Chapter 20 #2
I grab a handful of her hair, forcing her head up so she has to look through the small, circular window that overlooks the pier.
“Look at him, Hallow. Look at the man who gave us these scars.”
I reach for the black case on the workbench. Inside isn’t some store-bought toy; it’s a piece of “The Punchline” tech—a custom-built, industrial-grade oscillating anchor. It’s made of heavy, medical-grade cold steel, textured with spiralling, razor-thin ridges designed to catch and pull.
“Aris used electricity to break your mind,” I rasp, the metal clinking as I prep it. “I’m going to use frequency to erase it.”
I shove the anchor into her. It’s thick, uncompromising, stretching her open until she’s gasping for air she can’t find.
But that’s not the part that breaks her.
I take a secondary device—a series of weighted, magnetic micro-leads—and I clip them to her labia and the clamp still crushing her nipple.
They’re tethered by gossamer-thin wires to the main anchor inside her.
“This is a symbiotic loop, Hallow. Every time the motor inside you spins, the leads pull. The harder you twitch, the sharper they bite.”
I step back, the remote heavy in my hand. It doesn’t have buttons; it has a slider. I thumb it upward.
The sound is a low-frequency hum that vibrates the very floorboards.
Inside her, the anchor doesn’t just buzz; it grinds in a jagged, offset orbit.
It feels like a tectonic plate shifting against her G-spot.
And then the leads kick in. With every rotation, they snatch at her skin, a rhythmic, stinging tug that perfectly syncs with the internal thud.
“Fuck!” she screams, her body snapping like a whip against the ceiling restraints.
But the more she thrashes, the more the magnets jerk at her nerves. It’s a closed loop of agony and filth. I turn the dial. The frequency hits a pitch that makes her eyes roll back until only the whites are showing. She’s not just coming; she’s being electro-mechanically dismantled.
“You feel that?” I mock, walking around her suspended, twitching form, watching the way her muscles cord and fail.
“That’s the sound of your father’s campaign speech.
Every time the crowd cheers, I’m going to up the hertz.
Every time he lies about ‘protecting the children,’ I’m going to make you feel exactly what he sold you for. ”
I pull out my phone and sync the remote to the live audio feed of the Mayor’s speech.
“Now, the city is going to fuck you, Hallow. Literally.”
The Mayor’s voice booms through the funhouse speakers.
“I promise a future of order!” The vibrator spikes, the anchor spinning at a violent, blurring speed.
Hallow’s scream is lost in the roar of the mechanical hum and the applause of the crowd outside.
She’s hanging there, vibrating so hard the chains are throwing sparks, her pussy weeping a river of slick, frustrated heat over the cold steel.
“You’re the heartbeat of this city now, sweetheart,” I whisper, leaning in to lick a tear from her cheek as she shudders in a permanent, forced peak. “Don’t you dare go quiet on me.”
I leave the slider pushed all the way to the red.
The funhouse is filled with the sound of her unmaking—the wet, rhythmic thwack of the leads snatching at her skin and the deep, industrial growl of the anchor grinding into her core.
She’s not even screaming anymore; she’s just making these small, broken clicking sounds in the back of her throat, her body a blur of violent, high-frequency tremors suspended against the rafters.
I pick up the porcelain teacup—fine, bone-white china I looted from a Victorian estate—and step out onto the balcony.
The night air is crisp, smelling of salt and the expensive exhaust of the motorcade idling below.
A hundred yards away, the Mayor stands on a makeshift stage draped in red, white, and blue.
He looks presidential. He looks clean. He looks like a man who hasn’t spent the last decade dreaming about the sound of his children’s bones snapping.
“I see a city that has lost its way!” his voice booms through the speakers, echoing off the water.
I take a slow, deliberate sip of the Earl Grey. It’s hot, bitter, and perfect.
“You see a city that’s lost its way?” I murmur to the empty air, a jagged grin splitting my face. “That’s funny, Dad. I see a city that’s finally found its pulse.”
Inside, the anchor spikes in response to the crowd’s roar. I hear the chains rattle. I hear Hallow’s heels drum against the thin air.
“We must protect the sanctity of the family unit!” the Mayor shouts, slamming his fist onto the podium.
I let out a sharp, barking laugh and tilt my cup toward him. “The ‘sanctity,’ he says. While his daughter is hanging from a hook like a side of beef, vibrating on a frequency that would melt a normal brain. You really are a poetic piece of shit, aren’t you?”
I lean over the railing, watching the secret service detail scan the crowd. They’re looking for snipers. They’re looking for bombs. They aren’t looking for the ghosts of the past sitting on a rotting pier, drinking tea and watching the show.
“The darkness will be purged!”
I thumb the remote in my pocket, pushing the frequency even higher, into the ultrasonic range where it starts to whistle.
The sound from inside the funhouse changes—it becomes a shrill, piercing whine.
Hallow’s body snaps into a rigid, agonising arc, her spine looking like it’s ready to burst through her skin.
“Purge away, old man,” I whisper, the steam from the tea curling around my face like a shroud. “But you can’t purge what you built. You can’t purge the filth you left in the dark.”
I settle back into the rusted iron chair, crossing my legs, enjoying the symphony of his lies and her mechanical agony. It’s the best tea party I’ve ever been to.
I don’t just watch him; I savour him.
