7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Andy
It’s been hours. James Eric Michael sits weeping in exhaustion, with large patches of gauged skin and long dowel-like pins sticking out of every major artery. It’s clear that he’s not giving up, but I’ve had my fun, and the knowledge that he’s clearly terrified of moving too much and dislodging one of the pins keeping the blood from spurting out of his body is satisfying enough for me to turn to my next victim. He sits in terrified shock, barely moving or making a sound, staring at me with one gaping eye and one gaping hole.
I am pretty tired, and I’m getting fucking hungry. Cas has jumped in and out with me, trying to get more information from the men while I just put them through as much pain as possible. He’s tuned out for the time being, eating a protein bar in the corner of the room while testing the sharpness of his ax. He’s always more into it at the beginning. The fun goes out of it for him when he can’t play mind games anymore. At this point, I’m just torturing them until they die a slow death, and they know it.
I’m in the middle of cutting the third finger off of the man with no eye as he moans as loudly as he can — not very loud because he’s exhausted — when Cas gives an exaggerated groan from his corner. “This is like watching one of those black and white movies where no one talks.”
“Silent movie,” I correct him as I hear the satisfying snap of bone. “Movies were black and white until the 40s, I think.”
“We have that sodium amytal, ya know,” Cas mentions offhandedly. He knows how I feel about those so-called “truth serums,” though. It’s not always such a great way to get hard facts out of someone, since they make things up often whether they mean to or not. Plus, it has other side effects.
“You think I’m gonna let this fucker off the hook with a sedative that’ll have him going numb and passing out into a nice, sweet darkness before he dies from the stress I’m putting on his body from all this other shit?”
Cas sighs loudly. “Listen, these assholes aren’t giving anything up, and it’s been nearly eight hours. You’ve barely eaten anything, and all we have are protein bars and water in this dungeon. We should have at least stocked some fucking beef jerky down here.”
He points to the moron just feet away from me who can barely keep his eyes open, but is scared to let his head droop because of the long, pointy rod through his carotid artery. “It’s starting to stink from all the vomit that came out of this motherfucker over here. I know you want to get back to Chi sooner rather than later. And if I know Mara, as much as she loves Chi, she’s probably second guessing every single thing she says or does, thinking it’s going to make her somehow more traumatized or something. I’d like to get back sometime tonight.”
He's right, but I can’t let this go. I want more. I want their fucking souls. “Drugs are the easy way out for them.”
Cas lets out a frustrated sigh through his teeth. “You promised Chi you’d make them pay, and I know you want as much information as possible out of them. You’ve practically skinned one, and you cut the other’s eyeball out, along with three—” My blade slices through another tendon, “four of his fingers. How about this: you just take the last six fingers, and then we do it my way?”
I consider what he’s saying for another moment and then shake my head. “Can’t do it. I need more time.”
“I know part of you wants to,” Cas says in aggravation. He alternates between sharpening his ax and then scraping it against the cement wall to dull it again for another half hour while I cut the rest of the man’s fingers off and begin slicing skin. After the eighth finger, he actually goes pretty silent, staring off into the distance, making a non-committal, guttural moan every now and then, but seeming completely out of it otherwise.
I almost don’t want to ask, knowing he’ll say no, but I need to at least try. “You know, I might be persuaded to finish up quicker if you have something good for me rattling around in that useless brain of yours.”
I look up at his face and realize pretty quickly that he’s not all there at this point. His one pupil is dilated in shock, and he stares into nothing. “Hey, fuckface, I’m talking to you.” I smack him and then pull his head up by his hair, but he seems to register none of what I say before his eyelids flutter a mile a minute and he passes out.
“Fuck,” I whisper harshly, letting his head fall to his chest.
“Come on, asshole. Sodium amytal.” Cas says, holding up a syringe. “I know you want to. He’s passed out anyway. We jab this other fucker with it before he bleeds out completely, and then we give it to this one when he wakes up. We get two chances. They’re not getting the full effect of your torture anyway; they’re in shock even when they’re awake.”
I roll my eyes up to the ceiling. “Why do I always give in and do it your way?”
“Because my way is always better,” Cas says, as he grabs both syringes and sticks them into James Eric Michael, who barely even registers that there is yet another foreign object being stuck into his flesh.
“Not too much!” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “Just enough to make him slower and stupider than he already is.”
“Do you think this is my first fucking rodeo? Jesus Christ, Andy.” I almost make another snide remark, until I realize that Cas is my boss, and he’s honestly probably having a hard time following any sort of directive from me at all, so I should really be thankful.
Less than a minute later, James Eric Michael stops making intermittent noises of agony and seems to relax, letting his head droop back just a little. The skewer through his neck slips, and blood gushes from the cut. Even though I made sure to just barely nick the major arteries, any slip of the pins in that area would have had this outcome.
