on her flesh as she watched him pull the prongs from her side before he moved to the cabinet. Her heart raced. “Sticklan,” was as far as she got before he reached into the cabinet. What he pulled out of there was knotted leather lined with jagged metal barbs.

  She rocked back and forth, struggling against her restraints. He’d pulled the chord down with such ease, why couldn’t she do the same.

  “Sharp or blunt?” he asked.

  “I thought it was your cock you meant to torment me with,” she japed at him, hoping to buy time. Hoping maybe he’d forget about this new idea.

  Instead he grinned and said, “Patients my dear. I like a little foreplay first.” He took a step forward and the length of chord hissed as it moved through the air and slapped into her side. There was the swatting sting of rawhide against flesh and the subtle bite as the barbs caught in her flesh. She’d expected it to be worse, but in fact the shock gun had hurt more… until he yanked back on the handle. She felt the skin along her ribs tear slowly, the barbs ripping through her like a knife slicing steak, as he pulled with steady pressure. She writhed, breathing hard as blood began to drizzle down her side. Pain was all that existed but she didn’t give it voice, even as he whipped her again. Even as he whipped her the fifth time she didn’t make a peep, not even to ask him to stop.

  That changed when he returned to the cabinet and pulled out the canister. It had a hose and a nozzle and he grinned as he pointed it at her. Her eyes trembled as she watched it.

  “What is that?” she asked with more fear in her voice than she would have liked.

  He stepped closer, aimed the nozzle at her, and sprayed her with a dull mist of fluid that beaded on her skin. It didn’t take long for the burning to set in. Her eyes felt like they were going to melt into tears while her nose filled with mucus and shot fire back into her brain. Her throat clenched and every cut on her body—two along her left ribs, one to the right, and two across her back—screamed with acidic burns. She could taste the pepper in the air as the mist slowly coated her, finding not just her eyes, nose, mouth and cuts but the tender folds of flesh and opening between her legs. It wasn’t long before the searing was sinking deep into every wound and orifice.

  Sticklan moved to the wall near the stairs and pulled a lever, releasing the tension on the wire and she fell to the ground. “Why,” she finally shouted at him.

  His feet moved quick and passed her. She heard what she thought must be the table against the back wall moving but she was blind and gagging and then vomiting on the ground.

  It wasn’t just pepper in that spray.

  She cried when he sprayed her again, this time from closer, filling her wounds with bitterness. She flailed on the ground and he sprayed again, a blast strait in her face and when she cried out another shot down her throat. Gagging, she felt her abdomen clench violently as her body tried desperately to vomit. Only a tiny bit of acid bubbled up from her stomach and she spit it to the ground. She couldn’t breath, her nose was clogged with mucus, her throat clenched and burning. Chest heaving with suffocation, she began to feel lightheaded then finally her throat opened just a bit and she gasped.

  She was only allowed two breaths before she was in the air, rising up as he lifted her in the crook of his arm. Next came falling as he threw her down and she collided with the top of the metal table with a loud bang. She heard hydraulics hiss and the table lowered. Wiping at her eyes, she struggled to see but the burning was fierce and opening her eyes was like shoving daggers through them. Still, it was nothing compared to what was happening other places.

  Then it happened. As she lie on the metal table, cut bleeding and burning, Sticklan Stone raped her. Whatever he sprayed her with had come inside with him and each thrust brought a new wave of fire crashing against her cervix. She was little and he was big and not gentle. She gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the burning in her eyes or any of the deep cuts drooling blood from her body. She wanted to feel anything besides him in there. Anything besides his ravenous thrusts. As she recalled the way he leered at her all those years ago she knew this is what he was imagining. She heard his breathing loud and heavy and for the moment she was glad she was blind.

  “Scream,” he whispered. “Cry,” he told her. “Beg me and I’ll let it end.”

  “No,” was all she said, more of a grunt than a word as she’d been dry and now her insides were as torn up and burning as her outsides. He said the words again and again, asking her for a scream but she was determined not to give him one. She held together until anger took hold of him and he pulled free of her momentarily then forced himself into the other hole. When the burning made its way through there as well, shrill and guttural, she gave him his wish and screamed.

  When he was finished he patted her thigh and left her, cleaning up his gear and locking the cabinets behind him. She heard him ascend the stairs and then the door open and close, followed by the metal latch. She’d expected relief when he was gone
but it didn’t come. Instead his absence only scared her more.

  ‘I’m not going to die today,’ she thought and wept. It meant this wasn’t over.

  Water sprayed from the ceiling and she gathered it in her hands and tried to clear her eyes. If it helped she couldn’t tell. She gathered more water and tried to wash between her legs but the flesh there was tender and raw and it stung. Still, she could feel his seed leaking out of her and so she clinched her jaw and managed.

  Hours passed before she began to relax a bit. A short time later she was able to open her eyes. They still burned but she could see again. She was bleeding lightly from her wounds and the holes he’d used. He’d be back, but it didn’t look like he’d be back today. She tried to walk but couldn’t even stand, so she rolled back onto the table instead and wept until asleep. Her last thought before disappearing into a dream was that at least the worst of it was over.

  She was wrong.

  Lost and Found

  Quey’s eyes were wide as he looked at the set of wires Natalie had pulled from Ryla’s wound. He took tentative steps toward the table but his brain refused to process what he saw. It wasn’t possible… but there it was. She was a woman, flesh and bone... but there were wires.

  “She’s a robot?” Rachel asked.

  Natalie shook her head and replied, “I don’t know. She’s got a heart according to the monitor, and I swear I felt her kidney.” Natalie looked around the room and her eyes locked on the imager stored against the wall. “Help me with this,” she said to Rachel as she started for it.

  “What is it?” Rachel replied as she moved to assist.

  “It’s a body scan and imager. I need to see what’s inside her. What it looks like in there.”

  Natalie gave instructions on how to detach the scanning device of the machine from its cradle while turning it on by flipping a series of switches and entering settings and parameters into a touch screen interface. Then she and Rachel moved the scanner beside the bed and positioned the two arms over Ryla.