The remote in my hand is a heavy, matte-black slab of obsidian, custom-tooled with a haptic feedback strip. Every time the anchor inside Hallow grinds against her bone, the remote pulses in my palm. I can feel her heart through the circuitry. I can feel the exact moment her nerves begin to fry.
I slide my thumb slowly down the “Descent” track.
Inside the funhouse, the high-pitched whine drops into a low, bone-shaking thrum. It’s the kind of frequency that doesn’t just hit the skin; it moves the organs. I hear her. Through the open balcony door, her voice comes out in a shattered, sobbing mess, competing with the Mayor’s amplified lies.
“Jex… oh my god… fuck… please…”
I take another sip of tea, the floral notes clashing with the smell of the salt spray.
“Listen to that, Dad,” I whisper, my eyes fixed on the back of his silver head. “That’s the sound of your legacy. It’s got a real rhythm to it, doesn’t it?”
“We will build a wall against the chaos!” the Mayor bellows.
I slam the “Peak” trigger on the remote.
A jagged bolt of ultrasonic vibration rips through the wires. Hallow’s scream is a pure, vibrato-less note of agony. “JEX! STOP! PLEASE STOP! I CAN’T—”
“You can,” I mutter, my thumb twitching on the haptic strip, feeling the frantic, rhythmic slapping of her body against the air. “You were built for this. We both were.”
Suddenly, the “gift” arrives.
From the shadows of the warehouse district across the pier, the Choir moves. They don’t use guns. They don’t use bombs. They use the city’s own infrastructure. A massive, industrial crane—decorated in jagged, neon-green streamers—swings out over the crowd. Dangling from the hook isn’t a banner.
It’s a glass casket, lit from within by strobe lights.
Inside, the body of the Mayor’s head of security is displayed like a piece of taxidermy. He’s been stripped, his skin covered in the same “The Punchline” face paint Hallow is wearing, and his chest has been carved open to reveal a clock counting down from sixty seconds.
The crowd screams. The secret service scrambles. But my father—he just freezes. He stares at the glass box swinging toward his podium like a pendulum of truth.
I thumb the remote again, making the anchor inside Hallow twist in a slow, agonising spiral.
“Jex… please… I’m dying… stop it…” her voice is a wet whimper now, a ghost of a sound.
“Not yet, sweetheart,” I rasp, leaning over the railing, my knuckles white against the iron. “The clock is ticking. And Daddy hasn’t even seen the best part yet.”
I reach for the “Sync” button. One press, and the frequency of Hallow’s torture will match the ticking of the dead man’s heart.
The countdown hits thirty.
I thumb the master override on the remote, a jagged “Execute” command that bypasses the funhouse’s internal servers and hacks directly into the massive LED wall behind the podium.
The Mayor’s face, thirty feet high and glowing with projected virtue, flickers once, twice, and then snaps into a high-definition feed of the carnage behind me.
The crowd doesn’t just go quiet; they stop breathing.
There she is. Hallow. Suspended from the rafters like a sacrificial lamb made of sweat and sin.
The camera I rigged to the ceiling is wide-angle, capturing every inch of her spread-eagle crucifixion.
She’s vibrating so fast she looks blurred at the edges, her skin glistening, her head thrown back so far her throat looks like it’s ready to snap.
“Watch the screen, Dad,” I whisper, leaning back in my chair and crossing my legs. “See what the ‘sanctity of family’ looks like under the hood.”
I slide the frequency up, hitting the sub-bass levels that make the heavy LED screen pulse. The audio feed cuts through the pier, overriding the Mayor’s microphone. Hallow’s voice explodes over the PA system, raw and drenched in a filth that no one in this crowd has ever heard.
“Jex… fuck… Jex, please, oh god, fuck my pussy… it’s so deep… fuck, you’re so fucking good to me…”
The words are a wet, rhythmic chant, punctuated by the mechanical whir-snap of the leads snatching at her labia.
On the giant screen, the camera zooms in, clinical and cruel.
It focuses on her core—the way the anchor is grinding against her, the way she’s weeping a river of slick, frustrated heat that drips onto the floorboards below.
Every twitch, every fold of skin, every drop of her undoing is projected in forty-foot glory for the voters of this city to see.
My father turns.
I see the moment his soul leaves his body.
His face goes from presidential tan to a sickly, curdled grey.
His eyes bulge, fixed on the screen where his daughter is begging her brother to finish her while she’s tortured by a machine.
He looks like he’s having a stroke in real-time.
He tries to speak, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a hook, but the only sound in the air is Hallow’s frantic, pornographic sobbing.
“Oh god, Jex… I’m cumming… don’t stop, bite me… fuck, I’m so wet for you…”
The crowd starts to riot. People are screaming, some covering their children’s eyes, others staring with a sick, hypnotic fascination at the mechanical violation. The secret service is trying to pull him off the stage, but he’s frozen, paralysed by the sight of the monster he created.
I thumb the remote one last time, a “Kill-Switch” that sends one final, massive surge of voltage through the anchor.
Hallow’s body snaps into a rigid, terrifying arc.
Her eyes fly open, staring directly into the camera—directly at him—as she hits a peak that sounds more like a death rattle than an orgasm.
She screams his name—not mine, his—a long, agonising wail of “FATHER!” that shakes the very foundations of the pier.
The screen goes black.
The countdown on the dead man’s chest hits zero.
I don’t look at the explosion. I just pick up my teacup and take the last sip.
“Polls are looking down today, Dad,” I mutter, a slow, dark grin spreading across my face as the first wave of fire hits the stage.