Epilogue
CARLSON
“What the fuck are you looking at, dipshit?”
Carlson barely even registers the verbal spray from a jacked-up inmate passing by his cell. He barely even gives consideration to the inevitable events that will see said prisoner lay meaty fists into his face later.
Because his mind is elsewhere.
With an arm folded under his head and his ankles crossed, a veiled smile spreads. It’s been a week since his little package would have arrived at the Shaw residence addressed to Ms. Mae Ellison . A whole week of Mae knowing exactly what he did to her. There would be no more wondering. No more second-guessing if he was telling the truth about that fateful night they first met.
She’d have touched the oversized, innocuous pink bow wrapped around the small box. Perhaps she even assumed it was something delicate from her cunt of a boyfriend. A love token. His fists clench in delight, knowing that innocent thought wouldn’t have lasted long because she surely would have read the note.
Hello Darling,
Inspiration for your next collection.
C
Carlson wonders if her hands trembled while holding the USB. She always trembled when scared. It’s one of his most savored memories. He bites his inner lip, stopping the further spread of his smile when he thinks of the sound her little gasp would have made when she saw the title carefully scratched into the casing.
I had you first.
She would know, right then and there, that she certainly was holding a love token, just not from the man who’d tricked her into loving him. By the look of Carlson, he could be in any number of places right now, prison not being one of them, as joy fills his deviant soul, imagining his darling Mae watching in graphic detail the gloriously depraved night they’d shared in New Hampshire before she married his brother.
He visualized licking her tears, tasting the salt on his tongue as if it were a vivid reality.
He questioned if he, Dr. Carlson Cooper , starred in her dreams as much as she did his. He wondered if, for the next thirty-six years, two months, and four days until his release, she would spend a single hour without him crossing her mind.
“Get up, fuck face. You got a visitor.”
Guard Pytts —the motherfucker with a penchant for swinging the baton a little too freely and for no good reason. Carlson can’t help but cringe at the sight of it every damn time, remembering all too well the last occasion he was met with a baton as a free man. He hadn’t known what to be more frightened of—the long shaft of rubber destined to be used inside him or the brute who waltzed into his home twirling it between his fingers like a fucking majorette in a marching band.
Carlson props himself on his elbows, frowning when the asshole guard remains outside his cell. Pytts leans against the walkway railing, arms crossed, taunting him with the fucking baton. There’s something about the glee in his narrowed eyes and the way his smile twists when he chews on a piece of gum.
The bells sound, signaling rec time.
Cell doors along his row clank open.
Except Carlson’s.
A sea of orange files out of his wing, but he remains on the bed. He’s never in a rush to be with his fellow inmates. They all seem to want a piece of him in some form or another. Just like Pytts, they’re all determined to make his existence in this fuck hole more miserable than ever. But something about today’s rec time is enough to have him momentarily forget about Mae Ellison. Just .
Pytts glances down the walkway and nods to the approaching Warden Tomlin, who Carlson has long suspected is behind the torture he endures day in and day out.
He swings his legs over the cot, white knuckles gripping the edge. “What the hell is going on?”
Tomlin steps forward and manually unlocks the cell door before making a point of slowly sliding it open. He wants his helpless prisoner to feel exposed and vulnerable to whoever wants a piece of his flesh or soul. The wicked gleam in the warden’s eyes is blood-chilling as he says, “You remember Finny, don’t you?”
The color drains from Carlson Cooper’s face as the Swedish hulk he remembers all too well rounds the corner of the cell, his painfully large frame blocking the outside light and any hope of ever forgetting about his worst nightmare.
“I come baring gifts,” the Swede—with a disturbing thirst for revenge—rumbles in broken English. He accepts Tomlin’s baton, expertly twirling it between his fingers the same way Carlson so terrifyingly recalls. “You know from experience, this one’s my favorite.” Finny steps closer, backing the trembling prisoner into the corner. If the fallen doctor thought his cell would be a place he could run to and hide, he’d be sorely mistaken.
Wearing a deranged smile, the hulk tosses the baton on the cot and pulls a giant beast of a black cock from under his jacket. Carlson balks at the barbaric screw-like ridges spiraling around the engorged phallic shaft.
Only months ago, he’d suffered the humiliating glances from the ER doctors and nurses as they attempted to remove the oversized ceramic pine cone with jagged edges, and the silence that ensued when they stitched his asshole back together. The question played on their lips but none had been so brave as to ask how such a terrifying object became so completely lodged in his orifice. But that was in the past. His present is far more horrifying.
Carlson won’t survive something so brutal.
This he knew.
And if he did, he’d soon wish he was dead.
Despite his terror, Carlson’s lips twist into a snarl when he sees that wrapped tidily around the thick girth is a familiar pink bow.
Mae’s bow.
Fucking ungrateful bitch.
“He’s all yours,” Tomlin calls, sliding the cell door closed with a heart-thudding clunk. “We’re going to lunch.”
“Don’t go,” the desperate voice shrieks. “ Please! You can’t leave me here with him.” Like a rabid animal, spittle slings from his mouth as pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears. “I have fucking rights !”
The warden’s carefree whistle fades with each passing second, and like the madman he’s become since they locked him away, Carlson mutters a string of incomprehensible promises that will see him hunt for Mae in his next life.
In one last despicable bid for freedom, he attempts to sidestep the heaving hulk, only to have a meaty hand wrap around his neck. The Swede squeezes until the fool’s face grows beet red and then pins him against the cold concrete wall.
“Much like your dead brother, you’re a slow learner, skitstovel . So, this beauty right here…” a mere inch from Carlson Cooper’s face, the overgrown Swede holds the enormous cock screw, “… is a fuck- you gift from Damon Shaw.”
~
THANK YOU FOR READING Beautiful Ruins.