“Goddammit,” I curse, trying to push the pin back into place, knowing that I’ll never be able to find the exact spot I nicked. “We might have ten minutes or so now until he bleeds out, but he’s already lost so much blood, it’ll probably be even less.” I can’t help my disappointment. Now, not only will he have a sedative running through his veins while he dies to ease his passing, but he’ll also die quicker than I wanted.
Cas rolls his eyes. “Do you seriously want to try to stem the bleeding? If he’s gonna give something up, that’s enough time. Plus, we have another one, remember?”
I turn away from Cas and put my full focus on the task at hand. “All right, fucker, no time to waste,” I say, lifting his chin up with the blunt knife I take from my belt. “So tell me about the Kantoku-sha .”
“They speak in English,” he mumbles, as if this might be useful to me. I suppose anything might be helpful, and I know that the drug must be working to some degree, so although I really love to sit back and absorb a steady stream of babbled information, I decide to ask some targeted questions.
“Do you have any names?” I ask, idly running the blunt edge of my knife along my fingertips.
“No names, no names. We don’t give names.” The man coughs and shakes his head like a wet dog in an obvious attempt to get his bearings.
“But you think you might know who someone is?”
“ Kyouka suigetsu ,” the man mutters vaguely, his face contorting into something akin to anger. This is a name I’ve never heard, so all I can do is try to memorize exactly what he’s saying and ask Chi about it once she’s in her right mind again.
“ Kyouka suigetsu ,” I repeat.
Cas holds his phone up to my face. “I’m recording now. Say it again.”
For perhaps the first time, I feel an appreciation for Cas being here with me instead of doing this myself. I can’t possibly think of everything. I smack the man’s back and tell him to say it again, and he repeats it once more into the phone. I repeat as well, and then I turn back to the prisoner, rapidly bleeding out.
“Who else?”
Unfortunately, the man makes a strange little sound, something between a snore and a snort, and drifts off, dead to the world. When a slap to the face doesn’t work, I shake him, causing blood to squirt from the artery in his neck, which I’ve likely just opened up even more.
“Goddammit,” I say, as I accept that I’ve lost him.
Cas chops his ax into the guy’s neck, and it doesn’t stop until it hits the spinal cord. “You want the whole head?” Cas asks me, as if asking me how many ravioli I want for dinner.
“No man, just an eye. To go with this one.” I try to stand in front of the one-eyed man menacingly, but he doesn’t register my existence or anything I’m saying.
Once Cas has finished his business, he takes a full appraisal of the dead man’s one-eyed friend, who stares blankly into space.
“Hey, fuckhead! Ever heard of a lethal injection?” Cas holds up his syringe, but the man doesn’t even blink or show any sign that he has heard the words. He’s stopped making noises and is simply rocking ever-so-slightly from side to side. Cas pulls his head back by his hair and digs his ax into the guy’s neck, far enough that it gives a weak gush of blood, but the man barely flinches.
Cas looks up at me, shaking his head. “We’re not getting shit out of this one, man. He’s too far gone.”
It makes sense. I’ve basically done the same to him as his friend. But I try one more thing. “Epinephrine,” I say, holding out my hand.
Cas hands it to me without question, wanting to see where it will take us just as much as I do. I shoot it into his arm, and he juts up a moment later, eyes wide, chest pounding, blood leaking heavier from the multiple wounds on his body.
“Ahh, there he is. Come to join us one more time before it’s lights-out.”
He’s terrified and can barely breathe, much less speak. If he doesn’t have a heart attack in the next minute, he’ll be dead from something else in about the same amount of time. I don’t have long.
“Your friend told us about Kyouka Suigetsu and the Kantoku-sha ,” I say with a smirk. “Should we tell him you gave him up? If you have a family, friends, or anyone you don’t want dead, he’ll kill them, don’t you think?”
Now he looks even more worried. “No, no!” He gasps and caves his chest inward, likely in an attempt to calm his racing heart, which probably feels like it’s being crushed with a two-ton boulder right now. “You can’t tell them!”
“Them? Maybe I’ll just tell Kyouka Suigetsu .”
“Not him! Anyone but him!”
So now I know it’s the name of a man, for sure. “So what was the deal? You kill Akio, and what? What was in it for him?”
The man shakes his head and tries to respond, but he looks like a dying fish out of water as he gasps for breath. “You don’t,” he says, as he chokes, “don’t understand. You c—can’t!”
He chokes again, and his eyes roll to the back of his head as his body begins seizing. I know what this means. He’s no good to us anymore.
I take the ax from Cas’s hands and chop through his neck myself. I feel the man’s blood soaking through my clothes. I absorb it with satisfaction, as if it makes me stronger, like a power up in a video game. I want every last drop. I want it all.
Once I’ve finally hacked through the spinal cord and his head drops to the floor, Cas appraises me, nodding and wiping blood off his naked arms. “I approve.”
I shrug. “I hope Chi does, too.”